James Gunn’s New Plans for Wonder Woman and the Amazons Don’t Include Wonder Woman Yet

James Gunn’s DCU was announced over a year ago, we’ve been presented with a slate of movies & live-action TV shows that are supposed to be part of Chapter 1: Gods & Monsters, and ‘Paradise Lost’ is one of them.

Not much is known at the moment regarding the plot of ‘Paradise Lost.’ Peter Safran commented that this is a “Game of Thrones” type of story featuring a lot of drama and political intrigue. 

The show will be taking place on the island of Themyscira, home of the Amazons, which have close links to the gods. Themyscira is a society made up of only women, and while we have seen brief glimpses of the island in the previous movies related to Wonder Woman, the show now will focus solely on the island, bringing a much-needed high-fantasy element to the DCU. 

James Gunn commented that ‘Paradise Lost’ will be sort of an origin story for this mystical place and that the timeline is set long before Wonder Woman came to be.

“It’s an origin story of how this society of women came about. What does it mean? What are their politics like? What are their rules? Who’s in charge? What are the games that they play with each other to get to the top? I think it’s really exciting.” 

The show has a lot of potential to introduce us to the broader picture of Amazonian society and introduce a lot of significant characters related to Diana and her world.  

So, where does Wonder Woman in all of this come on? She doesn’t. James Gunn recently debunked Wonder Woman casting rumors, claiming that the actress to portray the role hasn’t been cast yet.

This is nothing unusual, however, as only a few big roles have been filled in the first place. Batman hasn’t been cast yet, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be part of the DCU. Since the show ‘Paradise Lost’ takes place long before Wonder Woman came to be, there’s no need to cast Wonder Woman.

But, what Gunn did confirm is that Gal Gadot obviously won’t return to the DCU.

‘Paradise Lost’ is presumably built upon a previously announced spin-off movie that never came to fruition.

In December 2019, it was announced that the spin-off movie in the Wonder Woman universe is in development. The project sounded similar to the freshly announced ‘Paradise Lost ‘series in the sense that it was supposed to deal with the island of Themyscira and that the focus would be on the Amazons rather than on Wonder Woman.

The project involved the state of the island after Wonder Woman leaves, following the timeline between ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ and the unreleased ‘Wonder Woman’ movie that never saw the light of day. A lot has happened since then, Patty Jenkins was removed from the directing position. ‘Wonder Woman 3’ was also canceled.

‘Paradise Lost’ is a third attempt at creating a spin-off for the Wonder Woman movie, and while it doesn’t deal with Diana herself, it has a lot of potential to bring more magic, intrigue, and fantasy to the freshly restarted DCU.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!