Is Agatha All Along Setting Up Mephisto’s MCU Arrival?

Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for Agatha All Along Episode 3, “Through Many Miles / Of Tricks and Trials.”

Agatha All Along name-checks a major Marvel villain in Episode 3: Mephisto. But is Agatha All Along really setting up Mephisto’s long-awaited MCU introduction, or is this a bait-and-switch on showrunner Jac Schaeffer’s part?

Agatha All Along’s Mephisto Reference, Explained

Agatha All Along Episode 3, “Through Many Miles / Of Tricks and Trials,” drops Mephisto’s name midway through proceedings, during a one-on-one chat between Jennifer Kale and the Teen. Bringing the Teen up-to-date on Agatha’s sinister reputation, Jen reveals that the coven’s leader supposedly traded her own son for the Darkhold. “They say no one knows what happened to him,” she warns. “They say he might be dead. Others say he might be a demon… or an agent of Mephisto.” And with that, Mephisto is officially part of MCU canon. Does this mean the diabolical baddie will show up in Agatha All Along‘s remaining episodes? Maybe. But Jac Schaeffer sure isn’t saying!

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“I mean, you know, I can neither confirm or nor deny [Mephisto’s inclusion in Agatha All Along],” she said in a recent interview with The Wrap. “I will say that that scene that you’re talking about, between Jen and Teen, is really about all of the conflicting rumors about Agatha. That’s really – the takeaway there is what is the true story? There’s this, there’s that, there’s this, there’s that. But who really knows? The only thing that people do know is that she’s always been up to to bad things.”

Agatha All Along Showrunner Addresses Episode 3’s Mephisto Tease

While Schaeffer’s comments suggest that MCU fans shouldn’t give up on the possibility of a Mephisto cameo in Agatha All Along, remarks she makes elsewhere in the Wrap interview cast doubt on this. Notably, Schaeffer positions Episode 3’s Mephisto shout-out as a nod to speculation the character was secretly pulling the strings in Agatha All Along‘s predecessor, WandaVision. These theories ultimately didn’t pan out, largely because Schaeffer wasn’t clued up on Mephisto at the time!

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“I didn’t really know who Mephisto was when WandaVision dropped,” she recalled. “There was the wine bottle that was a prop that had something on the wine label, that prop master Russell Bobbitt had put on, that I was, like, unaware of. And obviously, now I’m familiar with the ways in which Mephisto ties into everything. So it was a shock to the writer’s room that the Mephisto piece took off the way it did with WandaVision. And yes, this scene in Episode 3, [executive producer] Mary Livanos and I talked, and we were like, ‘We gotta say the man’s name’ [laughs].”

Agatha All Along is currently streaming on Disney+, with new episodes dropping Wednesdays.