Super Visions: Wild guesses and rank speculation

Nemeses - and how they got that way?

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  • Courtesy ABC
  • MASK, MADAME?: Ming-Na Wen is making the most of playing Agent May and her scarred, face-thieving foe, Agent 33.



I learned from the Internet which characters Kyle MacLachlan and Chloe Bennet, his onscreen daughter, are supposedly playing on “Agents of SHIELD.” Fret not! In case you don’t know already, I won’t repeat the names I saw online.

What I will do is toss out some wild guesses (maybe they’re hopes) for “AoS” and other entertainments headed our way.

On “AoS,” poor Agent 33 got stuck with Agent May’s face. Most of it, anyway. In case you missed it, Hydra outfitted the mind-controlled 33 (back when she was portrayed by Maya Stojan) with tech that let her mimic May’s appearance and voice. In the course of a fight, that elaborate mask seems to have fused onto 33’s head — except where it melted and left behind a horrific, eye-framing scar.

I vaguely recall having heard someone or other utter 33’s real name, but in the wake of the “AoS”’ midseason finale the character was clearly on the way to becoming someone else. A scarily insane someone else. Confronted with the seeming demise of her Hydra brainwasher/evil stepfather, the weight of what this woman had endured seemed to make something snap. The scene was beautifully played by Ming-Na Wen, whose stoicism as Agent May gets the precise dose of self-knowing humor it needs to be believable (the character knows what she’s feeling, but she sees no reason to share those emotions with anyone who might weaponize them). As 33, you could see whatever identity that character thought she had just … evaporate at the sight of Bad Daddy lying dead in front of her. Who might she be on her way to becoming, you ask? Could it be … “Whitney Frost”? A name that was itself an alias, I recall, once I find the proper link to Madame Masque.

Here’s hoping.

Elsewhere in the world of superspies, the happy news is the casting of Christoph Waltz in the next James Bond film. Its title, SPECTRE, has people speculating that Waltz is playing Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Bond’s nemesis and a character who’s been mired for years in legal wrangling that is, at last, wrangled. One interviewer asks the actor outright, “Is your character the head of SPECTRE?” Waltz’s amused reaction — as he says no to that question and adds, “Actually, it’s more interesting than that” — says to me: Blofeld’s Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion doesn’t exist at the beginning of this movie. Other reports say that the story involves the sinister cartel Quantum, from the first two of Daniel Craig’s (collectively quite stellar) Bond films. My suspicion? The character is a member of Quantum who has ideas of his own about how the world ought to be taken over. He’ll be dismantling that organization and remaking it as his own.

If I’m right, the result will basically be Blofeld Begins.

And I smile a Grinchy grin at that prospect. Here’s hoping your holiday wishes and mine all come true.