Madame Gao (Marvel)
Madame Gao is a female television villain who features in Marvel Comics.
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Biography
Madame Gao (Chinese: 高夫人) was a female human who came to reside on the planet Earth. Long ago, she had settled in K'un-Lun where she learnt to harness the power of Chi for healing. However, she along with four others came to pervert the teachings of their masters with her joining Alexandra Reid, Sowande, Murakami and Bakuto. For their crime of immortality, the five were banished from the city and out in the world they formed a subversive cult and criminal organisation known as the Hand which sought the bones of dragons in order to maintain their long lives. Gao had survived across the centuries where she claimed to had gone through interrogation in the 17th century.
When Harold Meachum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he was approached by Madame Gao for aid who promised to return him from the dead. In return, Meachum set up Gao's heroin operation in Anzhou, China, which his business partner, Wendell Rand, soon discovered. When the Rands were to travel to Anzhou for Rand to further his investigation, Meachum used poison from the Hand on the pilots and caused a plane crash which killed Wendell and Heather Rand while their son Danny Rand disappeared in the mountains. Gao had attempted to talk him out of using the plane crash to kill the Rands, as she believed it would cause too much unwanted attention, but Meachum insisted upon it. After Meachum died, Gao had her division of the Hand infiltrate Rand Enterprises and kept watch on Meachum, who was under the Hand's control after returning from the dead. Her influence made her the biggest drug dealer in New York City.
Madame Gao is a master in the drug trade; she is in charge of an illegal Steel Serpent manufacturing operation where her subordinates allowed themselves to be blinded, except for the security guards. She came to head the drug trade activity within Hell's Kitchen where she came to be one of a number of crime bosses that were allied with Wilson Fisk. To this end, Fisk proposed assisting Gao with the distribution of her heroin. Together they worked out a system where Gao's blind workers would take all of the bags of heroin to Russian Mafia who would in turn help to distribute it across the city. One night, Madame Gao sat atop an empty building, along with her various associates, awaiting the arrival of Wilson Fisk. When Leland Owlsley complained about the cold and how Nobu Yoshioka did not seem bothered, Gao claimed that men like Yoshioka who had blood on their hands stayed warm. Eventually, James Wesley arrived for the meeting instead of Fisk, citing Fisk was too busy to come in person, and for that he wanted to apologize to everybody and especially Gao personally. Gao listened as Owlsley protested about Fisk's absence and Anatoly and Vladimir Ranskahov called Wesley a lapdog. When Wesley then questioned Anatoly and Vladimir about why their payment was short, they explained that a masked man freed their captive girls and beat up Turk Barrett and their subordinates. Gao spoke in Mandarin, but only Wesley understood, asking if the masked man took the girls for himself, but the Ranskahovs informed her that he had let them go. Gao quietly listened as the meeting continued and tensions between Wesley and the Ranskahov brothers increased even more.
After her heroin production warehouse was destroyed, Gao came to withdraw from the area and vanished for parts unknown.
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Madame Gao was seemingly an elderly Asian woman of small stature.
She claimed to had lived long enough to watch the world change in many ways.
Madame Gao believed that anger was a gift and was useful if one could control it. She was known to offer teaching others in the way of channelling their anger. She had said that no locks were strong enough to imprison the truth.
Gao had said that one cold not be both savior and oppressor with one having to be sacrificed for the other. Thus, she believed one had to choose or others would make the choice for them.
Powers and abilities
She was noted to had survived interrogation during the 17th century. In addition, she was shown to have had a resistance to certain drugs such as sodium pentathol with her having an immunity to it. She claimed this was similar to how normal people took small doses of poison until their bodies gained an eventual immunity to them.
It was shown that she was multilingual where she spoke Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and English fluently though had claimed to speak all languages.
From dragon bones, she and her compatriots had drank a regenerative elixir that had bestowed on them an immensely long physical life that made them live across the centuries.
Madame Gao tended to walk with a cane though inside of it was a blade that she could unsheath for combat.
As a member of the Hand, she was part of a global organisation where their leader had fostered relationships with everything from crime lords to corporate partners. Gao came to operate a drug trade with her territory being New York that saw her operatives distribute illegal heroin illegal. Her agents that distributed consisted of people who had blinded themselves out of faith.
Notes
- Madame Gao was created by Drew Goddard where she was an original creation for the Netflix Marvel series where she made her first appearance in the episode "Into the Ring" and was portrayed by actor Wai Ching Ho.
In other media
Video games
- In Marvel: Avengers Academy, Madame Gao appeared in the setting of the mobile video game. She took over the leadership of the Hand after they failed to defeat Avengers Academy.
Appearances
- Daredevil: "Into the Ring" (2015)
- Iron Fist:
- Defenders:
External Links
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