Asteria who?
Photo: Clay Enos / Warner Bros.
In the 1970s, the most captivating superhero theme song contained lyrics about someone wearing “satin pantyhose” and “fighting for their rights”. Strangely, neither Lynda Carter’s Gal Gadot’s retro-Amazon Warrior or incumbent Diana Prince has always made satin pantyhose a regular part of their outfits. However, if we are not mistaken, it is quite possible that Kristen Wigg’s villain Cheetah was waving leggings Close for that description in Wonder Woman 1984, a film in such a hurry to finish that it only goes through the title of the hashtag –WW84. Anyway, and regardless of who actually wore satin pantyhose (tragically no one?), There’s a good chance that at the end of WW84, at least a small percentage of people will be singing that old “satin pants” theme song to themselves again. And this is because the post-credit scene for WW84 it’s a giant shock of nostalgia from the 1970s.
Spoilers ahead for WW84.
Technically during a scene in the middle of the credits, after the story of WW84 apparently finished, we are introduced to a mysterious black-haired woman who saves a bunch of innocent people from a disaster apparently caused by the fall of a pole. At first we must think that this is Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, but soon the figure turns to the camera and tells everyone the opposite: her name is Asteria and “she has been doing this for a long time”. If you have basic knowledge of pop culture, you will recognize the actress behind Asteria. Surprise, it is the “original” Wonder Woman, actress Lynda Carter! The ironic joke here is simple: Wonder Woman OG has now been cast as the Asteria Warrior Amazon, which Diana told us at the beginning of the film, was the person who originally wore the golden suit of the resurrected pseudo-angel armor in WW84.
As a comic book character, Asteria is not exactly a classic deep cut. Regarding the history of DC comics, “Asteria” is a very new idea, at least in connection with the backstory that WW84 use to describe it. In the film, Diana tells Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) that Asteria sacrificed herself to save the rest of the Amazons from the terrible world of men. This mainly checks with a 2018/2019 reference to Asteria do Justice League comic series, specifically Justice League (Volume 4) # 11, in which Wonder Woman tells Aquaman something quite similar about the legend of Asteria.
That said, Asteria’s continuity from these contemporary comic strips is not exactly one by one with what we see in WW84. And that’s because looks like, when launching Lynda Carter, the movie is playing with the idea that this Asteria is half, half, another Wonder Woman.
In 1998, in a DC one-shot comic called The Best of Elseworld: Supergirl & Batgirl Vol 1.readers briefly met another Asteria, a person who appeared to be the analogue of Wonder Woman from a parallel Earth. In this dimension, Supergirl and Batgirl maintain essentially the same positions that Superman and Batman occupy in “our” world, but instead of Diana Prince, that world (Earth-1098) had Asteria. That means Lynda Carter will face Gal Gadot in the future Wonder Woman sequel and ask her what the hell happened to your nifty armor? Alternatively, Lynda Carter’s Asteria could tell Gal Gadot that she is a different Asteria of a parallel universe? Or, even more absurd, she is really an alien in disguise and a CW refugee Arrowverse Television programs?
If you feel taken aback by the latter, the problem is this: this is not the first time that Lynda Carter has been involved with DC live action comics. In addition to having a special participation Smallville in 2007, she also very recently starred as the President of the United States, Olivia Marsdin, in CW’s Supergirl. But in this series, his character was revealed as a shape-shifting alien named Durlan. If you think that the CW superhero programs do not run on the same continuity as the DCEU films, you are right. However, Ezra Miller’s Flash (from Justice League) crossed over and met Grant Gustin’s Flash in the CW’s big crossover maneuver, “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. If that can happen, is it an exaggeration to believe that Lynda Carter would do the same?
Any of these things will end up importing into a Wonder Woman sequel? Short answer: Probably not. Bringing Lynda Carter into a cameo was probably just a smart way to make all fans of the older generation feel happy and also to remind subscribers that, yes, the 1970s Wonder Woman, complete with that crazy theme song, is now being broadcast on HBO Max.