‘Ironheart’ finally brings Mephisto into the MCU. But is it too late?

When Marvel is Wandavision started to be broadcast in 2021, the name “mephisto” was inevitable.

Each week, fans have theorized that the bad demonic Marvel would be revealed as the brain behind all the suffering of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). The theory had meaning, given that in the comics, the twins of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) Billy and Tommy (Julian Hillard and Jett Klyne) are fragments of the soul of Mephisto which he reabsorb later. However, Mephisto Truthers was left cold when Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) turned out to be the one and only nasty of the show.

However, viewers continued to anticipate the arrival of Mephisto in other shows. Was the image of a devil in a glass window test, Mephisto would be in Loki? No, it was only a reference to Loki (Tom Hiddleston) himself. Madisynn (Patty Guggenheim) he agreed with Mephisto during his infernal dimension ride She-hulk: lawyer in law? No, it was just a demon goat named Jake.

While the Disney + Marvel slate manifests itself, the fervor of Mephisto has died out. Maybe he really didn’t come to the MCU after all.

Enter Iron heartwhich stops the Whiz Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) against the Robbins Parker with magic propulsion (Anthony Ramos). In the final of season 1 of the show, Iron heart Finally reveals where Parker has obtained his magic cap, and the answer is that Marvel fans have been demanding since since Wandavision: Parker obtained the hood from none other than mephisto (Sacha Baron Cohen).

What does MEPHISTO do in Iron heart?

In episode 6 of Iron heartViewers learn that Parker has made a good deal with Mephisto in order to obtain the desire of his heart: becoming rich. Mephisto would give Parker all the tools – namely the hood – he needed to reach his goal. In return, Parker would abandon “something that you would not even miss”, as Mephisto said. Nothing summary in this blur!

Later in the episode, Riri does a similar deal with Mephisto, finally finding his best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross). However, the scene is ready for a test of strength with the demon, because all the magic has a cost. The magic of the resurrection surely requires the highest price of all.

Is the arrival of Mephisto too late to be exciting?

On paper, the revelation of Mephisto is exciting for MCU fans who have been lying since Wandavision. Even if its appearance in Iron heart Is it not comics, precision as it would have been in a show like WandavisionIt is always appropriate given the broader conflict of the emission between magic and technology.

However, with the arrival of the supervillain to come in 2025 – four years after Mephisto Fever reached its peak – it has the impression that the wind was removed from the sails of SS Mephisto. A large part of this comes down to Iron heartProduction schedule.

Iron heart The production wrapped in November 2022, then took almost three years to go out. At the time of writing and filming, the contribution in Mephisto had to seem to be a massive matter: a moment of fans service which also brings the history of Riri in a new intriguing direction. And maybe it would have been massive Iron heart been released in a timely manner.

Instead, the MEPHISTO revelation reads more like an artifact of the early era of Marvel Studios TV, when Marvel experienced with a varied, although overcrowded, with tops like ups like ups like Wandavision And Mrs. Marvel And stockings like Secret invasion. Since then, however, live action offers from Marvel Studios, only Loki And Daredevil received the second seasons. In addition, Marvel has turned on how he approaches television production, suggesting a distance from his first list of programs.

Between this and Iron heartThe release of two weeks of two weeks, it seems that Marvel and Disney do not have much confidence in the way in which Riri and the rest of the characters in the series will integrate into the MCU landscape in the future. This could include Mephisto, whose appearance, after so much media threshing, cannot simply represent nothing.

In the end, nothing sums up my reaction to the revelation of Mephisto as well as the own reaction of Parker to hear the name of Mephisto for the first time.

“Is it supposed to say something for me?” he asks.

In 2022, this line would have read like a fun joke to fans. But in 2025, he appeared to be a reminder of how the MCU obtained handling – and the number of loose ends, his television programs left in their wake.

Iron heart Season 1 is now in trouble on Disney +.