SPOILERS for Episode 6 of Ironheart, “The Past is the Past.” This post centers on a character who only appears in that episode. You have been warned.
So, the finale episode of Ironheart introduced a particular character. This is a character that fans have been speculating about since WandaVision. People have wanted him to show up, and now he’s here. I can’t say much about him above the “Read More” cut without spoiling someone, other than that he’s played by Sacha Baron Cohen.
Mephisto. Ironheart introduced Mephisto to the MCU.
Who’s Mephisto, you ask? He’s Marvel’s equivalent of the Devil. So, he’s kind of a big deal.
Now, there are some MCU fans asking “Why is he showing up now? Why didn’t he show up when Thanos snapped half of everything and everyone away? Why didn’t he show up during the events of WandaVision or Agatha All Along?” And I’m here to tell you: I don’t know, I don’t care, and that’s not what this post is about.
You see, Mephisto is being introduced here for thematic reasons. He’s here to illustrate where people end up after they make too many bad decisions, just like Parker Robbins/The Hood and Riri Williams do. And he’s also here to illustrate the prices people who aren’t billionaires have to pay to make their dreams come true in this day and age.
But what I really want to talk about here is how Mephisto is presented in each of the three sequences where he appears in this episode. Because he changes the way he presents himself first to Parker and then to Riri as their interactions with him progress. These changes appear in things like costuming, hairstyling, and dialogue deliver, among other things. I also want to talk about the differences between what Parker wants and what Riri wants from Mephisto.
You see, when we first meet Mephisto, he’s wearing the cloak that he ends up giving to Parker in the picture above. And Mephisto is at his most polished and dapper in this scene, with his black-and silver blazer with the geometric pattern on it, his half-up man-bun, and his friendly American accent. But in this sequence, everything he says rings very hollow compared to what he says in the following two sequences. He says “I’m a Parker Robbins fan” and “Can I just stare at you for a while? What a face,” but you can tell he really doesn’t mean it. Like, he’s just here because Parker is easy to manipulate–just one more soul for his client list or monthly quota or whatever.
I also think that the things Mephisto says are very general here because Parker doesn’t really know what he wants to bargain for with Mephisto. Therefore, Mephisto has to draw it out of him. The flattering comments are there to get Parker to trust him. Also, the line about the pizza, “If it’s not right, we’ll send it back,” can also refer to any deal that Parker might make (of course, that turns out to be an empty promise).
On top of what he says, another way that we know everything Mephisto says is completely insincere in this sequence is the way he stays in that fake American accent. The choice to stay in that accent contrasts with how he speaks during his second meeting with Parker and during his meeting with Riri.
Now, let’s jump to Parker’s second meeting with Mephisto. Parker/The Hood demands that his mysterious benefactor meet with him to give him more power. When we see Mephisto here, his appearance has changed, and he’s now using a London-ish English accent (pretty much Sacha Baron Cohen’s own accent).
What’s different about Mephisto’s appearance? Well, the black-and-silver blazer is gone, and so is his man-bun. His hair is completely loose, with a few strands of it hanging in front of his face. I think he’s wearing the same outfit as he was in his first meeting with Parker, just without the blazer, since he’s wearing a button-down white shirt with the top couple of buttons undone. Interesting, Parker is wearing the same type of shirt when we see him hanging out in his dad’s mansion in the present day at the beginning of the episode. So he’s sort of mimicking Mephisto’s style, whether Parker realizes it or not.
There’s a lot of symbolism in how Mephisto’s appearance changes here. Firstly, his disheveled appearance reflects how Parker’s relationship with him has deteriorated over the course of the Ironheart series. Parker keeps screwing up and not really using the tools Mephisto has given him for anything substantial. Like, the wealth Parker’s accrued through his gang’s heists may not last because the contracts he made the executives sign aren’t very binding, since they signed them under duress. So while he’s got wealth for now, but Parker might be hit with lawsuits later. Like, what he did was rather dumb, and I can see why Mephisto isn’t pleased. And that’s why Mephisto shows up with his sleeves rolled up and his suspenders exposed–he has to start enforcing the rules of the agreement now because Parker doesn’t understand or respect them (from Mephisto’s perspective, that is).
Secondly, Mephisto might also be disheveled because, as he says, “I’ve been busy. You’re not my only client.” Did he have to get his hands dirty in another client’s situation before he arrived to deal with Parker/The Hood? I don’t actually want an answer to that question. I want Mephisto’s other clients to remain mysterious for now. Also, I hope we don’t learn that Mephisto has been behind every major event in the MCU. It would be really boring if one cosmic entity was responsible for everything.
A couple of other things to note about Mephisto appearance here: when he’s sarcastically comparing Parker to William Shakespeare (who “was also a twat,” apparently), Mephisto gazing at his own reflection in a dingy mirror-wall and adjusting his hair. This might just be because he’s getting bored talking to Parker, but it also might be a clue that the appearance we’re seeing isn’t his true appearance (more on that in a minute). Also, we start to get more of his echo-y voice that only appeared once on the word “desire” in his first meeting with Parker. His voice echoes on lines like “I told you to be careful how you speak to me!” and “Are you have having a laugh?”, which ups the intimidation factor of this character and lets us know that something is off about him.
Okay, onto Mephisto’s third and final appearance in this episode.
When Mephisto meets with Riri during the remainder of the episode, his appearance has changed once again, but not as extremely as it did between his first and second meetings with Parker. This time, his hair is down, but it doesn’t look as disheveled as it did before. Also, the buttoned-down white shirt has been replaced with a black graphic T-shirt that seems to have a cross on it, ironically. Additionally, the black-and-silver blazer and suspenders have been replaced by a navy blue blazer.
I think Mephisto’s appearance changes this way because how he’s dressed reflects the dreams and goals of the person that he’s dealing with. When he met with Parker, his outfit reflected more of a fancy businessman vibe because Parker’s only goal is to be richer than his business tycoon father. When Mephisto meets with Riri in the episode’s second half, he’s dressed more casually, like a Silicon Valley or Seattle-area tech billionaire. They often wear things like blazer over T-shirts, and Riri said at the beginning of the first episode that she wants to be “Bigger than Jobs. Bigger than Gates. Bigger than Stark. Bigger than Pym.” Essentially, she wants to be a tech giant, and Mephisto’s outfit choice here reflects that desire.
Beyond that, we also get a glimpse at Mephisto’s true appearance in a quick shot of his reflection in a spoon. In that reflection, he still has Sacha Baron Cohen’s features and long black hair and beard, but he has red skin and yellow eyes, which is accurate to his comics appearance.
Okay, I am now done breaking down the way Mephisto’s appearance changes over the course of this episode! Let’s get into how his interaction with Riri differs from his interactions with Parker.
Overall, Mephisto’s approach to his initial interaction with Riri is much more straightforward than his initial interaction with Parker was. When he was with Parker, Mephisto kept up that cheery facade with that fake American accent. But, with Riri, he drops that act as soon as she sits down. He also tells her what he does quite clearly, while he was a bit more mysterious about it with Parker. Like, he told Parker that he’d give him the tools to succeed, and then he gave him the Hood and left. But when he meets with Riri, Mephisto lays everything out on the table so she has a better understanding of what she’s getting into. Mephisto also uses the word “partnership” when talking to Riri, which he never uses while talking to Parker.
On top of all that, Mephisto does different physical things in these sequences. When he’s with Parker, Mephisto is standing the majority of the time. But with Riri, he’s sitting down the whole time. Now this may partly be due to height differences between the actors, but these are intentional choices. Except when they sit down to have pizza, Mephisto is always lording his height over Parker, always looking down at him, regardless of whether he appears happy or angry. He also touches Parker on the chin a couple of times during their second meeting. By contrast, Mephisto never touches Riri and meets her sitting down, so she’s looking down on him. And when she says, “Great, another magic asshole,” he absolutely owns that title, saying, “That’s me.”
All of these differences make it pretty clear that Parker Robbins/The Hood is the kind of person that Mephisto has to deal with, and Riri Williams is the kind of person he wants to deal with. Like he says, he often has to deal with selfish people who think a lot of themselves and think their brute force will get them what they want. That description fits Parker to a T. And Mephisto also says that he values people who are exceptional but unseen, and that description very much applies to Riri. I think he uses people like Parker as pawns to help him find (or at least gain access to) people like Riri.
After all, Parker had no real desire or goal when Mephisto asked him what he desired, and when he came up with something, it was incredibly general: he just wanted to be rich, richer than his dad. Riri, on the other hand, wants to be a tech giant based out of Chicago who becomes a major industry figure because of her inventions. She also wants to be able to use her suit to protect the people she cares about. Those are much more specific desires than any desires that Parker has. All he wants is the magical power that his cloak gives him. Riri’s power comes from her intellect, but roadblocks like systemic inequalities get in her way. The only thing Mephisto really needs to do for her is remove or steer her around the roadblocks.
The different people that Mephisto has to deal with makes me think of this phrase that Daredevil/Matt Murdock uses in his appearance in She-Hulk to describe different types of law cases: “One for us, one for them.” “One for us” describes pro bono law cases for struggling people, while “one for them” describes law cases for wealthier people that help Daredevil keep his law practice’s lights on. I think it’s similar for Mephisto: dealing with petty assholes like Parker Robbins keeps him in business (“one for them”), while dealing with disenfranchised but brilliant people like Riri Williams is what he really wants to do (“one for us”). Now, I’m not saying that Mephisto is at all as altruistic as Daredevil/Matt Murdock, but there seems to be a similar dichotomy between these things.
That’s all I really have to say as far as episode analysis goes, but I have some more general thoughts Mephisto and his role in the MCU going forward:
- Introducing Mephisto in an unexpected series is a smart choice: If we had gotten Mephisto in something like WandaVision or Agatha All Along, I have a feeling that some fans and viewers would have been disappointed. Like, it would be too expected, and people would have built up their expectations a little too much. Then they’d be upset that his appearance didn’t live up to their expectations. By putting him in Ironheart, the writers have thrown everyone for a loop, so they don’t know what to expect.
- Just hinting at Mephisto’s true appearance is also a smart choice: Often, the best way to make a supernatural threat genuinely intimidating is to put them in real-ish situations. Back in my Tolkien post, I mentioned that I’ve always thought the Ringwraiths/Nazgul are much scarier when they’re riding around the Shire on horses than when they’re flying above Gondor on their Fell Beasts (dragons with Master’s Degrees). They’re scariest when they seem like something that can grab you in the night, and the same thing is true about Mephisto’s appearance. If he initially showed up in his full red-skinned, yellow-eyed demonic appearance, we wouldn’t be impressed because we’ve already had a red-skinned villain (Red Skull) along with multiple blue- and green-skinned characters (Yondu, Nebula, Gamora, the Skrulls, the Talokanil merpeople) throughout the MCU at this point. Instead, his behavior has to be unnerving and unsettling while the narrative gives us small hints that what we’re seeing is not his true appearance. All those hints make the character that much weirder, and they’ll make the full reveal that much more interesting when it happens.
- I hope they keep Mephisto in less magical/cosmic MCU works for now: I know that some fans would like Mephisto to interact with Agatha Harkness, Wanda Maximoff, Doctor Doom, or event Death herself. While that does sound fun, I hope the let him just pop up in more street-level stories, ones where the whole world isn’t at stake, and helps our heroes out…for a price. He’s so fun in this kind of setting, as the final episode of Ironheart shows, and it would be so fun for him to meet people like Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Daredevil, She-Hulk, the Punisher, etc. They all have different personalities, so they would probably all try to handle his offers in different ways.
- There’s a reason that Riri doesn’t know who Mephisto is: And that reason is…dramatic irony! What’s that? Dramatic irony is a literary device where the audience knows more about a given situation than the characters in the story do. Often, that’s because we’ve seen scenes that the characters haven’t been in, but with Riri and Mephisto, there’s an extra layer of meta dramatic irony. We know who Mephisto is because we have access to decades of comics where he has appeared, something that Riri doesn’t have access to because she lives in the MCU, where those comics don’t exist. Also, Riri is a mechanical inventor–she doesn’t know a lot about magic or cosmic entities because that’s not her area of expertise. This is kind of a weird note to end on, but I wanted to address the “Why doesn’t Riri know who Mephisto is? Isn’t she supposed to be a genius?” comments I’ve seen online.