WandaVision Head Writer Admits She Never Heard of Mephisto Before This Year

Fan theories were running wild throughout WandaVision, and many of them turned out to be red herrings or just coincidence. One of the more prevalent theories surrounded Mephisto, who was one of the villains fans locked onto as the big bad of the season because of the many references to the devil and the dark mystical side of the MCU. That turned out not to be the case, and during a new Mashable interview with WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer, Schaeffer reveals why Mephisto was never in the mix. Those red herrings were completely unintentional, as Schaeffer says she had never heard of him before the press rollout.

“There was never any conscious intention on my part to create any Mephisto red herrings because I didn’t know who Mephisto was until I started doing press,” Schaeffer said.

“Why did we talk about the devil so much? That’s a real coincidence,” Schaeffer said. “He wasn’t ever part of our storytelling conversations. We were very clear that the big bad is grief. And then the external bad is Agatha. So as a viewer and as a lover of the show and the characters, I didn’t want anything more than that.”

It turns out some of us were seeing what we wanted to see, and you could say that about Evan Peters’ Pietro too, who was always just something for fun and not indicative of the Fox Marvel implications.

“We knew that it was gonna blow people’s minds,” Schaeffer said. “What I didn’t anticipate was that it would be like, ‘Well, if they’re giving us Evan Peters they’re gonna give us Michael Fassbender.’”

That swerve is part of what Schaeffer loves about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “But what I respect about Marvel is the constant switchbacks,” Schaeffer said. “You think you’re looking at one thing and then it has the potential to be something else. So Fietro has been really fun.”

As for Scarlet Witch, we’ll see her next in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and as we saw at the end of WandaVision, it appears she will be searching for her children, who she thought were lost once her world broke apart. There’s also White Vision still out there unaccounted for, so her story is far from over.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which is slated to hit theaters on March 25th, 2022. WandaVision is available to stream on Disney+ now.