| “ | The voice in your head that tells you to cut your wrists, or do anything else to end your life, it never shouts. It only whispers. That's why Angelica called Brandt that. | ” |
Milton Bailey Brandt, more commonly referred to as Whispers, portrayed by Terrence Mann, is the main antagonist in the Netflix series, Sense8. Whispers is a Sensate who serves as a Senior Officer of the organization tasked with hunting down sensates for unethical experimentation or extermination. Notorious for his ruthless sadism and his uniquely cruel act of murdering all of his sensate clustermates, Whispers is widely feared amongst the sensate community due to his abilities and association with the BPO.
Overview[]
Whispers hunts sensates by using an eye contact connection. He uses the connection to visit his target, and see and hear what they see and hear. He uses this knowledge to hunt down and capture his target, and then torture them until they give him information about the rest of their cluster. He has also shown the ability to control the bodies of sensates who have been lobotomized (such as Niles Bolger in W. W. N. Double D?) as he would a puppet. His overall goal is to neutralize or kill any sensate that isn't affiliated with BPO.
Whispers has several aliases. In Metzger's phone, his phone number is under the name Dr. Matheson. When Metzger is pleading for his life, he calls him Milton. (W. W. N. Double D?). When Whispers arrives at the home of Amanita's mother, he uses the name Dr. William Friedmann. (We Will All Be Judged by the Courage of Our Hearts).
Personality[]
Whispers was an enigmatic sensate whom had been speculated to have slaughtered his own clustermates under the guise of scientific discoveries. After being employed to the Biologic Preservation Organization, he began work to lobotimize sensates, killing each one he came across or puppeteering their bodies for the BPO's drone program. Whispers notably had no regard for life or the people he encountered, as he saw many of the bodies he operated upon as books of knowledge and secrets he opened with his knife.
Despite this, Whispers showed some passion towards humans, marrying his wife Elizabeth and procreating, having a daughter Chelsea. However, he continued to focus heavily in his work for BPO and the capture of the August 8 Cluster since their rescue of Riley Gunnardottir.
Whispers's reputation as the Cannibal came to him because he murdered the members of his own cluster, an event so traumatic that it is extremely rare among homo-sensoriums. However, Whispers did not simply experience the death of his cluster as a murderer: he also experienced as the victim, feeling the emotions that his cluster felt when he killed them. As such, he was left with a lifelong fear of death and intended to use BPO's drone program to maintain his consciousness forever by transducing it to as many lobotomized sensates as possible.
Relationships[]
Non-Cluster Sensates[]
- Angelica Turing: to be added
- Jonas Maliki: Former Employee, who turned against him.
- Sara Patrell: Whispers became close to Sara Patrell under the guise of being a tutor. During his time spent with her, he soon learned that she was an unborn sensate and, soon, experimented on her. Ultimately, however, she died.[1]
- Riley Blue: Whispers was trying to make eye contact with Riley so he could manipulate and interrogate her, but she was still unconscious until by the time Will and the rest of her cluster helped her out.
- Will Gorski: Though they did not initially interact then, Whispers encountered a young Gorski in a hidden laboratory. He attempted to get the child to look him in his eyes but failed.
Through Jonas Maliki, Whispers continued to taunt of eventually capturing him and his cluster. The two men established unintentional eye contact upon a glance in the glass windows of an elevator and, as he chased Gorski and Gunnardottir, began to taunt and gloat that he would not be able to truly escape. - Wolfgang Bogdanow: BPO caught Wolfgang and handed him to Whispers. Whispers has seen to electrified and abused him for informations about the August 8 cluster.
- Lila Facchini: Lila assisted Whispers and the BPO in catching Wolfgang at his apartment.
Inside the Cluster[]
- Not much is known about his connection to his cluster, but Angelica Turing and Jonas Maliki mentioned that he commonly speaks to his clustermates in his dreams despite their deaths.
Non-Sensates[]
- Elizabeth: Whispers was previously married to Elizabeth and raised their daughter Chelsea together. However, though they were previously intimate with each other, Whispers increasingly became more distant and hostile towards his wife and daughter as he continued hunting for the August 8th Cluster, culminating in Elizabeth officially divorcing him.
- Michael Gorski: Whispers visited Will Gorski's father physical during the long standing hide. While there, they spoke about his son, taunting Gorski. During the conversation, Whispers aided in Michael's alcoholism and attempted to persuade him that his son was a criminal. Despite this, Michael expressed that he wished for Will's return.
- Richard Croome: Croome was Whispers' superior at BPO. When Croome met Will at a museum, he talked about BPO briefly and gave Will a small jar of blockers. Not long after that, Whispers, using unknown woman painter's body, killed Croome by jabbing his neck with a sharp paintbrush.
Appearances[]
| Sense8, Season 1 | |||
| #01 | "Limbic Resonance" | #07 | "W. W. N. Double D?" |
| #02 | "I Am Also A We" | #08 | "We Will All Be Judged by the Courage of Our Hearts" |
| #03 | "Smart Money Is on the Skinny Bitch" | #09 | "Death Doesn't Let You Say Goodbye" |
| #04 | "What's Going On?" | #10 | "What Is Human?" |
| #05 | "Art Is Like Religion" | #11 | "Just Turn the Wheel and the Future Changes" |
| #06 | "Demons" | #12 | "I Can't Leave Her" |
| Sense8, Season 2 | |||
| #01 | "Happy F*cking New Year" | #07 | "I Have No Room In My Heart For Hate" |
| #02 | "Who Am I?" | #08 | "All I Want Right Now Is One More Bullet" |
| #03 | "Obligate Mutualisms" | #09 | "What Family Actually Means" |
| #04 | "Polyphony" | #10 | "If All the World's a Stage, Identity Is Nothing But a Costume" |
| #05 | "Fear Never Fixed Anything" | #11 | "You Want a War?" |
| #06 | "Isolated Above, Connected Below" | #12 | "Amor Vincit Omnia" |
Skills[]
- Manipulation
- Investigative and Tactical Skills
- Medical Expertise
Media[]
| “ | Oh, come now, my dear, how many times have you made that threat? And we both know you won't do it. You can't. You are one of us, and there's still so much work to be done. You're coming home, with me. | ” |
— Whispers to Angelica Turing in Limbic Resonance.
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| “ | As a boy, I was an exceptional student. I loved reading. I opened a book and found secrets and knowledge hidden inside. When I was a medical student, I learned how to operate on human beings. I imagined they had names and lives, but as far as I was concerned, they were the same as books... except I opened them with my knife. Every moment I remain here brings me closer to the moment I will open Ms. Gunnarsdóttir while she is still alive so that you can feel as I slice into her cerebellum... and cut after cut, her secrets and knowledge will spill across my table. When all that remains of you and your cluster are the measurements and observations in my notebook, I will go home... and I will kiss my beautiful wife and my daughter, and I will return to my exceptional life. | ” |
— Whispers to Will Gorski in Amor Vincit Omnia.
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Trivia[]
- There is a fan theory that Whispers is based on sexologist Ray Blanchard, whose bigoted theories about transgender people are, among other terms, pathologizing and stigmatizing.[2] Blanchard has a short grey beard and his middle name is Milton (Whispers' first name). In addition, the sexologist J. Michael Bailey is a prominent supporter of Blanchard's theories (Bailey is Whispers' middle name).[3]
References[]
- ↑ https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/614605862993170432
- ↑ http://www.juliaserano.com/TSetiology.html
- ↑ Twitter @BlanchardPhD - https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1125845345441857538 (May 7, 2019)