Mephisto in Agatha All Along: why the finale skipped him

One character the Agatha All Along finale never brought in was Mephisto, the Marvel Comics demon long mistaken for the devil himself. Sacha Baron Cohen had been heavily rumored for months to appear as Mephisto, and with the story centered on the Maximoff family, I think that appearance would have been quite fitting. Since it didn't happen, this is my rundown of who Mephisto is and why he matters.

Agatha All Along (2024), the Disney+ series starring Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza and Joe Locke, closed its run with episodes 8 and 9. A line from Death in episode 8 is what brought Mephisto to mind.

Rio Vidal's nickel line in Agatha All Along episode 8

Episode 8, titled Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End, opens with the soul of Alice Wu-Gulliver lying on the floor of the house from the third trial. As Alice comes to, Rio Vidal, also known as Death, points to Alice's lifeless body. Alice had tried to save Agatha and was withered to a husk for it. In disbelief, Alice asks, "that's it? that's all the time I get?"

Death replies, "if I had a nickel for every time I heard that." She's implying that most people react this way when they die. We'd even see Agatha do the same in the finale, when she begs Death for more time with her son. That nickel line got me thinking about a character who wasn't anywhere near the finale: Mephisto.

Why Mephisto isn't Marvel's Satan

For anyone who doesn't know him, Mephisto is one of the darkest and most powerful demons in Marvel Comics. Given the way he looks and carries himself, it's not hard to see why he's often mistaken for Satan. That isn't the case. Mephisto doesn't mind when the humans he meets label him the biblical Satan, but he can't factually claim that title.

Neither can any of the other demon kings in Marvel Comics. There are multiple gods of light, hope and order in the Marvel cosmos with authority over their own realms, such as Odin with Asgard and Zeus with Olympus. In the same way, there are multiple demon kings of darkness, fear and chaos who rule domains of their own. They include Marduk Kurios, Shuma-Gorath, Satannish, Dormammu and Chthon, to name a few.

Many of these demon kings walk around claiming to be the true Satan, but none of them has the nerve to take the title officially. Each rules from a throne in his own dark dimension. There's also a separate realm called the Devil's Advocacy, where these demons sometimes gather for meetings of great cosmic importance. At its center sits a giant throne reserved for the one true Satan. No demon lord would dare claim it, out of fear of being attacked and vaporized on the spot by the others, each of whom feels he deserves that title.

Mephisto's power is tied to his realm and the souls he collects

Even if he isn't the ultimate devil most people assume he is, Mephisto is still an immortal and incredibly powerful force of chaos who can warp matter and reality at will. The catch is that all of that power is tied to his dark pocket dimension, which he likes to call hell. It isn't the real hell, because he isn't the real Satan.

Mephisto and his home realm are so closely linked that when he steps outside it, he grows weaker and weaker until he returns. As long as his tank isn't empty, he can still wreak as much havoc as he wants while collecting as many souls as he can. Getting people to sign away their souls is his main goal, because the more souls Mephisto brings into his realm, the stronger he becomes.

From Mephistopheles to Cynthia Von Doom's deal

That focus on souls makes sense when you look at where the name comes from. The character of Mephistopheles was introduced in 1587 in a piece of German folklore about a man named Doctor Faustus, who makes a deal with the demon in exchange for his soul.

Like Faustus, a number of people in the Marvel Comics universe have foolishly entered soul-binding deals with this king of chaos. One was Cynthia Von Doom, mother of Victor Von Doom. She gave her soul to Mephisto in exchange for the cosmic power to fight back against those who made her life miserable. That meant her afterlife would be even worse, as Mephisto went on to torture her soul for what he planned to be forever.

When Victor grew up, he began making annual trips to Mephisto's realm to try to force Mephisto to free his mother. No matter how many times he tried alone, Doom could never beat him. Eventually, in 1989's Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment #1, Doom put his pride aside and enlisted Doctor Strange. Together they freed Cynthia from her torment so she could move on to a peaceful afterlife.

Mephisto at the root of Ghost Rider's origin

Mephisto is also famously at the root of Ghost Rider's origin in the comics. Johnny Blaze made a deal with Mephisto to save the life of his stepdad, who was dying of cancer. Mephisto being as untrustworthy as he is, the man didn't die of cancer. He died in a motorcycle stunt gone horrifically wrong instead.

A deal is still a deal, so Mephisto came to collect Johnny's soul, only to be banished by Johnny's girlfriend, Roxanne. Right before he was banished, Mephisto put the essence of a demon of vengeance named Zarathos into Johnny's body. From then on, Johnny became Ghost Rider whenever Zarathos took control of his physical form.

How Mephisto tied into Billy and Tommy Maximoff

In the pages of 1989's Avengers West Coast #51, Mephisto was even responsible for the birth of Billy and Tommy Maximoff. Their souls were apparently formed from pieces of Mephisto by their mother, the Scarlet Witch.

When Mephisto reabsorbed those souls into his own essence, Wanda had Agatha Harkness erase her memory of Billy and Tommy so she could cope with the loss of her twins. Luckily for Wanda, the boys were later reincarnated into fresh bodies of their own.

One More Day and the Spider-Man deal fans despised

The most famous piece of Mephisto meddling in Marvel history came in the One More Day storyline from 2007. In exchange for the life of Peter Parker's elderly Aunt May, Mephisto erased the future timeline in which Peter and Mary Jane Watson marry and have a red-headed daughter.

This is the story that elevated Mephisto into an entity worth hating and paying attention to in everyone's eyes, since Spider-Man fans despised Marvel's decision to end Peter's relationship with Mary Jane this way. It was later revealed that Mephisto did it to stop Peter and Mary Jane's daughter from defeating him in the future, which she was destined to do.

What Mephisto could mean for the MCU and Ghost Rider

That's Mephisto in a very generalized nutshell. He's not the devil as such, but a powerful trickster demon of chaos who enjoys watching people suffer before stealing their souls, because souls make him stronger.

At the time, I thought that even without being Marvel's Satan outright, Mephisto's arrival in the MCU would most likely bring real problems for its heroes. It would also pave the way for Marvel Studios to introduce its take on the Ghost Rider mythos, which I found exciting. Mephisto is central to Ghost Rider's origin in the comics as well as in the two Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movies from 2007 and 2011.

If the rumored casting held, Sacha Baron Cohen would be following in the footsteps of Peter Fonda, who played Mephisto in the first Ghost Rider movie, and Ciarán Hinds, who played him in the second.