Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Loki episode 3.
Loki has introduced Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, a female variant of Loki - and she appears to possess very different powers to the original trickster god. According to the TVA, the timeline naturally skews towards chaos, with the creation of innumerable branched timelines. Their job is to prune those branches, to limit the chaos, and it makes sense they're finding themselves struggling to deal with a variant of Loki.
Sylvie seems to be a blend of two characters from the comics, Lady Loki and the second Enchantress, and she is very different to Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief. Dialogue has suggested this version of Loki wasn't adopted by Asgardians, although she's yet to indicate just who brought her up instead of Odin and Frigga. Her different physique and experiences have given Sylvie a very different fighting style to Loki (although there are overlaps) and likewise she tends to use enchantments Loki claims to be less familiar with. It's difficult to say whether that's due to temporal mechanics - Sylvie is a variant from a branched timeline, so there could be differences between her and Loki on a genetic level that have affected how her magic develops - or whether the mainstream Loki has simply never dabbled with these specific spells. Loki himself has attempted to hint some of Sylvie's magic is beneath him, exactly the attitude you'd expect from the egotistical trickster, but that's unlikely to truly be the reason he's never demonstrated the powers Sylvie displays.
Indeed, Loki and Sylvie's differences in fighting styles and powerset may be the main reason Sylvie has caused so much trouble for the TVA. They're expecting a Loki who wields all Loki's typical abilities - shapeshifting, illusion projection, duplication casting, and the like - meaning Sylvie's impossible for them to pin down. Here are all the abilities Sylvie has used to cause such trouble for the TVA, because they didn't expect a Loki to possess them.
Lady Loki appears to specialize in enchantments of the mind, and in Loki episode 3 we saw just how formidable these powers can be. When she makes physical contact with a person, she is able to weave an enchantment that penetrates their mind and encourages them to reveal their deepest secrets. It is possible to resist these spells, and the amount of resistance depends on the strength of the will; in the case of the strongest minds, Sylvie creates a false reality out of their memories and implants herself in them as a trusted friend, adviser, or perhaps even lover. This magic is certainly powerful, because when she used it on a TVA hunter she was able to penetrate the Time-Keepers' brainwashing and bring back memories she claimed were centuries old. The mainstream Loki does possess limited psychic abilities, which he used on Erik Selvig to help achieve his nefarious purposes in the first Thor movie. But he doesn't tend to use these powers particularly often, even mocking Sylvie for her use of them, and indeed in The Avengers preferred to use the Mind Stone for feats like this, suggesting Lady Loki has more control and experience in this area than he does.
Sylvie is experienced at hand-to-hand combat, making liberal use of her long legs for particularly savage kicks – a key contrast between the two variants given that Loki hates the use of brute force. Still, it's notable Sylvie initially challenged Loki through the bodies of others, suggesting she prefers to limit her own personal exposure to risks. Sylvie seems able to dominate the minds of weaker-minded individuals, transforming them into her puppets, speaks and acting through them. There appear to be limits to this power, given she's only been shown possessing one person at a time, and her consciousness does seem to need a degree of physical contact in order to jump from one body to the next. Hosts have enhanced strength during the possession, and collapse in exhaustion and fatigue when she moves on.
The interesting question is whether or not there are other limitations upon Sylvie's possession power. It's likely some hosts have a heightened degree of resistance, simply because their wills are too strong, and as a result some people may be able to fight against Lady Loki's control - perhaps even to reject her consciousness altogether. Hopefully this will be tested, perhaps by seeing whether Sylvie can possess Loki himself in a future episode of Loki.
Loki releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.
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