WandaVision showrunner Jac Schaeffer had no idea who Mephisto was until she started doing press for the show. The Disney+ superhero-sitcom starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany has been an enormous success on the streaming platform due to its uniqueness. The show mixes together the tropes and scenarios of sitcoms throughout from the ‘50s all the way to the present, without leaving behind the details that make Marvel films the blockbusters they are today.
Although a significant part of WandaVision follows the rules of a typical sitcom, it also observes Wanda’s cathartic journey through grief. She embarks on this psychological quest with the help of her better half — Paul Bettany’s Vision — but also with characters that have never been introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before. Agatha Harkness might be considered a helper, and also a villain, due to the torturing experience she forces Wanda into. Or characters like Pietro (AKA Ralph Bohner). And although there were hints of a possible multiverse, including references to Reed Richards or the presence of Mephisto in the show, Schaeffer said that many of these red herrings were completely unintentional.
According to Mashable, Jac Schaeffer had no clue who Mephisto was until the virtual press tour for WandaVision began. The executive producer said Mephisto was never part of the conversation while creating WandaVision, as they were clear that the big evil in the show is grief. And alongside it, Agatha Harkness was the physical antagonist to Wanda. Read Schaeffer’s full comment below:
“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.”
WandaVision‘s mystery practically begged its viewers to speculate about what was actually going on with the series. With each new episode, new details could be interpreted as hinting at one villain or another. Mephisto quickly rose as a fan favorite guess given the demon’s history with Scarlet Witch and Vision in the comics. However, while the many clues pointing to Agnes actually being the witch Agatha Harkness turned out to be true, all those Mephisto theories were left in the dust come WandaVision‘s big finale.
With the words of WandaVision’s showrunner Jac Schaeffer, it’s now been confirmed all the Mephisto theories that flooded the web did not have foundations in the show. Instead, WandaVision starred something worse than the big bad guy: grief. In a time when the world is in the vice of a pandemic, with people losing so much, following Wanda’s journey fighting her demons can be a more cathartic experience for the audience than fighting some big demon.
Source: Mashable
Originally from https://screenrant.com/wandavision-show-mephisto-villain-jac-schaeffer-no-plan/