Against all the odds, Loki season 2 is giving us the distinct impression that Jonathan Majors will remain aboard the MCU to continue on as Kang the Conqueror, the main villain for the entire Multiverse Saga. For a while there, speculation was rife that Marvel might pivot its plans and introduce another villain instead. Although that no longer appears to be the case, it is looking more and more probable that another new villain, who might just run rings around Kang in terms of power-levels, is on his way nonetheless.
Thanks to some preregistrations Marvel has filed with the U.S. Copyright Office, we’ve received a glut of fresh information on the MCU’s upcoming slate of Disney Plus series, including approximate release dates and confirmed cast and character lists. Speaking of, unfortunately Ironheart isn’t due to hit streaming for another 2 years, but at least we just got our first official confirmation that Sacha Baron Cohen is definitely involved in the cast. He’s listed in the registration as playing a character credited as Mystery Man.
If you cast your mind back to a year ago, when Cohen — who has three Oscar nominations to his name thanks to both Borat movies — was first reported to have joined the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever spinoff, it was claimed that he could be portraying Mephisto. Yes, the duplicitous demon himself who fans have been theorizing would enter the fray ever since WandaVision. With Marvel so keen to keep his role’s identity under wraps, but also going with an alias beginning with M, the chances of Cohen really being our Mephisto just shot up.
So why should we be excited about this? Well, Kang’s great and all, but as pretty much the Devil of the Marvel universe, Mephisto’s reality-warping abilities make him a force to be reckoned with — just see the One More Day comics arc in which he rewrote continuity to reboot Spider-Man’s entire life. With some kind of soft relaunch of the MCU expected to happen in Avengers: Secret Wars, he may even go toe-to-toe with Kang come the Multiverse Saga’s conclusion.
Again, though, don’t get to hyped just yet as Cohen’s Mephisto (if that is indeed who he is) won’t turn up until Ironheart gets here in September 2025.
