'Ironheart' finally brings Mephisto into the MCU. But is it too late?
When Marvel's WandaVision first started airing in 2021, the name "Mephisto" was unavoidable.
Every week, fans theorized the demonic Marvel villain would be revealed as the mastermind behind all of Wanda's (Elizabeth Olsen) suffering. The theory made sense, given that in the comics, Wanda's (Elizabeth Olsen) twins Billy and Tommy (Julian Hillard and Jett Klyne) are fragments of Mephisto's soul that he later reabsorbs. However, Mephisto truthers were left cold when Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) turned out to the show's one and only big bad.
SEE ALSO: 'Ironheart' review: Grief and AI collide in Ryan Coogler's Marvel series
Still, viewers continued to anticipate Mephisto's arrival in other shows. Was the image of a devil in a stained-glass window proof Mephisto would be in Loki? Nope, it was just a reference to Loki (Tom Hiddleston) himself. Did Madisynn (Patty Guggenheim) make a deal with Mephisto during her jaunt to a hellish dimension in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law? Nope, that was just a demon goat named Jake.
As Marvel's slate of Disney+ shows expanded, the Mephisto fervor died down. Perhaps he really just wasn't coming to the MCU after all.
Enter Ironheart, which pits tech whiz Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) against the magic-powered Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos). In the show's Season 1 finale, Ironheart finally reveals where Parker got his magic hood, and the answer is one Marvel fans have been clamoring for since WandaVision: Parker got the hood from none other than Mephisto (Sacha Baron Cohen).
In episode 6 of Ironheart, viewers learn that Parker made a bargain with Mephisto in order to get his heart's desire: become filthy rich. Mephisto would give Parker all the tools — namely, the hood — he needed to meet his goal. In return, Parker would give up "something you won't even miss," as Mephisto put it. Nothing sketchy about that vagueness at all!
SEE ALSO: Shea Couleé knows that now is the time for 'Ironheart'
Later in the episode, Riri makes a similar deal with Mephisto, ultimately getting her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) back. Still, the stage is set for a showdown with the demon, because all magic has a cost. Surely the magic of resurrection demands the steepest price of them all.
On paper, the Mephisto reveal is an exciting one for MCU fans who have been begging for it since WandaVision. Even if his appearance in Ironheart isn't comic book-accurate like it would have been in a show like WandaVision, it's still fitting given the show's broader conflict between magic and technology.
However, with the supervillain's arrival coming in 2025 — four years after Mephisto fever hit its peak — it feels like the wind has been taken out of the SS Mephisto's sails. Much of that comes down to Ironheart's production schedule.
Ironheart wrapped production in Nov. 2022, then took almost three years to come out. At the time of writing and filming, bringing in Mephisto must have seemed like a massive deal: a moment of fan service that also brings Riri's story in an intriguing new direction. And maybe it would have felt massive had Ironheart been released in a timely manner.
Instead, the Mephisto reveal reads more like an artifact of the early era of Marvel Studios TV, when Marvel was experimenting with a varied, if overcrowded, slate, featuring highs like WandaVision and Ms. Marvel and lows like Secret Invasion. Since then, though, of Marvel Studios' live-action offerings, only Loki and Daredevil have received second seasons. Plus, Marvel has retooled how it's approaching TV production, suggesting a shift away from its first slate of shows.
Between that and Ironheart's two-week release, it seems like Marvel and Disney don't have much confidence in how Riri and the rest of the show's characters will fit into the MCU landscape going forward. That could include Mephisto, whose appearance, after so much hype, may just amount to nothing.
In the end, nothing sums up my reaction to the Mephisto reveal quite like Parker's own reaction to hearing Mephisto's name for the first time.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" he asks.
In 2022, that line would have read like a fun in-joke to fans. But in 2025, it comes across as a reminder of just how unwieldy the MCU has gotten — and of how many loose ends its TV shows have left in their wake.
Ironheart Season 1 is now streaming on Disney+.
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