Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the third episode of Agatha All Along, so be warned, but not bewitched.
Ever since WandaVision ended back in 2021, one of our biggest questions sparked by that MCU chapter revolved around the hellacious big bad Mephisto being introduced into one or more upcoming Marvel TV shows, with tons of genuine and hyperbolic theories being tossed around. Kathryn Hahn’s horror-tinged spinoff finally spoke the antagonist’s name, cementing his existence within the canon, even if he didn’t show up by the end of Episode 3.
After hearing Sasheer Zamata’s Jennifer Kale dropping the Lord of Evil’s name in casual conversation during “Through Many Miles / Of Tricks and Trials," I thought back to CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell directly asking showrunner Jac Schaeffer and executive producer Mary Livanos about casting for Mephisto, with varied results.
Showrunner Jac Schaeffer's Quip
Schaeffer, who also served as showrunner for WandaVision, is presumably as informed as anyone about what’s happening with Mephisto within the scope of the MCU, even if she can’t readily scream such news from Westview’s suburban rooftops. When we self-awarely asked about casting for the demon, Schaeffer was a ball of laughter, though she did share a false answer that’s pretty damned interesting.
[Laughs.] Uhhh, Gene Kelly. [Laughs.]
Such an answer was likely offered since it’s patently impossible for musical film legend Gene Kelly to star as Mephisto from the great beyond — he passed away in 1996 at 83 years old — and possibly only because Jac Schaeffer had recently watched An American in Paris or one of the actor’s other hits. But still an intriguing suggestion no matter how impossible. Could we get a Mephisto who strives to sing in the rain, among causing pure havoc?
EP Mary Livanos' Tease
On the flip side of the teaser coin, executive producer Mary Livanos, who held the same position for WandaVision and other MCU projects, played it more directly coy when we asked her about Mephisto's casting. In her words:
[Laughs.] Well, I can tell you that we were delighted by all the fan theories coming out of WandaVision. And I’m sure there must be plans somewhere for Mephisto in the universe, but that’s all I can say about that.
Coming into Agatha All Along, it's assumed that everyone involved with Wanda and Vision's story in the first Disney+ MCU series came into the spinoff entirely aware of just how much of the fan-fueled conversations revolved around Mephisto. (Director Matt Shakman confirmed the villain was never in talks to appear in WandaVision.) So Livanos knows that even a seemingly random namedrop like Jen's will be put beneath the most intensive microscope.
But for all the assumptions that one can make after hearing such a teasy answer, it's still hard to know whether or not Agatha will indeed serve as a piece of connective tissue ahead of Mephisto's eventual arrival, which is thought to be happening in the yet-to-debut series Ironheart, which cast Sasha Baron Cohen for an undisclosed role that many firmly believe will be the demon.
How Agatha All Along Finally Referenced Mephisto
The third ep of Agatha All Along's nine-episode season revolved largely around the core characters dealing with being poisoned by...whatever is responsible for anything that happens on the Witches' Road. As Jen and Teen were seeking out items for an antidote, the potion-minded witch revealed to Joe Locke's mystery character that Agatha (allegedly) traded her son Nicholas for the Darkhold, clearly meaning to inspire suspicion within the younger character.
Here's how Zamata's character continued, stoking even more theories in the process that aren't necessarily related to Mephisto:
They say no one really knows what happened to him. They say he might be dead. Others say he might be a demon or an agent of Mephisto. But hey, that’s what happens when you have Agatha Harkness as your mom, right?
Some theories about Teen proposed that he could be playing a memory-affected version of Agatha's son Nicholas Scratch, and shots of Locke holding Agatha's pet rabbit seemed to be nodding in that direction, if only to say "We know what you're thinking, and you're wrong." But will we ever see actual representations of Nicholas Scratch or Mephisto in the MCU? We'll have to keep watching.
Agatha All Along streams new episodes for fans with Disney+ subscriptions on Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET.
