WandaVision post-credits scene: did it set up Mephisto?

The WandaVision finale ended with two post-credits scenes. The second one showed a darker Wanda studying the Darkhold while her sons begged for help, and to me it was a clear setup for her clash with Doctor Strange in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It also kept me holding onto a theory I'd been pushing all season: that Mephisto was lurking somewhere behind it all.

WandaVision (2021) starred Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was released on May 6, 2022. What follows is what I saw in that scene at the time, and why I still believed the devil had a seat at the table.

The WandaVision post-credits scene put Wanda and the Darkhold on a path to Doctor Strange

By the end of the finale, Wanda had defeated Agatha, trapped her in Westview, and erased the Hex along with Vision and her boys. She then soared off as an apparently more villainous Scarlet Witch. In the post-credits scene, she had retired to what looked like a Sokovian mountain cabin, with odd patterns that looked like runes on the walls.

Inside, there was a second Wanda, a darker Wanda, flipping through the Darkhold as the voices of Billy and Tommy begged her for help. The music under the scene was the Doctor Strange theme. Funnily enough, it was composed by Michael Giacchino, who also did the main Marvel Studios title theme that opened every single episode of WandaVision.

The episode was obviously setting Wanda up to face off with Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness. Agatha had explicitly said the Scarlet Witch's powers surpassed even those of the Sorcerer Supreme, and she warned Wanda about what she had unleashed. Exactly what that meant was left as an open question.

Why I was still on the Mephisto train after the WandaVision finale

I knew what people were going to say: where was my Mephisto? I'll admit I got carried away on that Mephisto train. I thought I was Peter Parker stopping the runaway train, when really I was Marty McFly trying to get out of there as the train crashed into a ravine behind me. Except I was still on that train, and the fire down there felt so warm.

There were reasons I stayed aboard. A page of the Darkhold appeared to show another dark, creepy figure on the left side of the book when Agatha was looking through it. A red lens flare flashed in the closing frame in a way that looked like red eyes beyond Wanda. A Mephisto figure also appeared in stained glass in the Loki trailer.

Then there were the boys crying for help. My view was that it was still possible these kids could be pieces of Mephisto's soul, demon spawn. That was a question WandaVision didn't answer, and one I thought Multiverse of Madness was perhaps going to answer.

Matt Shakman warned fans to brace for reveals that might not match their theories

WandaVision director Matt Shakman, in an interview with ComicBook.com, signaled to fans that they should brace themselves for finale reveals that might not live up to their theories. "I hope people find it both surprising but inevitable," he said. He added that he hates stories that pivot 180 degrees at the last minute, comparing them to Agatha Christie novels where the murderer turns out to be someone you just met.

My counterargument was that, like a great Agatha Christie mystery, clues had been laid out consistently throughout the episodes pointing to Mephisto. Rather than being someone we had just met, he felt like a presence that had been with us from the beginning.

How the Mephisto theory started with Kathryn Hahn's nosy neighbor

The Mephisto train left the station in August 2019. A month after Kevin Feige introduced WandaVision at Comic-Con, Kathryn Hahn was announced at D23 to be playing, to quote the announcement, a "nosy neighbor." Fans immediately began to speculate that this could mean the witch Agatha Harkness, arguably the most important female relationship Wanda Maximoff has in the comics. Agatha being part of WandaVision meant a very strong possibility that Marvel's devil, Mephisto, might show up as well.

One of the most famous Wanda and Vision storylines was the West Coast Avengers run in the late 1980s. In it, Wanda's children Billy and Tommy are revealed to be pieces of Mephisto's soul, in a plot where Agatha brainwashes the memory from Wanda's mind. This wasn't some obscure issue no one read. It's a critical turning point in Wanda's journey.

It's so crucial that Elizabeth Olsen even cited it in a Scarlet Witch history summary around the release of Civil War in May 2016. She described Wanda using magic to make herself pregnant and give birth to twin boys, Vision having his memory wiped, the two divorcing, and the twins turning out to be shards of the demon Mephisto. Almost five years before the show, she had pretty much described the plot of WandaVision.

Add to that the fact that Mephisto's name showed up as an Easter egg in the first Avengers film in 2012, and that Thanos's minion Ebony Maw directly quoted Mephisto from the Infinity Gauntlet comics with the line "my humble personage bows before your grandeur." It was clear to me that Marvel Studios at least had Mephisto on the brain for several years.

The WandaVision clues that pointed to Mephisto, episode by episode

The theory got its first speed boost in February 2020, when WandaVision's first promo footage revealed the series would introduce Wanda's sons Billy and Tommy. Another came in October 2020, when Kathryn Hahn's character was named Agnes in a trailer, a name we correctly identified as an amalgamation of Agatha Harkness. So when WandaVision premiered in January, many of us were primed to look for Mephisto, or anything that moved, so we could point at it.

Right out of the gate in episode one, Agnes mentioned her offscreen husband Ralph, saying the only way he would remember their anniversary was if there was a beer named June 2nd. June 2nd was the date the Salem witch trials began in 1692, and episode eight confirmed Agatha as a Salem witch, put on trial by her own coven a year later in 1693. Agnes also said "the devil's in the details," hinting he wasn't only there. Nothing came of Dottie or her drinking, which left that as a solid Mephisto clue in my eyes.

Midway through the season, Paul Bettany was asked about Mephisto and played coy, saying he couldn't speak to it because he was worried about getting fired. In episode six came the line "unleash hell, demons," which, after the devil in the details, was our biggest clue yet that Billy and Tommy could be spawn of the demon Mephisto.

Episode seven steered hard into witchcraft by revealing it was Agatha all along, with a rabbit that Billy, as a telepath, couldn't scan. Agatha revealed she hijacked Westview using dark magic from the evil spell book, the demonic Darkhold, in a dungeon covered in satanic imagery, including a horned ram's head on the wall. Episode eight opened with a full Salem witch trial. Historically, the witches of Salem were persecuted over suspected affiliations with the devil, and they cast spells in Latin, tying their witchcraft to Christian cultural influences, the same fire and brimstone imagery Marvel based Mephisto on.

What the finale did with Ralph, and why I left the chair open for the devil

In the finale, many of the things we thought could be clues turned out to point in other directions. Agnes's offscreen husband Ralph ended up being a borderline insulting rug pull, making Evan Peters's Pietro an aspiring actor named Ralph Bohner. I couldn't wait to see what the Fox Quicksilver fans would do with that one. Señor Scratchy, Agnes's rabbit, was nowhere to be found.

Still, there were those boys. I thought they were perhaps still demon spawn because of their cries coming from the Darkhold, a book with a fiery orange glow emanating off it. Earlier in the episode, Wanda had also thanked them for choosing her to be their mom.

Yes, I got way too trigger happy thinking Mephisto could appear in WandaVision. It was obviously not a show about Mephisto; it was a show about Wanda, and Skrulls. But darker forces remained out there, the table was set, and I was still leaving the chair open for the devil, in either Loki or Multiverse of Madness. No regrets.