WANDAVISION Head Writer Never Heard of Mephisto Until She Started Doing Press for the Series

During WandaVision’s run on Disney+, Marvel fans were theorizing and speculating about all kinds of things. One of the biggest theories making the rounds was that Mephisto would show up in some way. This was a theory I was never really convinced of, but while fans were spotting clues to Mephisto’s assistance, the head writer and showrunner of the series, Jac Schaeffer, didn’t even know who Mephisto was until she started doing press for the series!

It turns out that all the clues that fans were seeing, were pretty much coincidental. All those red herrings were unintentional. During an interview with Mashable, Schaeffer reveals that Mephisto was never in the mix:

"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.

“Why did we talk about the devil so much? That's a real coincidence. 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."

So, there was never any plan for Mephisto. She goes on to talk about Evan Peters's Pietro, saying that was always meant to be something for fun. His involvement was never meant to be an indication that Fox’s Marvel universe would merge with the MCU. She says:

"We knew that it was gonna blow people's minds. 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.'"

These are the kind of fans that Marvel Studios has been dealing with all of these years. If they’re going to bring Evan Peters into the MCU as Quicksilver, the theories are going to blow up with all kinds of craziness. I thought for sure that meant Wanda had pulled Quicksilver from another universe! Sure, it was a bummer when things didn’t play out that way, but it’s all part of the fun of being a fan! Schaeffer goes on to say:

"But what I respect about Marvel is the constant switchbacks. You think you're looking at one thing and then it has the potential to be something else. So Fietro has been really fun."

In the end, though, the whole series was about Wanda dealing with all of the things she lost, especially the love of her life Vision. It was about her grief leading to her full transformation into Scarlet Witch, which sets up her role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where things are going to get crazy.