Did Mephisto erase Peter&MJ’s marriage to stop the birth of the PatternMaker?

[JuanLaban]

And did he do it on orders of Thanos , who wants to kill all of the Omniverse after all , which would have been the result of the destruction of the Web of Life and Destiny , and Annie Parker is the only one who can fix it?

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[Miles To Go]

This is why I like to think OMD occured in many other universes, preventing a multiversal constant. Just imagine a whole council of Pattern Makers.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I tend to have a hard Doylist attitude to Mephisto.

Mephisto ended Peter and MJ's marriage because Quesada said so. End of story.

They never had a plot or story in mind. They thought they would screw the pooch and that people would complain and then get over it because people are goldfish, the internet and social media is just an overrated phenomenon, and the last 20 years and 810 issues worth of content with a married Spider-Man printed and sold to a bigger comics' market than Post-OMD would ever command, can be written off.

When obviously that didn't happen and the situation in Spider-Man never really returned to normal or became stable and so on, they now have to come up with ways to address that. And either they have a story that plugs holes or they don't have a story.

Basically a confrontation with Mephisto needs to do the following things to be in any way satisfying:

1) Have Spider-Man defeat and triumph over Mephisto so badly that Mephisto never returns to Spider-Man's corner again. The victory is written and drawn so well that it negates the sense of humiliation and demoralization that OMD inflicted on Spider-Man. This is going to be a very tall order for Post-OMD Peter Parker to do.

2) Have Peter and Mary Jane remember the Pre-OMD Status-Quo, and establish direct links and chains to the Spider-Man of AF#15.

3) Do it in such a way that Peter and MJ's relationship in the Post-OMD status-quo never fully puts marriage off the table completely and keeps the Peter/MJ relationship alive and well after they accomplish 2).

Of course to be completely satisfying, we need to have Peter and MJ married again in Post-OMD and Marvel has told us explicitly that not only will that not happen but Peter won't marry anyone again that he's going to be this static character going forward for different writers to come and do as they wish to have Peter date and become a womanizing loser-nerd for the forseeable future.

I honestly don't see how they will be able to do that and do 1), 2) and 3)...I mean the minute Post-OMD Peter and MJ remember that they did marry, that they were inseparable in the period just before OMD, and all that commitment and sacrifice how do you lapse them back into the Slott-era Ross and Rachel dynamic which was never ever a part of the characters across publication history.

[Haquim]

Yes, Quesadaphisto just wanted to get rid of the marriage without killing MJ (making Peter a widower would have made him look older, and they wanted to "return" to what in their head was the "golden age" of spider man, so a teen ager in the body of a 25 year old man...) but that doesn't mean the plot cannot be salvaged and reused to tell a good (or even great, hopefully) story. The elements are all on the table. Some of them have been there since before OMD actually and Spiderverse actually gave us a compelling reason for Mephisto to want to get rid of the marriage (besides editorial fiat, that is).
1. Before he was retconned, Judas Traveller was supposed to be some kind of immortal being on a quest to discover the true meaning of evil. He found Peter's struggle significant and dedicated part of his resources to make Peter's life more "interesting" by questioning his morality.
2. Traveller consorted with Scrier. While also retconned later as a cult of sorts commanded by Osborn, in a Silver Surfer's story Scrier (looking like the Spider Man Scrier) is a cosmic being of great power. He seemed to be some sort of evil being giving Traveller insight.
3. "Norman Osborn was never dead. He was hiding in Europe". This unfortunate (to use a mild term) development was one of the worse things that came out of the Clone Saga. He was cast as the mastermind behind everything and the way Marvel editorial used to erase most of the Clone Saga's developments (never mind that the Clone Saga was an extremely good story until editorial decided to use it to... get rid of the marriage! At least that backfired though).
4. Taken together the previous points give us a perfectly good reason for Mephisto to be involved in Peter's Life. What if Scrier really were an identity used by Mephisto? What if What if Traveller really were an immortal overpowerful being in search of the true meaning of Good and Evil and he was convinced he was just a delusional madman to take him out of the grand scheme of things by Mephisto's manipulation? What if Norman Osborn really did die in ASM #122 and his soul eneded in Mephisto's realm? What if Mephisto resurrected used him as a pawn to get rid of Traveller and make Peter's life miserable was just the icing on the cake?

That approach would make sense and help make more palatable a lot post clone saga developments. And adding the Spider Verse develompment and the Spider Totems would give Mephisto another great reason to want to meddle with Peter. If Peter, as a spider totem, is one of the most important people capable of altering the Web of Life and Destiny then manipulating him could give Mephisto a way to alter reality. In this scenario Mephisto used the pact to erase the marriage and alter reality to gain unknown advantages besides skrewing with Peter who being a truly good person is actually anathema to everything Mephisto stands for.

Lastly, what of MJ? We know that when the deal was struck she asked Mephisto to remember everything. This was glossed over but it does not mean it was retconned. The plotline was even hinted at in ASM561 (MJ telling Spidey they knew each other in another life and that they made a good team. Her reading The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus...). Now MJ is back into Peter's life. We know she loves Peter and Peter loves her. Does she know what the consequences will be for her getting back with Peter though (hint: aunt May got cancer)?

As you see the elements to tell a great story and setting a lot of what went wrong with Spider Man in the last decades are there (with little effort even Sins Past could be rectified using the idea of Mephisto altering reality and putting Gwen with Osborn). Let's see if Marvel wants to build on them or not.

[Mister Mets]

This is what the comics have hinted.

[WebLurker]

This is what the comics have hinted.

Pretty sure it was a "happy" accident in terms of plotting rather then something that was planned back in 2007, though.

[Celgress]

And did he do it on orders of Thanos , who wants to kill all of the Omniverse after all , which would have been the result of the destruction of the Web of Life and Destiny , and Annie Parker is the only one who can fix it?..

I like to think Big Red had a greater purpose in mind than just "sticking it to true love" so I buy into this theory or else a similarly major reason for his actions.