While it’s common practice for superhero sequels pick up with their main characters a couple years after their previous adventure, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 is kind of a special case. After all, the time gap in this case isn’t just one or two years, but instead a whopping 66. In case it isn’t clear, that’s a hell of a lot of time to exist as a mysterious gap in a hero’s background – but you shouldn’t be overly concerned that it will permanently stay that way. After all, on the set of the upcoming movie star Gal Gadot confirmed that the follow-up will work to answer questions that fans may have.
When Wonder Woman 1984 was still in production in England during the summer of 2018, I had the wonderful opportunity to join a group of journalists on a trip to the set, and it was during an interview with Gal Gadot and Chris Pine together that the discussion of the movie’s significant time gap was raised. The two actors were rather cagey about most things during the conversation due to all of the secrets that they have to keep, but Gadot did provide some details regarding what Diana Prince’s life has been like living through the middle of the 20th century:
If you will get an idea during this movie of what she’s been doing? Yes, you will. She’s been very much - she’s been involved in the Man’s World when she was needed. She doesn’t really want to make close connections with anyone, because she knows, either she’s going to hurt them because she’ll have to disappear one day, or she will lose them because they’ll grow old. So I think after the loss of Steve and the entire team later on, I think Diana is in a place where she’s happy where she is. She’s fairly lonely, but she made the decision to do that. And she does go to the world whenever it’s needed. But she’s not complete, you know what I mean? She’s very - she has issues.
As shown in the trailers for Wonder Woman 1984, the costumed hero from Themyscira remains active as a crime-fighter protecting the innocent (evidenced in a brightly-colored sequence taking down two armed robbers in a mall), but it’s interesting to think that the character also spends most of her time by herself. Not only is her existence as an Amazonian living in Man’s World a secret that must be kept, but she also apparently feels it necessary to cut herself off from the pain and loss that comes with outliving everyone whom she gets close to.
When you think about this, one can see how this makes the arrival of a suddenly-not-dead Steve Trevor all the more impactful. The fact that he too has not aged a day since 1918 might be seen as a suggestion to Diana that she can actually be with him potentially for longer than just a human’s life cycle. Of course, we still don’t know exactly why he’s back or how he didn’t die in that explosion at the end of World War I, and the answers to those questions may end up tearing away Wonder Woman’s hope.
Then there is also the presence of Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Ann Minerva in Wonder Woman 1984, who is a bit different from her comic book counterpart in that she is going to be introduced as a friend and colleague of Diana’s. But given Gal Gadot’s statement above, it makes us wonder about the true nature of their friendship. Is Diana perhaps more reserved in the relationship given everything that she knows that Barbara doesn’t? And how will that ultimately impact things with Barbara makes her transformation into the villainous Cheetah?
The vast majority of our Wonder Woman 1984 questions won’t be answered until we actually get to see the finished film this October, but we have some great news for those of you who are hoping to at least get a few more clues about the movie. As part of this weekend’s DC Fandome event – which will be playing out starting this Saturday at 1pm PST – a brand new trailer for the Wonder Woman sequel will be released for your viewing pleasure. Check out the event this Saturday, and be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the biggest news and updates about the exciting feature.
