Batman and Superman have pretty straightforward origin stories (dead parents and a dead planet, respectively), but Wonder Woman is a little more complicated. Over the years, she’s had a couple different backstories in the comics, but actor Chris Pine seemed to confirm which one the upcoming Wonder Woman movie’s going to use by revealing who Diana’s father is.
Spoilers, maybe, for Wonder Woman but definitely for a 5-year-old comic are below.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the movie (and its proudly feminist leanings), Pine talked about improvising on set with actress Gal Gadot.
“She has to be the straight woman, that’s the harder part,” Pine explained, before letting a Maury-like spoiler slip. “She’s delivering lines like ‘My father is Zeus.’ That is just so ridiculous. And she has to say it with a straight face, with a certain amount of innocence and earnestness. I get to react like any human being would to hearing something as ridiculous as that. So I had [it] easy.”
Wonder Woman's mother Queen Hippolyta sucking face with Zeus.
Prior to the 2011 reboot of the DC comics universe (known as the New 52), Wonder Woman had no father. Rather, her mother, Queen Hippolyta, formed a baby out of clay, and the gods breathed life into it. However, the reboot changed this. Instead of being a clay baby, Diana was actually the product of a passionate, illicit affair between the Queen of the Amazons and Zeus, the god at the head of the Greek pantheon and ruler of Olympus. This change made Wonder Woman a demi-god, which lead to some pretty fun comic storylines where she had to deal with her extended family members, like Hades, Ares, and Apollo.
In the trailers for the movie, Wonder Woman doesn’t seem to know about her secret heritage, the truth of which was initially kept from her in the comics, too. “I had no father,” she tells Pine’s Steve Trevor. “I was brought to life by Zeus.”
Which is, uh, kind of accurate, but it was thanks to some godly coitus, not mere divine intervention.
Wonder Woman hits theaters on June 2. Early buzz is very good.
