Marvel-Netflix has kept Sigourney Weaver's villainous role tightly under wraps, even in the latest Defenders trailer. We only got a few glimpses of her character, but it’s clear she’s associated with The Hand and evil Elektra. There’s only a few months to go until The Defenders releases, but I have a hunch we won’t find out who she’s playing until the series arrives. There’s not many convincing hypotheses about what Weaver will bring to the table and there’s no doubt her role isn’t plucked straight out of a comic book. However, there is one running theory that could explain why there’s so many factions of The Hand, why Black Sky is so important, and who Sigourney Weaver is playing.
Firstly, one of the most telling things we learned from Iron Fist is there’s multiple factions of The Hand, all with different agendas. Madame Gao seems to run a rogue faction of The Hand that’s now at odds with Bakuto. The fact The Chaste are returning to The Defenders is also telling, as well as Elektra’s inclusion in all this and the hole at Midland Circle. All these characters are all loosely associated with a “ Shadowland ” and an organization known as Snakeroot in the comics.
The Snakeroot are basically servants of a demon known simply as The Beast, a mystical being The Hand has worshiped since its founding. Snakeroot are the heart of The Hand, the “inner circle” if you will. They don’t appear in the comics all that much and it’s impossible to tell where they are in the hierarchy of The Hand, but their goals are distinct from those of the rest of the group.
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So if there’s Snakeroot, that means there has to be a beast, which in this case would be Sigourney Weaver or Black Sky. She could be the mystic power The Hand worships, which could explain how they have the power of resurrection. The Beast, tied to pretty much every character in The Defenders in the comics, is said to live in some extradimensional realm of hell. (Perhaps a huge endless hole in the ground?) This hell has ties to the Eighth City of Heaven, a devilish place described as “the prison of evils.”
The Elektra comics (via The Other Murdock Papers) describe The Beast as follows: “The Beast is power. The Beast is magic. The Beast will make you clean, Elektra. The Beast is not born of man or woman, yet with each passing year he grows more human in appearance. In time he will take his place in the world above and bring it to ashes. We are his Hand, clawing at the foundation of man’s great lie, clearing the path.”
The Beast also produces a liquid known as “the milk of the beast,” which could be what those warriors were drinking at Gao’s headquarters in China. The milk supposedly creates a connection from the drinker to the beast.
In Iron Fist, Danny Rand asks Zhou Cheng what his master, Ch'i-Lin (an actual beast in the comics who years for the power of the Shao-Lou dragon), would think of him being drunk all the time. Cheng says his master insists upon it to “tame his inner dragon” and keep it sedated because “bad things happen if I don't.”
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The Beast being in The Defenders would explain why The Hand is willing to make so many human sacrifices and go to such irrational measures; namely, because they are worshipping a higher power. The Beast also explains why Gao isn’t at odds with -- but also isn’t aligned with -- the larger Hand group. She could be Snakeroot, the more mystical inner circle of The Hand with more knowledge of its ancient origins. Black Sky could essentially be like The Beast in human form, and The Hand’s access point and direct messenger to The Beast.
There’s also another, more simple, theory. There is a character named Alexander Bont in the comics, who goes by the alias Kingpin before Wilson Fisk does. Since Sigourney Weaver is playing a villain named Alexandra, the character could have just been adapted as a man instead. Though Bont is a gangster in New York with ties to Daredevil, his character from the comics is quite shallow and doesn’t have ties to anyone else in The Defenders.
What do you think of these theories? Let us know in the comments.
