Hero Worship: Solving Wonder Woman's TV Dilemma

I doubt it comes as a surprise that I’m a huge Wonder Woman fan. She’s my second favorite female superhero character (second only to Catwoman) and has a fluctuating standing in my overall top 5. My apartment displays more pieces of Wonder Woman art than anything else, including furniture. Visually, there’s a certain majesty to her character that no other hero in the DC Universe can match and I adore it.

Yesterday, there was news of former Wonder Woman scribe (and successful TV writer) Allan Heinberg writing a pilot for a potential new CW show called Amazon, centered around a younger Diana, who is described as “a budding superhero.” First and foremost, let me point out that my thoughts are 100% conjecture. Amazon is merely a script at this point, with no promise of making it any further. But I think the fact that it’s called Amazon is a clear indication that this show has intentions of being entirely different from its clear predecessor, Smallville. It implies a fantasy series; one in which I imagine part of the character’s journey would be learning about the unfamiliar world of man and trying to understand it.

Way back when NBC passed on David E. Kelley’s ill-conceived Wonder Woman pilot in early 2011, I wrote a feature (one of my first for IGN, actually) called The Trouble With Wonder Woman, all about the many difficulties involved in bringing the character to live action. In it, one of the problems I point to is Wonder Woman’s homeland of Themyscira (Paradise Island) and how to effectively deal with exploring those concepts on-screen. Wonder Woman and her fellow Amazons certainly hold no shortage of mythology, so what’s the best way to deal with that in a digestible manner?

I say embrace it wholeheartedly. Since I wrote that piece, we’ve had Thor prove that a similar sort of amalgam mythology can be managed well on-screen. If Thor can manage it all in two hours, surely an hour long weekly TV show could do it even better. Let’s not forget that the fantasy genre is doing pretty well for itself on TV at the moment with shows like Game of Thrones or, more appropriate for the CW audience, Once Upon a Time and Grimm. There’s no reason CW couldn’t celebrate Wonder Woman’s fantastical origins and make it the underpinning of the show.

Amazon could incorporate the politics of Themyscira, betrayal amongst Amazons, conflicts with the gods, conflicts with the world of man, and so much more. Diana’s journey of growing up in such an environment, learning who she is, the nature of her birth, and dealing with her desire to see the world beyond Themyscira are all solid, interesting threads to explore. Of course, the show runners could still manage to find a way to incorporate classic Wonder Woman baddies like Cheetah, Giganta, and Doctor Psycho in new and different ways.

There’s a larger issue of the network no doubt necessitating the presence of male characters, which a show set entirely on Themyscira would essentially prohibit. Unless… the pilot ends with Steve Trevor crash landing on the island, as per the classic Wonder Woman origin, with the first season exploring his time amongst these apparent goddesses and learning about their culture. Meanwhile, perhaps, the military is looking into his disappearance and coming ever closer to discovering Paradise Island.

This would also establish a sort of forbidden romance between Diana and Steve (remember, “young Diana” doesn’t necessarily mean “early teen Diana”), which could ultimately be stretched out in further seasons once Steve has to return home and they’re separated. There’s plenty of ways that this material is malleable, which really is part of the beauty of the superhero myths.

An added bonus to taking this approach to Amazon would be added context to the Justice League movie. With that film bringing together the DCU’s premier super team with a limited amount of origin stuff involved, movie goers perhaps unfamiliar with Wonder Woman can turn to Amazon for insight into Wonder Woman’s origin. Even if Amazon and the (eventual) DC movie universe aren’t related, the rather ambiguous time period (“early!”) makes it an acceptable point of reference for the origins of the character.

After the failure of the last version of TV Wonder Woman – which was a downright silly departure for the character – it’s doubtful that Heinberg would aim to change things up all that much, not to mention CW’s apparent full-steam ahead approach to incorporating many DCU elements to the upcoming Arrow. As the superhero genre continues to achieve new and unprecedented success in various mediums, I think we’ll start seeing networks embrace the nature of these characters more fully rather than shy away from the more fantastic elements.

Hopefully, as a result, Diana can finally make her live-action return.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter, or find him on IGN. He loves superhero pets so hard.

Source : ign[dot]com