WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for "The President's Best Friend" by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales, Matthew Wilson, and VC's Cory Petit, from Heroes Reborn #7, on sale now.
From the absence of the Avengers to the Squadron Supreme's rise as Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Heroes Reborn event has turned the Marvel Universe on its head in some truly shocking ways. However, little in Mephisto's new reality is what it seems. While the Squadron have been keeping their world safe from those who might try and uncover the truth, President Phil Coulson is taking a far more brutal approach to keeping the peace.
Not only is Phil Coulson the public face of Mephisto's world, but that responsibility has also turned him into a cold-blooded killer in Heroes Reborn #7, where he kills both J. Jonah Jameson and Thunderbolt Ross.
Now that the Squadron Supreme have identified the threat of the resurgent Avengers, President Coulson listens in on the heroes' conversations in hopes to stave off the Avengers' return. From inside the Oval Office, Coulson listens to Doctor Spectrum and Blur discuss the Avengers, which draws the concern of his Vice President Thunderbolt Ross and Press Secretary J. Jonah Jameson. Before these two can get the word out, Coulson produces a gun from his desk and kills both with no warning. As he prepares to shift the blame of their deaths to hypothetical assassins from Wakanda, Mephisto steps out from the shadows in the form of a hellhound and congratulates Coulson for doing the right thing.
Far from the Captain America obsessed fanboy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Phil Coulson of the comic book Marvel Universe world has been turned into a cynic following his death at the hands of Deadpool and subsequent resurrection on the part of Mephisto. While Coulson had previously worked to save the world during the events of 2017's Secret Empire, his only focus now is maintaining the one that Mephisto has created. Both are aware that the more the Avengers are mentioned, the more the cracks in their new reality will become apparent to its inhabitants, and they cannot risk losing that which they now lord over.
As they discuss their next course of action, Mephisto suggests killing Captain America, to which Coulson can only begrudgingly admit is something that should have been done sooner. Now that the Squadron has already been drawn to Wakanda, which they cannot openly assault without drawing more attention to the situation, there is only one course of action left for Phil Coulson, namely the eradication of the Avengers with the help of Marvel's newest superpowered artifact - the Hellahedron.
Resembling a red Cosmic Cube or Tesseract, the Hellahedron or Pandemonium Cube seems to not only be Coulson and Mephisto's secret weapon, but how they managed to achieve this version of reality in the first place. Coulson recalls using its power to remake this world in Mephisto's image, which means this object could snuff out the Avengers for good.
While the world Coulson has created is absolutely stunning in so many ways, it doesn't hold up particularly well to closer examination. If he isn't able to harness the Pandemonium Cube fully, or loses his faith in Mephisto somewhere along the way, this villainous version of one of the MCU's greatest heroes may just bring about his own demise.
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