Warning: The following may contain spoilers for Justice League and Wonder Woman 2
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Wonder Woman's success was a big deal for the DC Extended Universe (for lack of a better name). While the shared universe wasn't exactly lacking in passionate fans after 3 critically divisive outings, it was important to land a win where everyone could unequivocally agree that the movie was a critical and financial success. Almost the second the film hit the big screen, the conversation quickly changed from "Will Wonder Woman be good?" to "When will there be a sequel?"
Fortunately, it didn't take long for that question to be answered, as Geoff Johns confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that he was already writing the script for the next one, and a few days later it was given a release date in December of 2019. Initially, there was a debate over when Wonder Woman 2 would take place. Should it occur after the events of Justice League, or could it be another historical piece? Screen Rant was the first to break the story that the sequel would be set during the 1980's as Diana participated in some covert action during the Cold War. The Wrap was quick to verify the story, just leaving fans to wonder where Wonder Woman fits into the events of the Cold War?
It's a seemingly difficult situation because the setting presents a set of requirements that put significant limitations on the story. There's still plenty to explore, of course, but an alternate history set during a time as critical as the Cold War means the scope of the story needs to be small enough so as to not introduce continuity issues in the DCEU, yet big enough to make for an exciting story worthy of following her battle against Ares.
Well, thanks to the trailers for Justice League, we might finally have our answer about how the story could do all those things and still be a thrilling sequel.
How Justice League Could Reveal Wonder Woman 2's Plot
The Justice League trailers appear to be mostly spoiler free, avoiding a full-on Superman reveal or a 3rd act reveal anywhere as significant as Batman v Superman's marketing reveal of Doomsday, but we've still seen enough in trailers and marketing images to piece together a few set pieces, with one of the biggest reveals being the apparent confirmation that the heavily featured battled with the red skies/mist may take place in the ruins of Chernobyl. We've seen several landmarks that match up with the former Soviet nuclear site, a promotional photo from Empire showed the iconic Ferris wheel on a monitor in the Batcave, and the most recent trailer explicitly showed parademons swarming out of a nuclear silo.
Exactly what Steppenwolf wants at the site is unclear, but with some sort of growth covering much of the area, he may be utilizing the radiation for a particular purpose. Whether radiation is rejuvenating for Apokoliptans, it has some connection to the Mother Boxes, or he just wanted a hideout in an abandoned nuclear site isn't readily apparent, but regardless, the choice of Chernobyl could be a major hat tip to the plot of Wonder Woman 2.
In the same way that the first Wonder Woman provided a slightly alternate history to the end of World War I (and Captain America: The First Avenger for World War II), Wonder Woman 2 could be providing an alternate history of the Cold War, particularly the Chernobyl disaster. The fact that Chernobyl was both a nuclear disaster and behind the borders of Soviet Russia during the Cold War means there's some discussion around the "true" story of what happened, as the existence of several popular Chernobyl conspiracy theories shows.
Of course, as many may want to point out, the DCEU isn't supposed to be that connected. Wonder Woman 2 having a connection to Justice League like that seems to go completely against what many people expect of the universe right now, but it's important to understand the kind of connective tissue the DCEU will see in the future. Where the MCU movies so far have revolved around a mostly central throughline involving the Infinity Stones, culminating in Avengers: Infinity War, the DCEU is going to have all characters involved in their own completely stand-alone stories, but those stories will still take place in the same DCEU tapestry. So, the cumulative story of all the individual movies in the universe may not tell a larger singular story, but, as Geoff Johns says, it's still "100% connected."
So, how could Chernobyl tie Justice League and Wonder Woman together?
How Wonder Woman 2 Could Connect to Chernobyl
The official Chernobyl story happens on April 26th, 1986. During a scheduled safety test in which the nuclear power station's power was shut off to simulate blackout conditions, a chain reaction caused by a number of quality control issues in the station's construction resulted in a steam explosion triggering a graphite fire. The fire burned for nine days, sending radioactive materials into the air before the reactor was eventually sealed behind a concrete barrier.
A 10-kilometer exclusion zone was established and nearly 50,000 people were evacuated from the area - a number that would grow to a total of 350,000 in the ensuing years. To this day, much of the area remains evacuated, although parts of the facility were still active and there are still some people living there. The interesting thing is that many of the initial evacuees would have been safer if they stayed put, and many of the later evacuees were actually leaving for other reasons - often political. Naturally, the poor (sometimes suspicious) handling of the evacuation, clean up, and recovery efforts have led to a number of conspiracy theories that the whole incident was just a cover-up for something else entirely, and that's where the plot of Wonder Woman 2 might step in.
Steppenwolf taking an interest in Chernobyl in Justice League suggests there's something special about the location. Chernobyl is not the only nuclear site in the world, so maybe it sits on top of something more important like a sleeping parademon army stashed there following the flashback scenes in Justice League, or maybe something far less overt. Steppenwolf would obviously be a problematic villain to also appear in Wonder Woman, but she could definitely face off against the Female Furies of Apokolips, who she's faced before in the comics. If they're concocting a plan involving the Chernobyl site and Wonder Woman infiltrates to attempt to prevent it, the catastrophe could be the result, having Wonder Woman succeeding in stopping a bigger plot, yet failing to prevent a disaster. This kind of tragic event would also be a compelling reason for her to put down her sword for a few decades.
The clear danger here is that Chernobyl was a real-world disaster that potentially resulted in the death of as many as four thousand people over the years due to radiation exposure and caused the permanent displacement of hundreds of families. This is an area both Justice League and Wonder Woman 2, should it incorporate Chernobyl, will want to tread lightly, and probably the reason Avengers: Age of Ultron chose us a fictional country like Sokovia for its mass destruction. It's obviously a risky proposition and could be in bad taste to suggest that a comic book villain was the true culprit in such a devastating real-life event, but the first Wonder Woman already did something similar putting Ares and Doctor Poison behind the chemical warfare of WWI, which was also a real thing that was devastating to real people, so if this is the route Wonder Woman 2 goes, we can only hope Patty Jenkins and Geoff Johns handle it in an equally sensitive way that uses the event to tell a story as full of heart as the World War I setting did for the first Wonder Woman.
Whether something along these lines is planned or not remains to be seen, but the fact that Wonder Woman 2 and Justice League tell stories that come so close to overlapping in this way definitely gives the appearance of some level of intentionality. At the end of the day, if this is Chernobyl connection actually exists, it's doubtful it will be done in any fashion that makes Wonder Woman 2 appear to be a mere Justice League prequel. Diana has earned her place at the forefront of the DCEU, and any Justice League connections, be it this or otherwise, are going to take a back seat to furthering her character and her story.
