[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Ironheart Season 1]
Summary
- Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Ironheart creator Chinaka Hodge, director Angela Barnes, and executive producer Ryan Coogler.
- Ironheart‘s Season 1 finale introduces Mephisto, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, as a long-anticipated antagonist.
- The trio discuss how they landed such an iconic big bad, the collaboration with Cohen, and why Coogler believes Riri’s decision to be the ultimate sacrifice.
It’s finally happened. The Season 1 finale of Ironheart just introduced a long-awaited, long-suspected antagonist from Marvel Comics, with Sacha Baron Cohen debuting as Mephisto.
Throughout the six-episode series, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) has been battling her own inner demons, struggling to cope with the loss of her stepfather, Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins), and her best friend, Natalie (Lyric Ross). She’s also determined to build revolutionary safety tech, but without the necessary funds, she’s found alternative ways of funding her projects through Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a.k.a. The Hood, and his gang.
After the culmination of Season 1 found Riri face to face with the devilishly powerful Mephisto, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to talk with series creator Chinaka Hodge, director Angela Barnes, and executive producer Ryan Coogler. In this interview, we find out how the hotly anticipated Marvel demon found his way onto Ironheart after years of rumors swirling around his MCU debut. The trio also discuss collaborating with Cohen on Mephisto, Riri’s ultimate decision, and why Coogler believes it to be “one of the more interesting things we’ve seen somebody doing in the MCU.”
How Did Mephisto Become ‘Ironheart’s Villain?
“We came in with a different big bad.”
COLLIDER: I have so many things I want to talk to you guys about, but I think everyone, after Episode 6, is going to want to know how you guys decided on Mephisto as being the big bad?
CHINAKA HODGE: Everything that we did in the writers’ room was a collaborative decision that then got run up the flagpole to who we call “The Trio,” who are Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, and Louis D’Esposito, who owes me a basketball game, by the way. We ran up our ideas for who the big bad should be in the show, and collaboratively, like most of the things in the writers’ room, we exited with Mephisto. We came in with a different big bad, but Mephisto was a plus from our executives.
Can you share what the original one was, or you don’t want to say?
HODGE: No, I cannot.
Say no more. So, how did you end up with Sacha [Baron Cohen]? Because he’s fantastic.
ANGELA BARNES: That was me saying something out loud, that I thought, “Okay, I’m going to tell them who I think would be great, and then when they say he’s not available or costs too much or whatever, then we’ll get to a list of what we can actually get.” I was like, “I think Sacha Baron Cohen would be perfect for this role. To me, he has the cheek that you need for the role, but also, we’ve seen him in some of his dramatic stuff. He can be scary, and I think Mephisto needs to be scary.” He said yes, and I was like, “What?! This is great.”
He was an amazingly collaborative partner. He was just fun to be with in general because he’s funny as hell, but had a lot of really smart choices. Him and his writing partner both came to set and worked really well. You can talk a little bit about that in terms of character development, but for me, he was just a joy to work with. I had so much fun. I wish we could have done more.
HODGE: It was one of the fastest things that happened on Ironheart, where she said his name, and then the next day, it was a yes. Then, two weeks later, he was there, and then the character got made. It all worked very, very smoothly in a way that I feel like there must have been some magic poured onto it. Then, in terms of creating the character with Sacha and Peter [Baynham] for Mephisto, it was a thrilling experience. We got together on a Sunday and banged out a lot of big choices, and then went away and came back. It was one of the first times where I felt on equal footing in the writers’ room with, to be honest, a person who was not a person of color. Sacha was… “benevolent” is too small. He was incredibly generous, incredibly giving, and wanted to make sure that everybody learned in the situation. So, it was one of the best surprises of my career.
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Marvel obviously has plans for different characters. When you are designing what Mephisto can do in this show, how much do you have to go to Kevin and everybody else and say, “This is what we think about the powers, this is what we think we can do? Is this all cool?”
HODGE: Yes. [Laughs]
BARNES: That sounds about right.
HODGE: We have to run it up the flagpole. There’s very few people who know what’s going on in every different sector of the universe, and so there just needs to be a control, and that control is Kevin. Kevin does a great job of making sure we all know what we need to know.
Ryan Coogler Calls Riri’s Deal With Mephisto a “Very Interesting Form of Sacrifice”
“The whole show is about antiheroes.”
I love the ending because I think, for Riri, the decision she makes is very realistic. She is suffering, and she’s been dealing with trauma, and even though she knows this is a terrible idea, she wants her best friend back. Can you talk about the decision about what she does? Also, because you’re ending the whole thing on a cliffhanger, including what’s going on with The Hood, how much have you thought about where you can go from here, and how much was like, “Let’s just plant these seeds and let’s hope we get to do another season?”
HODGE: The conceit of television is exactly the back half of what you said. We always hope that we get a second season. We always hope that we leave our limitedes or our seven seasons with questions that have the audience leaning in and wanting more. What was cool about Riri is the whole show is about antiheroes, and if she made the decision not to say yes to him, then she would have been a true hero and a little further in her journey than we want her to be. She can stay the complicated character she is as long as we give her some rough edges. So, you’re right, she hasn’t dealt with any of her trauma around Natalie, really. She hasn’t really dealt with any of her trauma around Gary, so she’s making poor decisions like someone who’s a super genius with a lot of unchecked emotions might.
RYAN COOGLER: I actually like how informed her decision is, though.
HODGE: Say more.
COOGLER: It’s an informed decision. She sees Hood at his worst, she sees what the deal with this guy looks like, and she still does it for a friend. You learn just how much she loves this person. It’s one of the more interesting things we’ve seen somebody doing in the MCU, and that’s hard because there have been a lot of these, a lot of movies, a lot of shows. It’s a very interesting form of sacrifice that can only happen in this story with these characters, so I thought it was a great way to introduce an incredibly powerful character from publishing, because you meet Mephisto via this deal, which I think is really cool.
HODGE: We had fun with it.
Ironheart Season 1 is available to stream on Disney+.
