When the cast was announced for next summer’s Wonder Woman, one name on the list with no character name specified was Elena Anaya, who starred opposite Antonio Banderas in The Skin I’m In and played a vampire in Van Helsing. Then we saw her in the first trailer wearing the type of facial prosthetic mask often worn by people injured during World War I, and we were intrigued:
Who is that masked woman? Thanks to an interview in Anaya’s home country of Spain, we now know she’s playing a villain. Anaya told SensaCine (translation via Comic Book Resources), “Well, it was a small role in this big ensemble, but it is an important character in the story… I’m going to be… a big nightmare for the two of them.”
Early rumors claimed the main villains would be Ares and Circe, but other facets of that rumor didn’t pan out, and we doubt the woman in the mask is Circe. Mythical Greek characters usually don’t need prosthetics. Other possibilities for her character include Morgan Le Fey, Doctor Cyber, Baroness von Gunther, and just about any other obscure comics character you could throw around, but our favorite theory so far comes from Movie Pilot, who laid out the case for her character being Doctor Poison.
Doctor Poison used masks and bulky clothing to disguise herself as a man, sneaking drugs into soldiers’ water supplies to make them disobey orders, instigating chaos among the ranks. The New 52 later reinvented this villain, and she became an expert in biological weaponry.
Obviously, this character isn’t disguising herself as a man, but we could see a version of Doctor Poison working with a less obscure villain to undermine the war effort. We’ll find out what kind of “nightmare” Anaya’s character has in store when Wonder Woman opens June 2, 2017.
(Via SensaCine, Comic Book Resources, Movie Pilot, and The Mary Sue)
