8 questions I have after watching Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is in cinemas now and blowing everyone away with it’s well-paced story, captivating performances, and kick-ass action. Easily the best DCEU movie released so far, director Patty Jenkins and lead Gal Gadot have delivered one hell of a cracking superhero movie, which will have fans begging for more, but until then... we have a few questions about Wonder Woman’s ending which need to be addressed.
At this point, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’d suggest you leave your house right now and go and watch it before reading the rest of this feature because full story spoilers will be coming up shortly. If you have seen it, grab your lasso of truth and let’s get going because I want to know if Diana will ever return to Themyscira, how she defeated Ares, and if we’ll see her in other time periods in the sequel?
Read more: Why Wonder Woman's finale is the best (and worst) thing about the movie
1. Will Diana ever see Themyscira and her Mother again?
When Diana decides to leave her home - the only one she’s ever known - and travel with Steve to stop Ares and the war, her Mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), tells her she “may never return”. But does that mean, she’ll definitely never be able to come back or she may never come back? I feel like the phrasing of her dialogue was purposely vague to give a gravitas to Diana’s departure, while still leaving the possibility of more Amazon screen time open. Because who doesn’t want to see more of Themyscira and the Amazons?! I hope Diana does see her home and family again because there’s a wealth of stories to be told there - maybe even a Wonder Woman spin-off? - and it would be a shame to have the island sink into the character’s history never to be revisited. Lauren O’Callaghan
2. What is Diana’s job in The Louvre?
This might be a small point but Wonder Woman definitely has a job in the 21st century and it’s not in some random office where she can keep her sword, shield, and whip on a nearby desk and have no one notice. The suitcase and photo from Bruce Wayne arrives at none other than The Louvre in Paris where Diana Prince clearly has an office. From what we briefly see, she’s surrounded by glass cases packed with historical weaponry and skulls, so it’s easy to assume she’s probably a curator of some kind.
As a job for a goddess who doesn’t age and has a penchant for weaponry and happens to have lived through two world wars, you can’t really fault her career choice. Remember that the 21st century Wonder Woman doesn’t exactly love humanity in the same inspirational way she once did. She’s lived through a lot and you can imagine that there’s probably something exceptionally attractive about these links to the past, even if they are carefully positioned behind glass. Let’s not go too Cliff’s Notes about it but her emotions might have had a similar treatment. Louise Blain
3. Why does Ares want appeasement if he’s the God of War?
Shock, horror… Sir Patrick (David Thewlis) was Ares all along! Ok, so it was kind of obvious but it does beg the question why did Sir Patrick worked so hard to make a policy of appeasement possible with the Germans if he’s really all about war. We do get a very short explanation from him when he reveals himself to Diana before the final battle, but he merely says he’s happy to sit back and support appeasement and watch humanity tear itself apart anyway knowing that we will. But supporting appeasement isn’t sitting back and letting humanity fight each other, it’s actively working against it, which for the God of War seems like a really odd thing to do. Is he just fucking with humanity? Does he enjoy building us up so he can smash us down all the harder? Or maybe he’s not as bad as Diana thinks and humanity is really doing all this to itself? Lauren O’Callaghan
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4. What happened to Doctor Poison?
If this is the first you’ve ever heard of Doctor Poison, it’s understandable but her character actually goes all the way back to the Golden Age of DC Comics back in the 1940s. A chief of, you guessed it, poison for a team of Nazi villains, Doctor Poison was actually a Japanese princess called Maru with a serious bone to pick with Diana. She was a recurring villain and even a trip to Transformation Island (yes, I know) couldn’t cure her evil ways and she formed a team of super nasties known as Villainy Inc - shh, stop sniggering at the back. Doctor Poison was actually brought back in the ‘90s as the grandchild of the original who seemed to have all the right evil genetics and was happy to carry on the villainous name.
It makes sense then that Gadot’s Wonder Woman didn’t drop that tank on the bad Doctor despite her absurdly grim desire to wipe the majority of humans out with poisonous gas. While we might never go back to see what happened post WW2, we can assume that Doctor Poison lived to fight another day and probably ended up back in the lab to concoct even more evil schemes and maybe get some kind of horrendous upgrade on that mask. Louise Blain
5. If The God Killer was destroyed, when does Diana get The Sword of Athena?
So that sword. It turns out that the God Killer sword has only been a part of the Wonder Woman lore for a very short period of time. It actually featured originally in a Deathstroke comic in 2014 as he was hired to kill Lapetus, the God of Mortality. Slade armed himself with the God Killer just for the job and through a complex turn of events, ended up unleashing a god on Themiscrya. Wonder Woman understandably didn’t like this much and became entangled in the lore.
This makes the God Killer in the movie effectively disposable for this version of Diana. When Ares destroys it, we know all isn’t lost because she is the God Killer. It’s a clever narrative device that delivers us the perfect self discovery story but interestingly never reveals how she gets the sword that she’s battling with in Batman v Superman. Hopefully we’ll find out in a later movie just how she gets her current choice of weaponry. Louise Blain
6. How did Wonder Woman defeat Ares?
It wasn’t going well for a while there, was it? While Wonder Woman thought she had the strength to beat Ares, the fact that he kept forcefully introducing her to walls, the ground, and tanks just didn’t fill us with all the confidence - incidentally this was the first time I’ve ever cared when a DC movie has thrown someone through //anything//. And yet, when she sees humanity, the sacrifice of Steve, the suffering heart of the war torn band of brothers she has crossed the country with, she finally finds the strength to beat the God of War. Wonder Woman suddenly becomes the God Killer that she always was. No sword, no fancy maguffins, just her and the final knowledge of her own infinite power which results in a frankly explosive lightning power that we had absolutely no clue she was capable of, sending Ares into oblivion. If that’s not an inspiring story for the ages, I just don’t know what is. Louise Blain
7. What made Diana turn away from humanity?
Wonder Woman goes on a rollercoaster of an emotional journey in this movie. She starts out believing it’s her duty to protect humanity and then nearly falls apart when she realises humans are flawed and Ares isn’t completely responsible for all the bad in the world. By the end, Steve’s sacrifice (among other things) convinces Diana that humanity is worth saving and it ends with her as a fully-fledged superhero ready to defend the world. But we know that’s not the case forever...
It’s strongly implied in BvS that Diana has turned away from humanity and no longer fights for us. Her armour is tarnished from lack of use and she’s reluctant to help Bruce Wayne with his investigation. While we know she eventually takes back up the mantle of protector and joins the Justice League - what made her turn away from humanity in the first place? Unlike a lot of superheroes, Diana is immortal so has no doubt seen a lot terrible things in her time on Earth. Perhaps it just got too much for her and she was sick and tired of helping us out only to watch us cock things up again. Maybe she was just on sabbatical - everyone needs a break now and then. The Diana we know in BvS is very different to the one we met in Wonder Woman so something happened between those two stories to change her, and I want to know what. The answer could lie in the next question… Lauren O’Callaghan
8. Will we see Diana in more time periods in future movies?
The short answer? Hopefully. The current reports are that a sequel is on the way and that it will have a contemporary setting instead of a historical one. However, given the fact that this story finishes just as WW1 does that gives us over 80 years of untold Wonder Woman story before she joins Bats and Supes on that roof and they don’t deserve her. Where has she been? How did she end up working in the Louvre? What has she seen? Has she been through every conflict in the world? The interesting thing is knowing that even after she defeats Ares, war still rages. Let’s face it, that’s got to be pretty infuriating - “Guys, I just cleaned up this mess!”. Now all we have to do is just cross our wrists and hope for confirmation. Louise Blain
Louise Blain is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in gaming, technology, and entertainment. She is the presenter of BBC Radio 3’s monthly Sound of Gaming show and has a weekly consumer tech slot on BBC Radio Scotland. She can also be found on BBC Radio 4, BBC Five Live, Netflix UK's YouTube Channel, and on The Evolution of Horror podcast. As well as her work on GamesRadar, Louise writes for NME, T3, and TechRadar. When she’s not working, you can probably find her watching horror movies or playing an Assassin’s Creed game and getting distracted by Photo Mode.