It took over 75 years for Wonder Woman to get her own live-action movie, with that milestone finally being reached on in summer 2017. The movie followed Gal Gadot’s Diana of Themyscira, whom we met the year prior in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, taking her first steps into the outside world in 1918, the final year of World War I. The prequel’s third act saw Diana facing off against Ares, the Greek god of war, but as it turns out, there was a version of this conflict where the superheroine was aided in a unique way by key supporting character Etta Candy.
This reveal comes to us from Welcome to Derry co-creator Jason Fuchs, who wrote an early draft of Wonder Woman and received a ‘Story By’ credit for the movie with Zack Snyder and screenwriter Allan Heinberg. While speaking with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, Fuchs started off talking about how he originally envisioned the Diana vs. Ares clash:
The thing I most wish we'd done in the film is in that third act when the final battle is going on between Diana and Ares, and obviously the fate of World War I hangs in the balance, there was a version of the third act I had written. I was trying to find a way to involve regular human women in the success, and not just Diana, who is, of course, the Themysciran and has powers.
Ok, I’m tracking so far. After all, it was revealed in Wonder Woman that Diana was actually the “god-killer” herself rather than the sword she’d been carrying with her because she was the daughter of Zeus. Between that and not giving into her rage over Steve Trevor’s death by killing Doctor Maru, she was able to redirect the lightning Ares was shooting at her and destroy him. So then how did Etta, played by Lucy Davis, fit into all this? Fuchs, who also wrote a scrapped Lobo movie, continued:
And there was a version where because the war has restarted, there was a draft where both the high commands were sort of in trains, which was based on the real history of it, and they're both saying to their respective commands back home the war's back on. There's fighting, there's explosions, the armistice is off. And the male generals are telling their assistants, Etta Candy on one side of it and other telegram operators on the other side who are all female, telegram back the war’s back on.
World War I ended on November 11, 1918, nearly four and a half years after it began, and the armistice was extended three times until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. However, in this version of events, the war would have nearly started back up had it not been for Etta Candy’s timely intervention with women from both sides of the conflict. Jason Fuchs explained:
And Etta Candy cooperated with the German women to both sabotage the telegram systems, knowing that Diana just needed 10 more minutes, 12 more minutes, to defeat Ares, and then the armistice could hold. And so there was a great extra scene where you saw the way Diana inspired these women to help save the day in that moment that I really loved that beat. There was no time to shoot it, it just didn't ultimately practically work in the final context of the movie, but that was that was a pretty cool beat I wish we could have preserved.
It sounds like in this version of Wonder Woman, Ares’ power would have been more contingent on World War I continuing, meaning he’d be even stronger so long as mankind kept fighting amongst itself across the globe But with Etta Candy and these other women preventing the announcement of the broken armistice, that gave Diana just the right amount of time needed to vanquish her adversary. This sounds like it would have been cool to see, but I also understand why it was decided not to include this sequence in the final cut given everything else that was already going on.
Jason Fuchs also mentioned in the interview how an even earlier version of Wonder Woman was set during the Crimean War and would have seen the title protagonist meeting Florence Nightingale before the Charge of the Light Brigade. There was also a draft where Kalibak, the eldest son of Darkseid, was going to appear in a post-credits sequence, which no doubt would have played into the Justice League saga that Zack Snyder was planning. You can revisit the Wonder Woman we did get, along with Gal Gadot’s other DCEU appearances, with an HBO Max subscription.
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