Warning: This article contains spoilers for Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Following its complete overhaul by new co-CEOs of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, the current composition of the DC Universe is muddled and confusing. The upcoming The Flash movie is set to course-correct the whole universe by giving it a fresh start, so there’s really no telling what the future holds for original members of the Justice League, including Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman.
As it stands, we’ve seen the powerful Amazon warrior princess in five films (six if you include Zack Snyder’s Justice League), and she is set to make an appearance in The Flash alongside Batfleck, aka Ben Affleck’s Batman. From what we’ve learned throughout those outings, Woman Woman is not a god but a demi-god, i.e. a being with partial divine status.
Wonder Woman is the superhero alias given to Princess Diana of Themyscira. Diana’s lineage is incredibly powerful – her mother is Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, and her father is Zeus, the King of the Old Gods. Albeit inspired by Greek and Roman mythology, the Amazons and the Old Gods have a specific history in the DC Universe (or the DC Extended Universe as it was known until the recent changes in command).
Amazons are superhuman warriors created by Zeus to protect the human world, who possess superhuman strength, superhuman beauty, and superhuman intelligence. As an Old God, Zeus is an immortal, nearly invulnerable all-powerful being who can manipulate magic and thunder. It’s easy to understand, then, why, as the offspring of both, Diana is one of the most powerful superheroes in the DC universe, second only to Superman.
This history comes into play in the film where Diana is last seen, Shazam! Fury of the Gods. In it, Billy, aka Shazam, is challenged by the daughters of Atlas, himself a Titan. In DC lore, Titans are the parents of the Old Gods and Atlas is the original source of Shazam’s powers.
This background is important in explaining Wonder Woman’s cameo in Fury of the Gods, because she uses her powers to resurrect Billy at the end of the film. Although Diana has mastered and developed her powers to the point of being able to kill an Old God like Ares, as happens in the first Wonder Woman film, and now being able to bring someone back from the dead, Wonder Woman is not a god. But as demigods go, she might be the closest to it there is.
In the comics, Diana does become the God of War at one point by killing Ares, but for the most part, she is, indeed, an Amazon-Old God hybrid demigod, and the same can be said of her iterations in Warner Bros.’ live-action adaptations.
