‘Ironheart’ Finale Delivers a Devilish Twist Everyone Saw Coming, as One of Marvel’s Most Powerful Characters Joins the Fray

Editor’s Note: This article contains severe spoilers for Ironheart episodes 4-6. Read at your own risk.

Marvel finally brought Mephisto into the MCU, and it happened in the final episode of Ironheart. Fans have been waiting for this character to appear since WandaVision, and now it’s official.

Sacha Baron Cohen plays the powerful demon, and apparently, not even Dominique Thorne, who plays Riri Williams, knew about it until she was on set.

In an interview with TheWrap, Thorne said she only found out during filming. “That’s when I knew, ‘Oh! OK, great,’” she said, laughing. “Even the names were fake. I mean, Marvel, hats off to them. They are so committed to the lore and the secrecy that even us within the cast weren’t sure who it was actually going to be.”

All season long, people believed Parker Robbins, a.k.a. The Hood, got his powers from Dormammu, the villain from Doctor Strange. That made sense, since his magic cloak seemed dark and strong enough to be tied to Dormammu. Even Zelma (played by Regan Aliyah) thought so.

But in the final moments, when Riri comes face to face with the mystery man, he laughs at the idea. He tells her he’s not Dormammu. He’s Mephisto.

That reveal surprised Riri, and Thorne too. She said, “I learned in the midst of our shooting. So, by the time they gave me the correct name in the script, it was like ‘Whoa, the Reddit guy! The guy from all the rumors. He’s in this show? OK, y’all are serious!’”

Sacha Baron Cohen’s casting had been rumored for a long time, but it was never confirmed. His name kept changing in the script. Only during the final scene did Thorne see him and hear the name Mephisto spoken out loud.

In that scene, Riri walks into a pizza place that’s empty and wrecked from the battle. A man sits alone, the one who gave Parker his powers. Riri thinks it’s Dormammu, but he corrects her. He’s Mephisto, the one people have been talking about since WandaVision.

Mephisto offers Riri a deal. She’s lost her best friend Natalie again, and she still doesn’t have the money to build her new tech. Natalie was brought back earlier as a magical A.I., but the suit couldn’t keep her alive. Mephisto says he can help, and it looks like Riri accepts. She’s seen with the same strange glowing marks on her skin that Parker had.

So, is Riri now working with the devil? Thorne doesn’t give a straight answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “We might need to keep an eye on her, is all I think I can say for now.”

Thorne also talked about how hard that decision would be for someone like Riri. “I mean, yeah, I know what the right thing to do is, but this is my best friend,” she said. “I can’t get my father back. I can’t get my stepfather back, but my best friend? Right now? Especially as a young person going through that particular transition… that’s such a tender time to have lost someone so close to you.”

Ryan Coogler, who directed Black Panther and co-produced Ironheart through his company Proximity Media, said the reveal felt right. He explained that Riri’s story, much like Spider-Man’s, started on the streets but quickly got bigger and more serious.

“Just two kids trying to make a way for themselves and watching Riri get so in over her head… eventually encountering a seemingly all-powerful, mystical being,” Coogler told Variety. “I just absolutely love that we’re not meeting [Mephisto] in WandaVision… You’re meeting him through this stressed-out, young Black genius.”

Head writer Chinaka Hodge said the decision to bring Mephisto into the story came through collaboration. “We all landed on Mephisto together, but there was one of us in the room who led us there,” she said. Marvel producer Zoie Nagelhout added that Dormammu was the original idea, but Mephisto made more sense for Riri’s story. “He offered a sort of interesting and heightened way to tie together the characters’ journeys,” she said.

The director of the episode, Angela Barnes, was the one who pitched casting Baron Cohen. Nagelhout said, “She pitched it, and we couldn’t unsee it.” Once he said yes, the team worked hard to keep it a secret. “If he was outside, we wrapped him up in tarps… so he had to walk like two steps at a time,” she said.

Hodge said Cohen gave different versions of the character, which fits because Mephisto can change his form. “This is purely speculation,” she added, “but I would love to see a version where Sacha does Mephisto a couple of iterations, and then maybe Meryl Streep is in the role in the future.”

What’s next for Riri Williams? Will there be a second season of Ironheart? Will she appear in Black Panther 3? Coogler joked, “I don’t know jack shit.” But he said he’s excited for whatever comes next.

Ironheart is now streaming on Disney+.

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