Wonder Woman’s Final Fate Has Been Revealed (But Will She Really Die?)

Wonder Woman is in a really good place right now. Absolute Wonder Woman is a brilliant book, the most critically acclaimed of the Absolute books, and Wonder Woman has two A-list creators — Tom King and Daniel Sampere — on it. King’s Wonder Woman is quite divisive, but the latest issue is so far getting praise from multiple corners of the Internet. Wonder Woman #19 is the end of the initial Sovereign story, taking the entire story full circle and reminding readers of one of the missing plot points. It also reveals a shocking moment — the death of Diana in a thing that the issue calls the “Wonder War”. Everything in the last 19 issues has led to this moment.

King and Sampere’s Wonder Woman began in the future, with Wonder Woman’s daughter Trinity going to the Sovereign to ask how Wonder Woman had defeated him. Issue 19 brings us back to that point, as the Sovereign is able to figure out the real reason that Trinity came — to learn how the dagger that Wonder Woman used in her defeat of the Sovereign ended up in her chest with the crest of the King of the United States on it after a massive battle that also killed the Wonder Girls. This brings up a lot of interesting questions and idea, but the biggest question that readers have is the most obvious — will this dark future stick?

Is the Wonder War Inevitable?

So, to understand how we’re supposed to get to the Wonder War, a little bit has to explained about King and Sampere’s run. The run started with with an Amazon named Emelie killing a bar full of men. Through the run, readers learned that she was an Amazon defeated by Wonder Woman to win the contest that brought Diana to Man’s World. At some point since the attack, she got pregnant, possibly with the Sovereign’s child, and the baby is born in issue 19. That baby was named Lyssa, after the god of war, and Emelie said she was a curse. At some point in the future, Lyssa will lead a war against Wonder Woman and the Amazons, one that will end with her killing Wonder Woman, along with the deaths of Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark, and Yara Flor.

Now, obviously, DC is never going to actually kill Wonder Woman and if they do, it won’t be in such a seemingly final way. Donna Troy, at least, is also too important to die. Cassie and Yara actually can die, since neither of them are any other books right now nor do they have as much importance to the DC Universe as Diana and Donna. However, there will almost certainly be a Wonder War. The Sovereign’s story is definitely going in that direction, as it looks like at some point in the intervening years, Lyssa decides to either take revenge for the Sovereign’s defeat or is going to Themyscira to free him.

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Trinity’s actions, trying to find out about what happened between the Sovereign and Wonder Woman, as well as many of the Trinity back ups do give readers a clue to how this story is going to end up. The Wonder War is going to happen. It is going to kill Wonder Woman. However, Trinity is learning about this for a reason. Anyone who has read the Trinity back-ups knows that she has a lot of experience with time travel. Trinity has learned the consequences of messing things up in the past, and the work that has to be done to fix them. However, one can look at all the times she’s traveled back in time as her learning how to affect the future with time traveling. Trinity, at the point she is in the framing device of King and Sampere’s run, is an experienced time traveler and she’s learning all of this so that she can go back in time to tell her mother how to survive the Wonder War.

This makes all the time travel shenanigans of the Trinity back-ups, and her upcoming limited series which also promises time travel, make sense. The clues have always been there. For example, in Trinity’s first appearance, the King and Sampere created back-up story in Wonder Woman #800, she was with Damian Wayne and Jon Kent. The three of them had had many time travels adventures by this point, plus their fathers are the ones with time travel technology. Looking back, it’s easy to see that King has been setting all of this up from the beginning.

Wonder Woman is Dead, Long Live Wonder Woman

Many comics start out in the future. Flashbacks are a common part of comics, so King and Sampere’s run being told completely in flashback wasn’t that unique. Wonder Woman #19’s introduction of the Wonder War and the death of the Wonder Family makes the whole situation much more interesting. It adds an extra dimension to the story, and it also gives readers who were paying attention a clue as to where the story is going to go in the months to come.

Wonder Woman is a major DC hero, so there’s no way any death of hers is going to stick, so obviously that’s not going to happen. This isn’t the 5G DC Universe that we would have gotten if Dan DiDio would have stuck around. However, looking at the clues given by the book, we’re still going to get a great story, as King and Sampere build up the Wonder War right in front of our eyes.