Wonder Woman 1984's Dreamstone conjures up giant walls, sports cars and a herd of cows, but leaves behind a few plot holes along the way. Diana's latest DCEU adventure begins with Maxwell Lord attempting to seize the Dreamstone, seducing Kristen Wiig's Barbara Minerva to get his hands on this seemingly worthless rock. Unbeknownst to the soon-to-be Cheetah, the Dreamstone is capable of granting even the wildest of wishes, and Max spends his on becoming one with the artifact. This allows Lord to personally grant the wants and desires of others but, just as the Dreamstone would, he takes a little something in return.
Reaction to Wonder Woman 1984 has been divisive - surprising, since the original 2017 effort was unanimously praised. The sequel has been criticized for being too long, misjudging its tone, and rehashing stereotypical tropes. However, Wonder Woman 1984 is also guilty of plot holes that are all but impossible to ignore. Predictably, many of these involve the Dreamstone and the rules that govern Maxwell Lord's ability to grant wishes.
Wonder Woman 1984 is rooted firmly in fantasy and, obviously, the very concept of a divine stone that can generate office staff out of thin air is stretching reality. The 1980s vibe and light-hearted emphasis also suggest that Patty Jenkins probably didn't intend Wonder Woman 1984 to be a film that audiences would think too hard about. Nevertheless, the mechanics of the Dreamstone invite some unanswered questions. Here are the inconsistencies we wish Wonder Woman 1984 had addressed.
Barbara Gets Two Wishes
The rules of the Dreamstone are relatively straightforward. Everyone gets one wish by making contact with the stone and stating their desire; in exchange, something precious to them will be seized. Barbara Minerva manages to buck this trend, receiving two wishes in Wonder Woman 1984. Barbara's first request is to become more like Diana in terms of strength, confidence and popularity, and she wishes for this unwittingly, not realizing the true power of the artifact. When Barbara and Maxwell Lord unite ahead of Wonder Woman 1984's final battle, the part-time cryptozoologist is protecting her oil magnate boyfriend while he embarks on a wish-granting spree using the US government's satellite infrastructure. To help protect himself, Lord gives Barb a second power-up thanks a loophole in the Dreamstone's rulebook. Instead of Barbara personally wishing for more power, Lord takes qualities of strength, prowess and rage as payment for wishes made by random unseen strangers and passes them onto Barbara.
This is a real stretch of what the Dreamstone is capable of. Instead of taking something in exchange for granting a wish, Lord can apparently elect another person to receive those benefits. This contradicts a moment earlier in Wonder Woman 1984 when Lord warns his son, Alistair, not to waste his only wish. Why make such a fuss if this loophole exists?
Conflicting Wishes
All while Maxwell Lord is granting the desires of his close personal friends, the Dreamstone is unlikely to contradict itself, but what happens when he hooks up to the world at large and two wishes inevitably contradict each other? Among the various vain pipe dreams provided by Lord in Wonder Woman 1984, someone undoubtedly would've wished to be the richest person in the world, but when another punter rolls up to the Dreamstone booth and asks for exactly the same thing, who gets priority? The most likely solution is that the Dreamstone operates on a "first come, first served" basis - a wish will remain active unless directly superseded by another. Alas, this is mere speculation, as Wonder Woman 1984 only shows wishes that fit neatly alongside the others.
Steve Returns In Someone Else's Body
The Dreamstone appears capable of anything in Wonder Woman 1984, but the wishes use ingredients that already exist, rather than conjuring end products out of thin air. For instance, the wish of Maxwell Lord's secretary for "more staff" is answered by people who are hunting for jobs and mysteriously find themselves in the Black Gold office. The wish doesn't simply whip up a workforce from nothing. This perhaps explains why Diana's wish for Steve to return results in the WWI veteran waking up in the body of a man who already exists in 1984. However, the Dreamstone isn't consistent in this regard, and does poof stuff into existence when no other option is available, such as the giant wall in Egypt, and Reagan's extra nukes, suggesting the stone could have resurrected Steve in his full, original glory, but instead decided to pay homage to 1980s body swap movies.
The manner of Steve's revival also raises another interesting point. Assuming Diana wasn't the only person who wished a loved one back to life, there could've been a whole host of souls walking around in unfamiliar bodies during Wonder Woman 1984. While not necessarily a plot hole, the idea that Steve Trevor wasn't the only confused afterlife returnee is a complication Wonder Woman 1984 deliberately avoids.
Why Aren't Some Wishes Already Renounced?
In the climax of Wonder Woman 1984, Diana wraps her Lasso of Truth around Maxwell Lord's leg and communicates with the entire world, imploring everyone to renounce their wishes and undo the evil lies created by the Dreamstone. The ploy works, and order is restored. Diana herself, however, let go of her own wish much earlier in the film, after realizing that the presence of Steve Trevor was sapping her Amazonian power, so, why didn't other disgruntled Dreamstone customers also get their money back before the final battle? The renouncement montage includes folks such as the Irishman who told someone to drop dead, and the Egyptian businessman who wished for a massive wall - people who surely would've renounced their wishes sooner. Perhaps everyone must utter "I renounce my wish" verbatim in order to get their refund, but at no point does Diana explain this to the world's population.
Remember That Time?
Chronologically, Wonder Woman 1984 takes place prior to both Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, released in 2016 and 2017 respectively. With different filmmakers releasing DCEU movies out of sequence, it's little wonder that inconsistencies have arisen - why doesn't Diana use her golden armor, flight powers, or invisibility magic in the 2010s, for example. It's also uncanny that through all the DCEU movies set after 1984, no one ever mentions that one time everything went wild and a wish-granting oil tycoon almost triggered World War III. In real life, this is obviously because the events of Wonder Woman 1984 hadn't been conceived five years ago when Diana first debuted alongside Bruce and Clark, but looking at the DCEU's in-universe timeline, it's certainly strange that this major event has never been referenced, especially by an inquisitive detective type such as Bruce Wayne.
Why Does Granting Wishes Hurt Maxwell Lord?
With each wish Maxwell Lord makes a reality, his physical health takes a hit and, like any other gambler, he tries to dig himself out of trouble by granting more wishes. Exactly why Lord's body decays is never properly explored in Wonder Woman 1984. Since the businessman himself is the Dreamstone, surely granting wishes should have no detrimental effect - just as it wouldn't to the stone in its original form. While there's no explicit reasoning for Lord's frail condition, it's possible that health was his sacrifice in exchange for merging with the Dreamstone. Alternatively, perhaps the human body simply can't handle the power of a divine object, even if the object itself made the fusion happen. Whatever the mechanics behind the gradual fall of Maxwell Lord might be, his bloodshot eyes and queasy expression are intended as a visual metaphor for absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Does The Stone Still Exist?
The end of Wonder Woman 1984 leaves many loose ends, including "is Maxwell Lord arrested?" and "does Cheetah retain her powers?" but another important unresolved plot point is the fate of the Dreamstone itself. After a stern telling-off from Wonder Woman and a fatherhood revelation, Maxwell Lord renounces his wish and is no longer the human incarnation of the Dreamstone. It's not clear whether the Dreamstone then ceases to be after Lord's renouncement, or whether the artifact merely separates from its human host and goes back to being a regular rock. If it's the latter, someone really should find that troublesome relic before another villain comes along and does even more damage.
What Gets Undone And What Doesn't?
After Diana addresses the world and everyone renounces their wishes, the products of Maxwell Lord's greed evaporate - the wall in Egypt, Reagan's nukes, etc. The mass renouncement also appears to undo the consequences of the Dreamstone's power, but only to a limited extent. The best example is the missile squabble between Russia and the US. The President uses Lord's power to gain more nukes, and Russia responds by firing on her Cold War opponents, causing the Americans to counter-strike. After Wonder Woman's plea, the President is shown renouncing his wish, and the missiles created by the Dreamstone begin to disappear, which makes perfect sense. But what of the Russian missiles that presumably weren't a product of the Dreamstone at all? These weapons seem to vanish too, which suggests renouncing a Dreamstone wish will also undo whatever came about as a result. But when Maxwell Lord arrives back in Washington to find his son, the ground is still covered in the debris of his chaos which, as a consequence of the wishes, would've been cleared up. Evidently, Wonder Woman 1984's Dreamstone is happy to erase nukes, but draws the line at picking up litter.
