Agatha All Along Episode 3 Leans Into WandaVision's Mephisto Theories And Rumors

By the pricking of my thumbs, something spoilery this way comes. Warning: This article discusses events from the latest episode of "Agatha All Along."

Yep, here we go again, folks. Old habits die hard, especially among powerful witches, but nothing dies harder than the average Marvel fan's obsession with the infamous entity known as Mephisto. We've been down this road before in "WandaVision" and even "She-Hulk," to name just a pair of Marvel Cinematic Universe installments that played fast and loose with our expectations of when the demonic villain might finally make his live-action debut in the franchise. Well, just in case the latest Disney+ series didn't already have enough going on, "Agatha All Along" has pushed its poker chips all in and actually name-dropped the elusive comic book character during episode 3 — something that no other property under Kevin Feige's careful supervision has yet dared to do.

What does this mean for the rest of the series (and perhaps the MCU overall) moving forward? Based on recent history, particularly with all the red herrings in "WandaVision," probably nothing. But can any of us afford to underestimate whatever creator, showrunner, and writer Jac Schaeffer might have up her sleeves this time around? Given the spin-off show's promising start (/Film's BJ Colangelo calls the first four episodes "wickedly fun and effectively creepy" in her review), the answer to that would seem to be a resounding no. For better or worse, "Agatha All Along" has just opened up the Pandora's Box all over again and invited a whole new round of theorizing and speculation over Mephisto. Here's our best guess about where all this is heading in the episodes to come.

Between the unexplained rivalry between Agatha and Aubrey Plaza's Rio Vidal, that weird spell preventing the Teen from revealing his identity, and even all those naming hijinks before the ultimate title reveal, it's clear that "Agatha All Along" viewers are once again being kept purposefully in the dark. That's underlined with the unexpected Mephisto moment early on in episode 3, in which Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), our favorite unnamed Teen (Joe Locke), and their hastily-assembled coven of witches undergo their first serious trial on the Witches' Road. While stealing a quick moment away from the group, Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata) offers some wise words of advice to the young and occasionally naïve Teen: Don't trust Agatha. Pressed further, she admits that our title character has done shady things in the past, including a rumor that she gave up her own infant son to acquire the Book of the Damned (also known as the Darkhold). Where that child is now is anyone's guess. Dead? A demon? Or, as Jennifer ominously suggests, perhaps an agent of Mephisto?

If that line of dialogue doesn't kick the fan-theory machine back into gear with a vengeance, nothing will. Based on what we know about Agatha's missing son Nicholas Scratch, there's certainly a Mephisto connection at play here that comes straight from the comics. In one issue, the two end up making a tentative allegiance when Scratch ends up exiled in Hell and starts getting chummy with the villain in charge — in other words, he makes a deal with the devil himself, Mephisto. Up until this moment, the villain hadn't actually been officially confirmed as part of the MCU or not. (The closest we've come is a throwaway reference in a SHIELD file from "The Avengers," though that can be safely treated as a mere Easter egg.) But if an all-knowing witch like Jennifer can drop his name out of nowhere and have the implication speak for itself, surely there's more to this Mephisto tease than meets the (newt's) eye.

With every episode, "Agatha All Along" is drawing more and more connections between Nicholas Scratch, the noticeably unnamed Teen, and Mephisto himself. Our first major hint at the unseen demon behind the curtain actually came as early as the premiere, when Rio dropped a reference to having a "black heart," and episode 2 doubled down on it with the reveal that the fourth name associated with Agatha's coven is simply ... a black heart. Given that the name of Mephisto's son in the comics just so happens to be Blackheart, I mean, you can see where we're going with this. But episode 3 goes a little further and offers up another line that feels more telling than that — one that puts the spotlight squarely on the mysterious Teen.

Are you starting to feel like there's a major reveal coming with the Teen? You should, if you've been paying even the slightest attention so far. In the same scene between him and Jennifer, the experienced witch makes an awfully suggestive comment that can be read multiple different ways. While alluding to the drama that went down between Agatha and Nicholas Scratch, the next sentence we hear goes like this: "That's what happens when you have Agatha Harkness as your mom, right? I doubt she'd even recognize her own son if he showed up on her doorstep." It doesn't take a witch's elixir to put two and two together and realize that she might as well be talking about the Teen right to his face, especially since he almost literally just showed up on Agatha's doorstep in the first episode. If he knows anything about Nicholas Scratch's whereabouts or his (possible) association with Mephisto, he isn't saying anything ... yet.

Jac Schaeffer might've claimed not to have known much about Mephisto while she was working on "WandaVision," but things couldn't be more different in "Agatha All Along." We'll (hopefully) see where all this going in future episodes, with new ones premiering on Disney+ every Wednesday.