The DC Extended Universe has often lacked the tight cohesion and history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some of this stems from its most recent movies trying to distance themselves from controversial films, such as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, or outright failures, like Justice League. In the case of the former, one question raised by the film was how the world's superhuman population stayed so under wraps before Superman's appearance. Given what the first trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 has shown off, this deserves even more scrutiny. Not only is the character's arsenal different from what she uses in the future, but she's much more out in the open. Given these contradictory elements, could the film possibly be retconning, or even outright ignoring, the other films in the DCEU?

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Laying Down Arms

Wonder Woman is already poised to not wield the sword and shield from her previous movie appearances, relying only on her innate superhuman abilities and Lasso of Truth. Where she uses these gifts are most notable, however. Diana is shown operating out in the open, and not just on the battlefield, like before. Instead, the trailer has her fighting criminals in a fairly packed 1980s mall, and she is later seen racing through the streets in broad daylight. While in the mall, she can be seen using her tiara like a boomerang to destroy security cameras, in an arguably in-vain attempt to still diminish knowledge of her existence. Still, would this be enough for the public to not know about Wonder Woman? Better yet, doesn't this create obvious discrepancies with what we know of her DCEU future?

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Dark Future

Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice

Wonder Woman was shown using both her sword and her shield in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which of course comes after Wonder Woman 1984 chronologically. Given the grave threat in that film posed by Doomsday, who anyone watching the news would've suspected as being related to the strange phenomena surrounding the crashed Kryptonian vessel, it makes sense that Diana would pull out all of the stops and her entire arsenal to face the monster head-on.

This issue is relatively minute, however, compared to the pure logistics of no one knowing who Wonder Woman is in the present day. In Dawn of Justice, photographic evidence of her (which is from her first adventure in World War 1) is a relatively esoteric artifact in Lex Luthor's possession, with even Batman questioning who she is. She is apparently unknown by name to the world at large, lacking even the urban legend presence that Batman has by the events of Dawn of Justice. How is all of this possible if she was operating so blatantly and openly in the '80s?

In Batman's case, he operates at night, stuck to Gotham City, and lacks any spectacular powers. Wonder Woman, however, employs her miraculous strength, speed and lasso in the daytime in the streets and shopping centers of at least Washington, D.C.. This makes her being even just an urban legend or rumor that much harder to believe, especially given the aforementioned surveillance cameras. Surely Diana doesn't take out every one of them whereever she goes, so people in the D.C. area at least would have some idea of who she is and what she can do.

This contradicts Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice, in which Superman is really the only widely known public metahuman. That photo from WW1 couldn't be the only surviving evidence of Wonder Woman if she was so active during this era, or any era before Superman's first appearance. This could be retconning the history of the DCEU, so that Superman's appearance was only special in that Superman was blatantly an alien. Given the DCEU's current model of being less focused on continuity and a shared universe, Wonder Woman 1984 may even be ignoring those future movies entirely to tell its own story. Given that Wonder Woman's character and first film are some of the more universally praised aspects of the DCEU so far, it might be wise to anchor the universe to her narrative more so than the previous mixed to poor entries.

Directed by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984 stars Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Kristen Wiig as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah, Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord and Natasha Rothwell. The film opens on June 5, 2020.

KEEP READING: Wonder Woman 1984: Gal Gadot Teases How Diana Meets Maxwell Lord