WandaVision’s Kathryn Hahn and Jac Schaeffer Didn’t Know Who Mephisto Was

Remember how everybody was scrambling to theorize which WandaVision character was secretly Mephisto? Well, Agnes was definitely one of them, and it turned out that nobody turned out to be Mephisto: Agnes revealed herself to be Agatha all along, Monica Rambeau gained superpowers, Wanda transformed into the Scarlet Witch, and…Mephisto wasn’t even a tiny part of the picture at all. Here, Kathryn Hahn and head writer/showrunner Jac Schaeffer to the Agatha/Mephisto theory that spread during the run of WandaVision, and how they both had never even heard of Mephisto as a character before.

Apparently, Kathryn Hahn didn’t have a social media account at the time when WandaVision episodes were being released, so she couldn’t check out random fan theories shared over the Internet; however, that didn’t stop her from hearing them: her friends shared the biggest fan reactions to the show’s episodes. And during a MTV Awards interview, she revealed her favorite speculation of them all:

“I remember hearing [from friends] that I [Agatha] was a puppet of Mephisto and I immediately had to say, ‘Who is Mephisto?’ Don’t hold that against me! Now I know who it is.”

She’s not the only one who hasn’t heard of Mephisto, though! Even WandaVision‘s head writer and showrunner Jac Schaeffer had also admitted honestly that she didn’t know who Mephisto even was before conferences regarding the series. Despite Schaeffer having social media unlike Kathryn Hahn, the entire Mephisto theory – yes, the entire thing – was totally debunked when the showrunner herself said that he didn’t have anything to do with the series’s storyline: 

“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.”

“I didn’t toss and turn, but [the number of fan theories] did affect me, I have to admit. I’m a people pleaser; I want people to be happy. But as far as the sum total of the series, I didn’t want to break any promises, and I don’t feel that we ever promised some big male bad. It’s baked in that the ultimate antagonist of the show is grief, and that Agatha is the external antagonist. So as far as those theories, I got a little nervous, but even at this point, I don’t want Mephisto or Magneto. As a viewer, that’s not what I would want out of this series.”

All I can say is…great answer. Agatha’s arguably a better villain than Mephisto. I mean, if Mephisto showed up, would we have gotten that awesome catchy jingle “Agatha All Along”? Nope! Bringing Agatha Harkness into the story as a hilarious nosy neighbor and then a powerful witch, on top of Kathryn Hahn’s right-on-spot casting as the character, was way better than having any Mephisto involvement.