Believe it or not, we’re just over two weeks away from a brand-new Marvel TV series. Ironheart, the series starring Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), will debut on June 24, 2025, with three episodes. That’s a hefty premiere considering there are only six episodes in the entire series.
With Ironheart out later this month, we’ve been long overdue for a new trailer. Now, Marvel has finally released one, which not only reveals a detail that lends credence to a years-old fan theory, but shows how the latest MCU offering is breaking new ground for the entire franchise.
This trailer shows more of what we saw from the previous one, as Riri struggles to define what kind of hero she wants to be and copes with the supernatural temptations of The Hood (Anthony Ramos). Now, though, there’s a new element: bright red transmutation circles that appear everywhere from mysterious rooms to inside the interface of Riri’s Ironheart suit.
This magical element means one thing to longtime Marvel fans: Mephisto. The comic book character serves as Marvel’s answer to the Devil, and was long theorized to be the secret villain of WandaVision. In reality, of course, that was Agatha all along, but when Sacha Baron Cohen was cast in an undisclosed Ironheart role, Mephisto quickly became the leading theory again. The Marvel fandom is 0 for 1 when it comes to correctly predicting Mephisto’s involvement, but you can’t strike out forever.
Regardless of whether the magic on display in the trailer is the work of Mephisto, this is still a milestone for the MCU. So far, magic and technology have stayed very separate in Marvel’s storylines. Dr. Strange got into magical adventures, while Iron Man used his technology to confront high-tech foes. Asgard is fuelled by magic, while Wakanda is a high-tech paradise. We’ve never really seen the two in collaboration and opposition, but the shot of these magical runes within Riri’s suit just proved it can happen.
The source of this magic is just a guess for now, but it showing up at all in an otherwise grounded series suggests that Ironheart is more than it seems. Two MCU worlds that were once kept at arm’s length could now very well be coming together.
