Diana of Themyscira has been exiled from her homeland since the early days of DC's Rebirth, but since taking over the series with Wonder Woman #58 in November, writer G. Willow Wilson has emphasized and amplified the Diana's status, not just as an Amazon warrior, but as an immigrant and refugee.

In the aftermath of "The Just War" story arc, Wonder Woman has strong reason to believe her mother, Queen Hippolyta, is in great danger, and that Themyscira itself may be under threat -- and yet Diana is powerless to act. Wonder Woman #63 and #64, both of which can be purchased wherever comics are sold, take very different approaches to Diana's plight, and that of her fellow Olympians.

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In #63, illustrated by Emanuela Lupacchino, Wonder Woman helps a group of eccentric minor gods trying to build a new life in America; it's a funny, lighthearted story, but one with a powerful message about the treatment of refugees. Then, in #64, illustrated by Jesus Merino, Diana finds that one of her most cunning enemies has vital information about the fate of Themyscira.

CBR spoke with Wilson about the new storyline, mixing the mundane world with high fantasy, and what it means for Wonder Woman, specifically, to lose her homeland.

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CBR:  Ever since DC's Rebirth universe started a few years ago, the Wonder Woman series has been increasingly about the idea of Diana as an exile and immigrant. Has your own experience shaped how you approach a story like this?

G Willow Wilson: Oh no, I don't know that it has necessarily. [Wonder Woman] is one of those characters who is so far removed from any sort of human experience that I think you really have to stretch your creative muscles to approach her. That's the challenge.

Issues #63 and 64 are both timely, but tonally very different stories. In #63, you take a lighthearted approach to the Olympian gods in exile and their (mis)adventure in a diner. How does this sort of lightheartedness help bring the message of these Olympian refugees' experience home to readers?

Wilson: I think what I was really trying to do in that issue was place these very fantastical characters in our own kind of mundane day-to-day world and show that contrast, which has a lot of humor, but also a lot of pathos. I thought that juxtaposition was fun.

It's always interesting, I think, when you have a story like Wonder Woman that has very high fantasy elements sitting cheek and jowl with contemporary real-world issues and locations. The trend in Wonder Woman in recent years had been to kind of go back and forth between her real-world stories and her Olympian mythical high fantasy stuff rather than blend the two. What I really wanted to do was pull those two worlds together, to see that high contrast between fantasy and the real world.

Diana is so often represented as a paragon of peace, but we don't often see her intervening in the more mundane aspects of life. What do you think would compel her to intervene in this particular case, or what made you want to tell the story that way?

Wilson: There aren't a ton of low stakes stories when it comes to big superheroes. I think we get a false impression when we just have high-stakes story after high-stakes story that this is how the battle between good and evil plays out. However, 99 percent of the time in the real world, it plays out in these low stakes scenarios.

It's a battle against bureaucracy. It's trying over competing narratives in the press. It's trying to convince a specific person to do a specific thing. So I think it's valuable to have some of those low stakes stories with the high fantasy elements because they really show us a lot more about situations we're likely to encounter in our lives; right versus wrong instead of the universe coming to an end again.

I like that marriage of high fantasy creatures in low stakes environments. I've done a lot of that in Ms. Marvel, and I wanted to draw on that here.

Next Page: Who is Wonder Woman at her breaking point?

Wonder Woman 64

Issue #64 starts a much more high stakes story, with Veronica Cale returning. How does her storyline tie into what's going on in Olympus?

Wilson: Well, we'll find out more about that. It's not immediately clear. We're kind of left with some questions. How did Veronica Cale encounter this... lost goddess of grudges? And how did their pasts cross? And what is it exactly that she wants? We're left with more questions than answers, and we see in the upcoming two issues how Veronica Cale has gotten herself mixed up in this exiled god scenario and what her long game is.

So again, it's kind of fun for me to call on one of Wonder Woman's chief antagonists from her real-world stories and pair her with that antagonist from her high fantasy Olympian storylines. It's not clear if they're working together or against each other, or how that's going to involve Wonder Woman.

Veronica is a fascinating villain because you can understand where she is coming from, with everything she's endured with her daughter, but she chooses the worst possible path. How do you view her character, and why is she so fixated on Wonder Woman in particular.

Wilson: I think she's a really interesting character because she is so ambitious. And yet, at the same time, she feels this tremendous hatred toward Wonder Woman, who in so many ways resembles her. So you'd think that they'd have a kind of camaraderie. But it's the opposite.

Veronica resents Wonder Woman. I think she sees Wonder Woman as kind of this outdated aristocratic entitled princess from another realm. That she can just stroll into our world and start dispensing justice according to her right.

And you know, I think there's some truth to what all of these supervillains say. Especially in the case of Veronica Cale I think there is some painful truth there.

Veronica is self-made, she's had to work for everything that she has. So she resents Wonder Woman for being born into a position of power and for having this inherited status. And I think that she is resentful of the fact that people adore Wonder Woman and see her as this icon of peace and justice, and yet they don't see Veronica Cale in the same light. That rivalry has been a very emotionally complex background that is a lot of fun to play with from a storytelling perspective, because two-dimensional villains are never fun.

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Something that was interesting in their dynamic, which you play a bit more with in this issue, is that Veronica's child has been a target for a while and has had all these various things happen to her. And now they're separated. At the same time, Diana is separated from her mother and doesn't know if she's ever going to see her again. How do these different-yet-similar experiences shape them in such different ways?

Wilson:  What we're seeing in these past few issues is that the loss of her homeland and mother has started to really fray Wonder Woman. We've seen her get salty. We've seen her get crass. We're seeing the way that those stresses play out in someone like Wonder Woman, and I think that highlights some of the similarities between her and Veronica. Whether that is something that will occur to either remains to be seen.

They may be too eager to see each other as enemies than as people going through very similar life experiences. Will they respond in different ways, or is this the thing that will make Wonder Woman finally show her vulnerability? Will she finally get to the point where she's too pissed off and tired?

Her first instinct seems to be to help, whether it's with Cheetah or Ares or Veronica Cale, and there's gotta be a breaking point.

Wilson: One wonders. Is that breaking point right now? Is it possible to always stand by our highest beliefs at a time when we are at our lowest?

I think that's as much a question for Wonder Woman as it is for any of us when we are facing the incredibly challenging situations, we have to figure out if we really believe what we think we believe.

Right. Diana hasn't been able to return home for some time. She is essentially a refugee. There's so much uncertainty about her situation. How do you see her moving moving forward, or where does she go from here?

Wilson:  I think she's really starting to question how this redefines her mission. Before, even though she couldn't go back to her home, it was still very much part of her mission statement. She was really pulling on her heritage, her training, her pride in who she was and where she came from in doing her job here on Earth.

With all that gone, she has to ask: Who am I now? Who am I without all of those things? Who am I really when I say, 'I am Diana of Themyscira,'... because there is no Themyscira? So she has to ask herself some very tough questions about identity.

Wonder Woman #64 is written by G. Willow Wilson with art by Jesús Merino and covers by Rachel Dodson, Terry Dodson and a variant (featured in our cover image) by Stanley "Artgerm" Lau.