Warning: contains major spoilers for Wonder Woman: Black & Gold #4!
In Wonder Woman's latest villain has found some inspiration within the game. Wonder Woman: Black & Gold #4 features Hypnota, a villain from Diana's early days. However, she has undergone a major design change in this story.
Wonder Woman: Black & Gold is an anthology series revisiting some of Wonder Woman's past eras, friends, and foes. It has brought characters and plotlines back into DC canon for Infinite Frontier. This has included Diana's old boutique, her era without powers, and her being a spy during that era. This particular Wonder Woman-focused issue brings back "Modly Modern", Catherine Perkins, and Hypnota.
"Love Failed" has the creative team of Andrew MacLean and Diego Lopez. This story has Diana facing Hypnota, who was first introduced in Wonder Woman #11 in 1944. At the time, Hypnota is a woman who dresses like a man and has the ability to mesmerize and control people. Typically, she was depicted as a sort of stage magician. Her final appearance pre-Crisis was in 1948 in Wonder Woman #28. She reappeared briefly in the early 2000s, making only two appearances in 2001 and 2002, under the name of the Hypnotic Woman. Now, this Wonder Woman foe has returned under her original name, without her previous disguise.
Back in her early appearances, Hypnota would appear in a stereotypical Middle Eastern appearance, with a turban, harem pants, and Turkish slippers or genie shoes. She would also wear fake facial hair to give the appearance of a man. Now, her design has completely changed - and an update was certainly necessary. Now, Hypnota is depicted as an elderly woman who takes advantage of others through a new style of stage show. In her alternate form, she resembles many of the ocular foes seen in the Legend of Zelda. On Transformation Island while confronting Wonder Woman, her human face has been replaced by a singular, giant eyeball. She also has additional appendages that also have eyeballs at the end of them. This design is exceedingly different from her introduction and it is certainly off-putting, just like Hinox, Eyegore, Vitreous, Gohma, Aarghus, Bilocyte, and many other foes that Link has faced over the years. Even Breath of the Wild’s Guardians have focus placed on their eyes.
Wonder Woman's latest foe may seem very strange, but her design definitely plays into her abilities. After all, the easiest way to hypnotize people is by focusing all efforts of hypnosis on their eyes and by using ones' eyes. This is exactly where Link has had to face throughout The Legend of Zelda franchise.
