As one of the “Big Three” members of the Justice League, Wonder Woman has displayed a plethora of powers in the DCEU, but her movie appearances have only scratched the surface of her well of abilities from the comics. As a storied character with a long history, Wonder Woman has had many strange powers over the years. Between the multiple iterations of the main timeline of the DC Comics, her origin has consistently changed the most out of the staple Justice League founders. As such, her powers are surprisingly varied.
Throughout Wonder Woman’s appearances in the DCEU, directors have shown off the character’s surprising amount of versatility. Appearing in 2017’s Justice League, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Flash, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods as well as her own two films, Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984, Diana Prince is separated from Superman nicely by having a wider range of abilities beyond just flight and super strength. Still, not every power she’s exhibited from the comics made the transition to the big screen, and with the DCEU wrapping up, it’s more pertinent than ever to take a look through her wider catalog of powers to see what could be in store for James Gunn’s new version of Wonder Woman.
In Wonder Woman’s origin in the mainline DC Comics following the Crisis On Infinite Earths storyline, Diana’s very beginnings are magical in nature. Sculpted from clay, Wonder Woman is blessed at birth by several deities in Greek mythology, granting her a wide array of supernatural gifts passed down straight from the gods themselves. This included Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who gave Wonder Woman “The Eye of the Hunter” and unity with all beasts.
What this translated into was the ability for Wonder Woman to speak to animals. Rarely using this ability, it was especially jarring when it did come up, Wonder Woman often surprising her compatriots with her kinship with woodland creatures. This ability was likely axed in the DCEU due to its possible overlap with Aquaman’s ability to communicate with sea creatures, a murky area of overlap that could cause some confusion with Diana’s fellow Justice League member.
Another goddess to bless Wonder Woman upon her inception was Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home. Hestia’s power is channeled through the Lasso of Truth, used heavily in the DCEU. But the blessing of Hestia came with another, more defensive element, being total immunity to fire and flame.
Not only shielding Diana against harm from conventional fires, the divine protection even extends to supernatural flame, having protected her from the supernatural fires of Ares. Though Ares in the DCEU is shown to be able to generate heat strong enough to melt magical metal artifacts such as Wonder Woman’s sword, God Killer, he doesn’t really use giant plumes of flame as an attack. That could be reason enough for this power not to come up in the DCEU, keeping Wonder Woman that little bit more mortal in the realm of the film series.
Between flight, super speed, and the invisible jet, Wonder Woman has no shortage of ways to get around. Yet in the comics, she has been even more mobile, rarely showing off her ability to teleport. The exact mechanics of this ability have varied over the years, sometimes requiring Diana to utilize a sort of rope trick with her Lasso of Truth to create a portal through which she and others can travel. But in earlier appearances, Wonder Woman is able to simply warp to another location with so much as a thought.
The comics themselves rarely showcased this power, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t appear in Wonder Woman’s more recent film appearances in the DCEU. It would be difficult to create a high-stakes story for Wonder Woman to take on that wouldn’t be broken by the ability to simply appear anywhere. Not only that, it would make the Invisible Jet even more obsolete, despite being a much more fun visual for audiences to enjoy.