Before Lamentis: ‘Loki’ Episode 3 Embraces the Quiet Romance of Richard Linklater’s Classic Films

Two strangers opening up on a train, walking for hours in the moonlight, and enjoying the sights of a foreign city with a strict time limit haunting them at every turn. Is this one of Richard Linklater’s classic Before films, starting with the iconic indie romance Before Sunrise, or Episode 3 of Disney+’s Loki? The latest installment of Loki threw Marvel fans a real curveball, stranding Loki (Tom Hiddleston) with Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) on Lamentis-I, a doomed moon with no way out. The two rival Loki variants fight, bicker, team up, ride a train, walk all night, and meditate on the meaning of love…all before the apocalypse sets in.

Loki Episode 3 “Lamentis” went full Linklater in the most perversely romantic way possible giving us the moment MCU fans didn’t know we needed to see: the god of mischief finally falling in love. (With a version of himself.)

Loki follows the misadventures of Tom Hiddleston’s beloved anti-hero after the TVA, or Time Variance Authority, scoops up the variant version of Loki who slipped away with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame. This Loki likely would be annihilated from existence except for the fact that TVA Analyst Mobius (Owen Wilson) needs help tracking down another, more dangerous Loki variant. And so Loki begrudgingly joins the TVA only to come face to face with a “Lady Loki” variant at the end of Episode 2. He follows her through a time door to the TVA and just as she prepares to kill him, he opens a time door vaulting them through time and space to…the worst apocalypse of them all: Lamentis-I.

Loki Episode 3 follows these two rival “Loki” variants — Di Martino’s version prefers to go by “Sylvie” — as they bicker, banter, and begrudgingly fall in love with each other. The episode was brilliantly written by Bisha K. Ali (who coincidentally will be the head writer on Disney+’s next big MCU show Ms. Marvel) and exquisitely directed by Kate Herron, but all I could keep thinking about watching it was Richard Linklater’s seminal romantic classic Before Sunrise.

Linklater’s film follows American backpacker Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and French college student Céline (Julie Delpy) after the two strike up a conversation on a train in Europe. Bewitched by their instant connection, Jesse asks Céline to disembark in Vienna with him. The pitch is she gives him one night to wander the city. At sunrise, he will board a flight back to the States and she will return to Paris. The film is a glorious two-hander. Hawke and Delpy talk, flirt, laugh, and eventually fall hard for each other. Future films in the Before series* follow the couple as their love is tested over the decades, but Before Sunrise remains a cinematic classic for its simplicity and depth. And it feels like the template for how Loki falls in love with Sylvie in Loki Episode 3.

After a few sparring rounds, the two find themselves sneaking onto a train bound for an ark. Loki has possession of the TemPad, which is their only hope out, and Sylvie knows how to juice the TemPad up using the power of the ark. What follows is a rather gorgeous scene where the two open up about their mothers. Loki’s Achilles Heel has always been his love of Frigga (Rene Russo), while Sylvie only remembers snatches of her adopted mother. Loki breaks the ice and asks Sylvie if she has a beau, to which she jokes there isn’t time for real love when you’re hopping through apocalypses. Loki admits the same. He’s had hookups — with both sexes — but never anything real.

After getting booted from the train, the two sit on space rocks and ponder existence. They wander for hours across Lamentis-I, knowing they have limited time left together to save themselves. The whole thing could just have easily been called Before Apocalypse because like Linklater’s series, all of these poignant conversations come with a very real, very fixed deadline.

Ultimately, the episode ends with Sylvie and Loki making a thrilling attempt to hijack the ark in a last ditch attempt to save themselves and everyone else. They have grown to a point where they trust each other and Loki, it seems, is in love. Love is not hate as Sylvie opines, but a dagger. Or maybe it’s something else entirely for Loki.

It’s easy to laugh off the idea that Loki is falling in love with himself since he’s an egotistical character, but if the character’s later arc in the MCU films proves anything, he’s also burdened with glorious self-loathing. If Loki does fall in love at all, it’s a huge step forward for the character. That he falls for a version of himself? That is also seismic. It means he, like Frigga, sees something in himself worthy of love.

The MCU has never been great with romance. It often shies away from lust and leans into tidy cliches. But by taking a page from one of the all-time greatest film romances, Loki might be slowly correcting that. Loki Episode 3 is 100% inspired by the most swoon-worthy work of Richard Linklater and that’s what made it’s magical fireworks all the more incandescent.

*Coincidentally, Delpy recently revealed she turned down an offer to make a fourth Before film, citing that she’s tired of the industry; hence why she likely didn’t reprise her role as one of Natasha Romanov’s instructors in upcoming Black Widow flick. And in a twist, Ethan Hawke is currently at work on a new Disney+ Marvel show, Moon Knight.

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