Gal Gadot is still Wonder Woman, according to Gal Gadot

The future of DC’s cinematic universe is still pretty unclear, despite James Gunn and Peter Safran being brought on board to right the ship. It’s not their fault they got stuck with the last dregs of the studio’s previous strategy, or that their new boss was tax break-happy. But they do get to decide how they’re moving forward, and that’s where things get murky—just look at Gal Gadot and Wonder Woman.

The new Superman casting would indicate that the studio is going ahead with a full reset for the Big Three. Except Gadot, at least, is pretty sure she’s still cinema’s Diana Prince. “I love portraying Wonder Woman,” she says in a new interview with Comicbook.com (conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike). “It’s so close to and dear to my heart. From what I heard from James and from Peter is that we’re gonna develop a Wonder Woman 3 together.”

This comes after Patty Jenkins, director of the first two Wonder Woman movies, exited the project in the wake of Gunn and Safran’s hiring. “I never walked away,” Jenkins shared in a post to Twitter last year. “I was open to considering anything asked of me. It was my understanding there was nothing I could do to move anything forward at this time. DC is obviously buried in changes they are having to make, so I understand these decisions are difficult right now.”

Gunn and Safran have made big changes—the Superman: Legacy casting is indicative of that, and there will likely be another new Batman, too—but that’s why keeping Gadot around would be so confusing. Starting fresh with only two out of the three biggest heroes on its roster ties this new era to the old one in what would seem like an unwelcome reminder of the tumultuous old regime. Even in the event Gadot’s Wonder Woman is considered an “Elseworlds” character now (the same umbrella under which Robert Pattinson’s The Batman now falls), having multiple theatrical versions of a character would only dilute its effectiveness and surely contribute to the dreaded superhero fatigue.

It’s understandable why Warner Bros. would want to keep Gadot in the mix. WW84 notwithstanding, her solo outing was one of the few unadulterated hits of the “Snyderverse” era. Her take on Diana is beloved enough that she’s been brought in to boost some of those last dregs of the old DC, with cameos in Shazam: Fury Of The Gods and The Flash. (Obviously, Wonder Woman was not powerful enough to save either of those two films.) Perhaps the studio wants to give Gadot’s Diana a proper send off, but keeping her on the roster isn’t a great sign for getting this reset off the ground.