Greg Berlanti’s next DC project in development at The CW will be Wonder Girl — but it will not be Donna Troy (Conor Leslie), the version of the character seen on Titans. Instead, the series will star the relatively new character of Yara Flor, daughter of an Amazonian warrior and a Brazilian river god. The newly-created character will be the Wonder Woman of DC’s upcoming Future State event in the comics, which time-jumps its universe forward to see a new and more diverse DC Universe led by new versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and other key heroes. It launches in January.
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Queen of the South executive producer/co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez will write the pilot, which will be produced by Berlanti Productions. Berlanti is the studio behind all of The CW’s other DC shows, including The Flash, Stargirl, Black Lightning, Batwoman, and more.
Black Lightning took the first Black superhero family to the small screen, while Batwoman marked the first LGBTQ+ woman to head up her own show. It seems like The CW is hoping that the breadth and popularity of their multiverse of DC shows will give them an opportunity to elevate underrepresented voices while managing their risk.
Per Deadline, who broke the story, Yara Flor will not just be appearing as Wonder Woman in Future State but will get her own series by Catwoman and Ladykiller writer/artist Joelle Jones soon. Jones provided some concept art for the series, which you can see above.
There are relatively few Latinx characters in the Arrowverse who get a lot of screentime. The biggest names are Cisco Ramon from The Flash (Carlos Valdes) and Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog from Arrow (Rick Gonzalez).
There is no indication in this initial announcement whether Yara Flor’s story will be part of the shared Arrowverse continuity or not. If so, it may acknowledge the third season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, when the Legends sent Helen of Troy to live on Themyscira, and she later returned in Amazonian armor to help them battle a demon.
Popular DC TV series have started to seep their way into the main line comics in recent years, with the return of the long-unused Firestorm supporting character Felicity Smoak as well as the instroduction of Ryan Wilder, the new Batwoman, in a recent issue of Batgirl. Such a quick turnaround on the Ryan Wilder and Yara Flor stories likely signals an increased back-and-forth between the film/TV side of DC and the comics side, in spite of numerous painful layoffs on the comics side in recent months.
In addition to Wonder Girl, The CW reportedly just asked Black Lightning to make a backdoor pilot episode for a prospective Painkiller spinoff.
Rodriguez will continue to run Queen of the South, but her overall deal with Touchstone TV reportedly expired earlier this year, freeing her up to pursue projects with other studios.
