The last month has brought the identities of the adversaries Wonder Woman may face in her 2017 solo movie. There’s Circe, the sorceress who loves turning her victims into animals, and God of War Ares, who will be operating behind the scenes. While it remains to be seen how Circe would get involved in the story, a new report is out stating what Ares’ master plan is, and if true, this scheme would provide a key connective thread between Wonder Woman and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
When Wonder Woman kicks off, Ares has stolen a blade from the Amazons that will turn him into the most powerful god and let him take over Olympus. Unfortunately for him, the sword is locked, and in order to unlock it, he’ll need to start World War III. Ares draws his powers from "malevolent psychic energy," and a conflict of that nature will provide him enough energy to access the blade’s power. Needless to say, Diana of Themyscira will step in to stop him, but defeating him won’t be the end of her mission. Heroic Hollywood also says that the sword will disappear by the end of the Wonder Woman movie, and in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Diana is still searching for it. Of course, in that movie, she’ll likely end up assisting the Dark Knight and the Caped Crusader against an unknown threat.
It’s already been reported several times that Wonder Woman will feature flashbacks, specifically taking place World War I, so those parts of the movie being set in the past make sense. However, it does feel like an odd move having the modern day events chronologically take place before the story where moviegoers are meeting Wonder Woman for the first time. However, a full prequel is certainly within the realm of possibility, if one of DC’s top brass is to be believed.
While speaking with Collider, producer Charles Roven mentioned how each protagonist’s evolution won’t begin or end during their solo movie. As he explained:
So if, for example, The Flash movie or the Aquaman film is gonna come out after Justice League 1, it’s not gonna be a completely different character; that character will have evolved from Justice League 1. Wonder Woman, when we see her in Justice League 1, will have evolved from Batman v Superman. Unless we decide that in one of these stories we’re gonna do something that happened in the past and have it be more of an origination story, in which case you’ll realize how that character became what they were in the movie that they were first introduced.
Although he didn’t directly address the Wonder Woman movie, that statement seemingly hints that it could indeed be a prequel. We’ll meet her next year, find out how she got into that situation a year later, and by Justice League Part One she’ll have developed further.
This would mean DC is taking an opposite approach to Marvel’s set ups. The MCU post-credits scenes typically foreshadow what’s coming at a later date in-continuity, whereas in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, we’ll meet Wonder Woman, and then a year later show what she was up to right beforehand. It also sounds like Roven is leaving the door open for the DCEU’s other protagonists to get the same treatment. After all, we are getting heroes like Aquaman and Flash established as superheroes before their movies come out, so whose to say that their solo adventures might also take place in the past, either as origin stories or earlier exploits?
We’ll see Wonder Woman’s solo adventure unfold on June 23, 2017, but if the rumor about Ares is true, then Diana will have already defeated him when we meet her for the first time in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on March 25, 2016.
