After years of theories and anticipation, Ironheart finally debuted Mephisto, Marvel Comics’ stand-in for the Devil, in the MCU. And he’s played with evil glee by none other than Sacha Baron Cohen. But this reveal brings us back to 2021, when it seemed we all thought Mephisto would appear.
First in WandaVision, then other MCU projects. After all, he has a big connection to Wanda Maximoff and her twins in the pages of Marvel Comics. So there was plenty of reason to think he would show up. Yet, he never reared his ugly head. But now that he’s finally appeared, let’s go back and remember all the times we thought the MCU was hinting at Mephisto back in the day. And there were quite a few times we fell into the Mephisto trap.
“The Devil’s in the Details” Dottie Jones Is Mephisto
The actual first time we thought WandaVision was hinting at Mephisto as the super secret villain was in episode two. Still stuck in a black-and-white Bewitched scenario, they presented Dottie Jones (Emma Caulfield) as a high society woman in Westview who runs everything in town. During a planning party for an upcoming event Wanda and Agnes are attending, she tosses off the phrase “The Devil’s in the details.” Right after, Agnes slyly whispers to Wanda “That’s not the only place he is.” Was Dottie, who seemingly runs the show, really the Devil himself, a.k.a. Mephisto? Since Caulfield played “demon turned human” Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we thought her casting was a hint. Alas, Dottie was just another citizen of Westview trapped in Wanda’s hex, whose real name was Sarah Proctor.
“Unleash Hell, Demon Spawn!” Evan Peters’ Pietro Is Really Mephisto
We’re still a wee bit bitter that Evan Peters’“Fake Pietro” character wasn’t Quicksilver from the X-Men films as hinted at. No, he was some guy named Ralph Bohner under the spell of Agatha Harkness. This was the start of the Multiverse Saga and they didn’t lean into the Multiverse for this plot point? Way to drop the ball, Marvel! Regardless, anther theory on who “Fake Pietro” could be was that he was Mephisto himself. After all, he refers to Wanda’s kids Billy and Tommy as “demon spawn” in the Halloween episode. We thought the reference was literal, as in the comics, Wanda created Billy and Tommy from shards of Mephisto’s soul. And in that moment, it seemed Fake Pietro might be Mephisto himself. As it turned out, Fake Pietro wasn’t not the X-Men’s Pietro, he wasn’t Mephisto either.
A Secret A-List Actor Will Play Mephisto in the WandaVision Finale
As WandaVision approached its endpoint, its star Paul Bettany gave an interview where he said the show had one more big surprise in store. He told the press that he would soon work with an actor “he’d never worked with before.” And he was quite excited for the opportunity. This led people to believe that we were getting an A-list actor, (perhaps Al Pacino?) to play Mephisto. They would have revealed him as the ultimate “Big Bad,” to steal a Buffy term, behind it all. In the end, the actor Bettany was talking about never having worked with was himself, as “Westview Vision” acted against “White Vision” in the series finale. Once again, Mephisto (and Al Pacino) was a no-show.
Mephisto Is the Main Villain in Spider-Man: No Way Home
So WandaVision ended with no Mephisto. But that was not the end of the Mephisto theories. Because at the end of 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home was hitting theaters. The end of Far From Home saw Peter Parker’s secret identity revealed to the world, throwing his life into upheaval. In the comics when this happened, in the “One More Day” storyline, Peter Parker made a literal deal with the Devil, or in this case Mephisto, to erase the knowledge of his true identity from the world’s mind. The price in the comics was his marriage to Mary Jane. We even thought we saw Mephisto’s face in the official poster. In the actual film, it was Doctor Strange who cast the spell making the world forget who Peter really is, not Mephisto. Once again, our Mephisto dreams were dashed. The big red dude was nowhere to he found.
Mephisto Is the Big Bad of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
We knew, even before it hit theaters in 2022, that the Doctor Strange sequel went through many different permutations. Its original director, Scott Derickson, left the project, and with him went the film’s original villain, Nightmare. For a moment, we believed Mephisto was replacing Nightmare, as we knew the Scarlet Witch was in the film. Would Multiverse of Madness finally give fans a Wanda vs. Mephisto confrontation? Nope, chalk this one up to another Mephisto theory that simply never materialized. We do hope we see Nightmare at some point down the line though.
Agatha All Along Finally Namedrops Mephisto
After all these different projects, it was WandaVision spinoff series Agatha All Along that finally mentioned Mephisto by name. The witch Jennifer Kale mentions that someone in the series might be a potential “agent of Mephisto,” finally uttering his name in MCU canon. But that single namedrop was all we got. But at least now we knew Mephisto existed in the MCU. And probably the least likely place most people expected to see him was in Ironheart. But now that he’s made his debut, we can’t help but wonder where the demon lord will appear next. Hey, if Blade ever gets off the ground, it would make sense for Mephisto to appear there. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking around every corner.
Originally published on September 30, 2024