text: Rebooted continuity By November 2013, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the McClory estate had formally settled the issue with Danjaq and MGM and acquired the full copyright to the characters and concepts of Blofeld and SPECTRE. Blofeld consequently reappeared in Spectre, played by Christoph Waltz, and with a new background. In this continuity, he was born Franz Oberhauser, the son of Hannes Oberhauser (a character from the original short story "Octopussy"), James Bond's (Daniel Craig) legal guardian after being orphaned at the age of 11, making him and Bond adoptive brothers. As a young man, he resented Bond for being his father's favorite, leading him to murder his father, stage his own death, and take on the alias of "Ernst Stavro Blofeld", derived from his mother's maiden name. Over time, he assembled a global criminal organisation known as Spectre. Additionally, it is revealed that the villains of the previous Craig films – Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), and Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) – were all really working for Spectre.
  Bond encounters Blofeld while investigating a worldwide terrorist network, later revealed to be Spectre. Bond discovers that Blofeld is trying to take control of Nine Eyes, a global surveillance program, with help from treasonous Joint Intelligence Service agent Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), and staging terrorist attacks in order to justify the program's existence. Bond and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), Mr. White's daughter, confront Blofeld at his hideout in the Sahara, where he gloats about being indirectly responsible for several tragedies in Bond's life, including the deaths of his lover Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and the previous M (Judi Dench). He then tortures his former foster brother by strapping him to a mechanical chair programmed to surgically remove Bond's eyes. At the last second, however, Bond destroys the chair with an exploding watch given to him by Q (Ben Whishaw); the explosion destroys Blofeld's right eye and leaves him with a vertical scar running down the wounded socket. Nevertheless, Blofeld manages to escape. Bond ultimately foils Blofeld's plans and has the opportunity to kill him, but decides to spare his life, and Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the current M, takes Blofeld into custody.