How Wonder Woman 1984 Sets Up Zack Snyder's Justice League

Wonder Woman 1984 is now playing in theaters where available as well as streaming on HBO Max and while the film has audiences split in terms of reception, no one can deny that it's sparked a lot of conversation not only about the film itself but it's place in the greater world of DC Films. That universe is a vastly different place since the first Wonder Woman was released in 2017 as what was once something of an all roads lead to Justice League type of plan has since become a much more independent situation as DC Films leans into the concept of the Multiverse. Still, with Zack Snyder's Justice League finally coming to fruition on HBO Max in March 2021, it's worth asking the question: how does Wonder Woman 1984 set up the so-called Snyder Cut?

The reality is that Wonder Woman 1984 doesn't really set anything up for Zack Snyder's Justice League and the reason for that is that it is the first Wonder Woman film that had the direct ties to Justice League. As fans will recall, Wonder Woman was released in June 2017 ahead of Justice League's November 2017 release and even within the Wonder Woman film there were direct ties to the DCEU. The first film even opened in present-day Paris with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) receiving a photographic plate of an image of herself from World War I from Bruce Wayne and ends with Diana emailing Bruce to thank him for the photo. These things established the continued relationship between Bruce and Diana, building on events from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which was released in 2016.

The connection there makes sense. At the time, Snyder was very much the architect of the DCEU with the director having expansive plans for how the interconnected world would play out. He also came up with the story for Wonder Woman along with Allan Heinberg and Jason Fuchs, with Heinberg ultimately writing the screenplay. Principal photography was completed on the film in May 2016 and reshoots took place in November of that same year meaning that Wonder Woman was largely "finished" well before Snyder stepped away from Justice League's post-production in May 2017. Any connection to Justice League was contained in Wonder Woman.

By the time development on Wonder Woman 1984 began, Snyder had already departed Justice League and Joss Whedon had come on board to finish the film. In June 2017, Geoff Johns told Variety that he and director Patty Jenkins were already at work on a second film script noting that they had a "cool idea for the second one." Warner Bros. officially announced that a sequel, with Jenkins returning to direct, was announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2017. It wasn't reported until December 2017 that Justice League would be Snyder's last DC film as a director.

Even with the timing of things, however, it wouldn't be impossible to consider that there could be connections between Zack Snyder's Justice League and Wonder Woman 1984. After all, Snyder did do reshoots and additional scenes for the upcoming film series' release but given that Gadot herself has said that she wasn't part of those reshoots, it seems unlikely that any adjustments or connective threads were put in place between Wonder Woman 1984 and Zack Snyder's Justice League.

If anything, fans are more likely to see connections between Zack Snyder's Justice League and the newly-confirmed Wonder Woman 3. Generally, Justice League is set in the present which is where the third Wonder Woman movie will be set after the heroine's adventures in 1918 and 1984 respectively.

"I wouldn't go, like, to the '60s or to the '40s with Wonder Woman," Gadot recently told MTV News. "I feel like the past has been handled well, and now it's time to move on."

As for Snyder's larger vision for the live-action DC Films universe, even if there are some ties between Zack Snyder's Justice League and the future Wonder Woman 3, fans shouldn't expect Wonder Woman 3 to carry Snyder's vision forward. In a recent New York Times profile of DC Films head Walter Hamada, it was revealed that there are no plans for follow-ups to the world Snyder created.

"At least for now, Mr. Snyder is not part of the new DC Films blueprint, with studio executives describing his HBO Max project as a storytelling cul-de-sac — a street that leads to nowhere," the Times' Brooks Barnes writes.

Starring Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Pine, Wonder Woman 1984 is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.