Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) is set to be the main villain of Wonder Woman 1984, and if his character is anything like the comics, his villainous plot could involve a mass mind-control scheme. While Barbara Minerva/Cheetah (Kristin Wiig) gets a lot of the setup, Lord is the type of character who can really give Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Gal Godot) problems that she’s going to struggle fighting her way out of.
The first Wonder Woman movie focused on Diana’s origin and her fight against Ares, the Greek god of war. Wonder Woman 1984 looks to be bringing her villains down in scale. Rather than World War I and a Greek god, she’s now fighting a corrupt businessman and a woman with cat powers. It’s a big shift, but that doesn’t mean that the scale of the threat or the story has gotten smaller.
Maxwell Lord’s big plan in Wonder Woman 1984 is a mystery, but it’s likely drawing from his comic roots, where he uses mind control as a powerful weapon. Sometimes he has good intentions, others he’s been an out and out villain, but the trailer strongly implies that he’s going to be the big bad of the movie while not saying exactly what he does to earn that title.
Maxwell Lord’s Role in Wonder Woman 1984
Lord’s exact role in Wonder Woman 1984 has been somewhat obscured in the marketing. The trailers haven’t tried to hide that he’s in the movie, but the exact role that he plays is a bit unclear. The first trailer focused on his part as a businessman, appearing on TV and promising to sell people things that can make their lives better. There are a couple more shots of him looking smug and vaguely villainous, but most of his role was left to implication.
It’s implied in the trailer that Lord is the one who brings Steve Trevor back to life, with Lord’s voiceover saying “Think about finally having everything you’ve always wanted” as Diana is looking up at a plane, thinking about Steve’s sacrifice, then Steve appears in the next shot. While bringing back Steve in itself might be what Diana wants, he’s not going to be doing it for purely altruistic reasons.
Actor Pedro Pascal has also given some insight into Lord’s part in the movie. Just like is shown in the trailer, he sells people their dreams and tells them that they should go to any lengths to get it, summarizing Lord’s main motivation as “f*cking greed”. There’s also a suggestion that Diana is immune to his charms, while Minerva isn’t.
Theory: Maxwell Lord Attempts To Brainwash People In Wonder Woman 2
Maxwell Lord’s role as an antagonist in the story is clear, but what is his big plan? Minerva gets more set up as the antagonist, but she could easily be just the secondary villain. She may even be working for Maxwell Lord, and the evidence for this actually comes from the official Lego set, showing Wonder Woman and Cheetah fighting near a giant satellite dish.
This satellite dish could be part of Lord’s plan, using it to brainwash and control people. This has actually been hinted at since the first trailer, where there’s a quick shot of the satellite dish seen right before showing Lord holding a mysterious crystal. This crystal could be a Chaos Shard, a powerful artifact from DC comics. Minerva has issues with self-esteem and is an archaeologist, making her the perfect target for Lord's manipulation to get his hands on the Chaos Shard. Those mind control powers could then be amplified or broadcast around the world with the help of the satellite.
The focus is on Lord because he’s well-known in the comics for using mind control. In the Invasion storyline, Lord becomes a metahuman and gains mind control powers that he mostly uses for good, helping the Justice League. He becomes more of a villain over time, at one point going as far as to mind control Superman, but that story will be more important later.
Why Maxwell Lord’s Villain Plan Would Fit With Wonder Woman 1984
As indicated in the title, Wonder Woman 1984 is very '80s. Back in the 1980s, the power of brainwashing was a real concern people had in America, though its roots went back to the 1950s. It came in many forms - some thought it was a tool used by the Soviet Union, others believed that consumerism was driven by brainwashing people into thinking that they needed to buy things - but regardless of the form, it was a big concern at the time. This would give the 1980s setting a strong reason: Lord is playing into the fears of the time. He’s already a prominent businessman that many would be suspicious of for that reason. Add in that he has some ability to control minds or brainwash people, and he’s many of the fears of the 1980s rolled into one.
He’s not just holding up a mirror to the 1980s setting, but also to the present. The comparisons between this movie’s version of Maxwell Lord and Donald Trump aren’t subtle, with similarities in appearance and prominence, not to mention the 1980s being the time when Trump first rose to prominence as a celebrity businessman. This version of Lord has a new addition that makes the comparison even more blatant: being a TV personality. This gives Maxwell Lord a resonance with the present as well, being just as relevant now as he is to the 1980s setting of the movie.
Bringing together his status as a TV personality and his brainwashing also points to why Lord is a villain for Wonder Woman specifically, rather than his usual status as being a villain for the Justice League in general. The best-known confrontation between Lord and Wonder Woman in the comics comes from Wonder Woman #219, where Lord has taken control of Superman’s mind and is making him go on a rampage. Diana binds Lord with her lasso, and he tells her the only way to stop this is for her to kill him. With little hesitation, Diana snaps Lord’s neck, establishing her as one of the DC heroes willing to kill in a situation that’s severe enough.
This becomes an issue in Infinite Crisis (written by Wonder Woman 1984 co-writer Geoff Johns), where footage of Diana killing Lord is broadcast all over the world, but with the context removed to make it look like Lord was innocent and Diana killed him for no good reason. If the story goes in this direction, where Diana has to kill him but it looks like she killed a well-known TV personality without justification, that’s a compelling story to use, whether that’s in Wonder Woman 1984, a future Wonder Woman movie, or a bigger crossover movie, although if it stays in continuity with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, she'd still be flying under the radar, mostly unknown to humanity.
