Doctor Strange: 10 Villains Mads Mikkelsen Could Be Playing

While there are plenty of demons and lords of Hell in the Marvel Universe, Mephisto is unequivocally Marvel’s version of the Devil. He’s pure evil, with no redeeming qualities and simply craves power, death and destruction.

It’s easy to see how Mephisto’s outer shell could be cracking based on the set photos. There’s clearly some sort of demonic presence underneath Mikkelsen’s skin and the ruler of Hell’s spirit would surely be enough to slowly burn away at his vessel’s body. In addition, his power is so vast that re-shaping the nature of a church is both something he's capable of and a feat he would likely enjoy doing.

Mephisto has appeared on screen before, played by Peter Fonda and then Ciaran Hinds in the Ghost Rider films. To include him here could be the MCU’s attempts to redeem the character from those films, who didn’t live up to his impressive comic book self. 

More importantly to the MCU, Mephisto boasts a key role in The Infinity Gauntlet. While that comic will undoubtably see some changes before it becomes Infinity War, the possibility of his character appearing would seem to make a lot of sense.