[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ironheart episode 6, “The Past Is the Past.”] Marvel Studios came to bargain with Sacha Baron Cohen. The Oscar nominee made a surprise appearance in Tuesday’s Ironheart finale, which revealed that Cohen’s Mephisto made a deal with Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos) to grant the low-level hood his greatest desires: power, respect, and to be “stupid, disgusting, greasy rich.” While Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) sought the source of the Hood’s magic cloak that made him an invisible, bullet-bending baddie, she learned the fabric originated in “one of the darkest dimensions known and probably unknown.”
Madeline Stanton (Cree Summer) — a family friend who trained in magic arts and sciences at Kamar-Taj in Nepal but left to raise her daughter, Zelma (Regan Aliyah) — advised Riri against meddling with the “bad magic” surrounding the Hood. Teen witchling-in-training Zelma speculated that the source of Hood’s power was the dread Dormammu, one of the most powerful dimensional beings in the universe who dwells in the Dark Dimension.
Zelma referenced the events of 2016’s Doctor Strange when she told Riri about the rogue sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a Dormammu zealot who drew power from the Dark Dimension, bringing him into conflict with Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Like Parker, Kaecilius’ body was covered in magic scars, so Zelma was “a solid 50%” sure that Dormammu’s Dark magic gave the Hood his other-worldly powers.
But when Riri came face-to-face with the mystery man who supplied Parker with a cursed cloak, he scoffed at being mistaken for Dormammu. “I go by a lot of names. You can call me Mephisto,” the human-looking devil told Riri, his true red-skinned form only glimpsed in the reflection of a tea spoon.
While Strange bargained with Dormammu by trapping him in an endless time loop in order to get the Dread One to banish himself and his Zealots from Earth, Riri made her own deal with the devil when she accepted Mephisto’s offer to bring best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross) back to life. Ironheart ended with Riri under Mephisto’s corrupting influence, as evidenced by the magic scars on her arm, and Parker — in withdrawals without his hood — seeking help from Zelma.
In an interview with Variety, Ironheart executive producer Zoie Nagelhout revealed that the Mephisto twist wasn’t the “initial idea.” Instead, the Hood’s origin would be tied to Doctor Strange villain Dormmamu like his comic counterpart. It’s only in the sixth episode that the viewers learn Dormmamu was a misdirect and it was Mephisto pulling the strings.
“If you look to publishing, Parker’s power is drawn back to Dormammu, who is also a very epic character in the MCU and who would have been very exciting to play with,” she said. “But as we developed it, we realized Mephisto was a better thematic fit for what the show is about.”
“Diving into these scenes of ambition and cost and what you’re willing to give up for the things you want, he offered a sort of interesting and heightened way to tie together the characters’ journeys — and in particular, Riri’s — so it became almost like a no-brainer to have him,” Nagelhout continued of Mephisto, who, in the comics, has made deals with the likes of the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider; Doctor Doom’s mother, Cynthia von Doom; and the Spider-Man villain Norman Osborn, a.k.a. Green Goblin.
Cumberbatch pulled double duty by voicing the CGI cosmic conqueror and destroyer of worlds in Doctor Strange. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the pages of Strange Tales, Dr. Strange’s arch-nemesis has, so far, appeared just the one time in the MCU. As for Mephisto, speculated to be the secret villain of WandaVision and Agatha All Along before finally debuting in Ironheart, there’s no word yet on when or where Cohen might next appear in the MCU. But you know what they say: Speak of the devil…
All six episodes of Ironheart are now streaming on Disney+.
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