The following contains spoilers for Agatha All Along, now streaming on Disney+.
Key Takeaways
- Agatha All Along didn’t include the expected Mephisto cameo, disappointing many fans.
- Showrunner Jac Schaeffer apologized for the tease, explaining that Mephisto didn’t fit into the show logistically.
- Due to fan excitement, Mephisto is likely to appear in the MCU in a future show like Ironheart.
Almost from the very beginning of Agatha All Along, fans were excited not just about watching Agatha Harkness go down the witches’ road and see where that path led but also about seeing a couple of big characters finally make their entrance into the MCU. When the show debuted on Disney+, there were plenty of guesses about who might make the list. As it turns out, a few guesses were spot on. Others fell a bit short. And still, some other planned cameos never made it to air.
Chief among the characters who were guessed at was Aubrey Plaza’s Rio. It seems people realized very early on that it wasn’t her real name and that she was someone or something else entirely. It took a while, but Agatha All Along got there when it revealed Rio as the physical embodiment of Death. With that reveal, some hoped that before the series – or at least Season 1 – wrapped, the MCU version of the devil, Mephisto, would also appear. As it turned out, it didn’t happen and was never really planned.
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Agatha All Along Showrunner Is Sorry For Tease
Once the two-part finale forAgatha All Along aired the program’s showrunner was finally able to talk about the biggest elephant in the room. Jac Shaeffer knew that people were waiting to see the reveal of this Thanos-level villain, especially after he was specifically mentioned in one of the episodes. She knew people were expecting for him to arrive shortly after and he never did. And for that, she told Variety, she hopes she didn’t it didn’t upset anyone. Especially because at one point, there was a storyline where he was going to appear.
“Mephisto has never interested me. But we have an early, early document that included him in a potential antagonist, but I don’t remember ever really taking that seriously.”
Schaeffer went on to say that logistically, she never felt this level of villain fit into the show. Finally, she went out of her way to clarify that while Mephisto was mentioned, it wasn’t intended to be a way to toy with people. She just felt like the mention of him when talking about Agatha’s backstory in Episode 3 made sense, especially in dealing with rumors of what she did with her son, Nicholas Scratch.
Of course, while Schaeffer is now claiming that she didn’t mean to mislead or get Agatha All Along fans worked up about a possible cameo, she fed the beast not long after Episode 3 aired. After the rumors started firing up.
“With these shows, so often there is something that is at once a joke and a wink and a nod, and actually has something legitimate underneath it. As we all know, Mephisto is a character who’s very wrapped into Agatha’s storyline. I mean, people have to watch, but we’re always playing with the audience in that way.”
It appears that once she played with the audience and hinted at Mephisto arriving with no payoff, she realized that some people might be angry. That’s likely why she bothered to apologize for the character not being a part of Agatha All Along.
Mephisto Almost Certainly Coming Sooner Rather Than Later
So will the MCU somehow keep the devil at bay? It seems pretty certain that it won’t. This isn’t a company that mentions a character that generates the fanbase excitement Mephisto has without eventually offering a payoff. Another show has been pinpointed by rumors for a while for when the villain is expected to appear in the MCU finally.
Even before Ironheart was officially unveiled with its teaser earlier this fall, there were quite a few people who believed it would be that program where Mephisto would first pop up. It’s not entirely clear just how he might fit into the show, but it’s clear that when the D23 teaser showed off Parker Robbins (otherwise known as The Hood) it was clear that at least part of the show would feature a battle between technology and magic. At some point, when Marvel introduces magic into its programs, it can’t hold off on showing Mephisto any longer.
His introduction ahead of Avengers: Doomsday also makes quite a bit of sense, as that will be another show in which a villain could dabble in magic. Doctor Doom is a villain that is well known for using the dark arts. It’s possible he could even become entwined wth Mephisto. Perhaps the demon could be a key to Doom having the face of Tony Stark in this universe. There are after all, lots of guessing going on just how Marvel is going to work the story so that Robert Downey Jr. is playing Victor Von Doom after playing Tony Stark previously. It’s hardly out of the realm of possibility that Mephisto could be involved. Though he’s almost certainly going to make his presence known before before Doomsday hits theaters. With Agatha All Alongcome and gone, it feels like Marvel is zeroing in on when.
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