The first great DCEU movie, at least according to critics, has arrived in the form ofWonder Woman. There are a great many reasons that the vast majority of fans and critics are really digging director Patty Jenkins' entry into themodern world of superhero movies, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the movie isn’t overly concerned with setting up other movies. It more or less is its own thing. But that’s not to say some Easter eggs weren’t squeezed in there. One possible Easter egg fromWonder Womancould actually be hinting at the arrival of a pretty major villain from DC Comics in a future DCEU movie.
Warning: minor spoilers ahead forWonder Woman. Now, this hasn’t been confirmed by anyone at Warner Bros. or anyone who worked on the movie, but a very plausible fan theory has popped up onReddit, as they often do, suggesting that the movie actually could be hinting at the arrival ofBane. Yes, the very same Bane who one day breaks Batman’s back in the comics. So, how do we get to Bane fromWonder Woman? Here’s how Redditor Uncrowded_zebra explains it.
“During this movie, as a red herring of sorts, we see Dr. Maru giving Ludenhorff an inhalant that appears to make him stronger including right before his fight with Wonder Woman. There is very little good reason for these scenes, other than to poorly misdirect the viewer, and there could have been better ways of doing so than by cryptic, unexplained chemical inhalant. Which lead me to suspect that the chemist has developed and is supplying Ludenhorff with an early version of the drug which will later be known in the DC universe as Venom. As Dr. Maru survives the film it seems feasible that she, or her research might still be active in Germany during WW2 and that following that war many Nazi party members fled Europe. It is a reasonable leap from there that some of them may have sought shelter in the corrupt island nation of Santa Prisca (birthplace of Bane) and brought with them the secrets of the drug.”
Alright, so let’s assume that theory is even partially correct. The gas featured inWonder Woman, even to a morecasual DC Comics fan, does sound pretty similar to the Venom that turns Bane into Bane. And this would be a pretty good way to introduce that concept into the DCEU without it feeling all that shoehorned. Plus, Bane has a lot more good grace with fans since Tom Hardy portrayed him inThe Dark Knight Rises. For years following his on-screen debut inBatman & Robin, most people wrote him off as a useless, corny bad guy, which isn’t really the case in the comics. So it seems likely that he’ll show up in one of these movies at some point.Suicide Squad 2?The Batman?Nightwing? There are plenty of options.
For what it’s worth, and it probably isn’t worth all that much, a recent post from 4chan suggested that Bane was being considered as a villain forSuicide Squad 2. So there’s that to consider. If nothing else, this is a pretty clever fan theory. But it could also be a clever way to set something up rather unintrusively for the future of the DCEU. Unlike theemail scene in Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was about as heavy-handed as something like that can be. Just don’t be too surprised if we see Bane show up in the future and have it call back toWonder Womanin some way.
