Spectre Rumors: Is Franz Oberhauser Related To Blofeld?

We are a few months away from the release of ‘Spectre’, and we are all still trying to figure out just who the hell Franz Oberhauser is.

With Spectre Rumors running wild, Bond fans are scrambling to figure out just exactly who Franz Oberhauser is and how he plays into the Bond lore. We know that Oscar-winning actor Christoph Waltz will be stealing scenes in the role, but beyond that it’s a total mystery as to just exactly who the character is.

Of course, you could just take the easy route and accept that Franz is the latest Bond villain and wait to see things play out in the theater. Where’s the fun in that, though?

One popular theory among fans is that Franz is somehow related to Bond, whether it be by blood somehow or as his former legal guardian. It’s known that Bond’s parents died in a climbing accident when he was a kid, leaving him an orphan and without anyone to take care of him.

We assumed that this might have bee Kincade in Skyfall, but he was merely the gamekeeper and not Bond’s guardian. One way to take this theory is that Oberhauser is Bond’s guardian, but the closeness in age range would seem to throw this one off a little bit.

But sticking with the family ties, it’s possible that Franz and Bond are adoptive brothers. In the trailer for Spectre, the legal guardianship papers that Bond has list Hannes Oberhauser as his guardian — something that ties back to the books and Octopussy. In the books, Hannes Oberhauser is a climbing instructor who later works for the Gestapo — something that could pit Bond and Franz against one another over morale issues of their shared father.

Another theory is that Franz is somehow related to not Bond but his nemesis from the classic films, Ernst Blofeld.

The lawsuit involving Thunderball and the characters involved there have kept the Blofeld character from being able to be officially included in Bond films. The last time we saw the character was in For Your Eyes Only, when Bond drops a never identified or credited Blofeld down a smokestack from a helicopter.

But now that the legal matters have been settled, Blofeld is able to be used again and having him related to Franz is a clever way to tie the old and new Bond together without rebooting everything about the franchise. Rather than recasting Blofeld — which has already been done a handful times anyways, so it’s not a big deal — having him evolve on the family tree is an investing approach.

Frankly, we won’t know what will happen with the Franz character until we see Spectre, but the wealth of possibilities is reminding us why we love Bond films. There’s so many different great ways his character can unfold in the Bond mythos, and it seems like an impossible situation to screw up.

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