Wonder Woman: We Think We Know Who This Villain Is

May we present Doctor Poison.

By Proce MacDougal

A new Wonder Woman trailer hit today (check it out below), and while it’s full of Themyscirian action and Gal Gadot greatness, we couldn’t help but notice that we still don’t really know who the bad guy is in the film. Sure, there’s the war -- the War to End All Wars, no less! -- but who specifically is Princess Diana gonna be beating the heck out of in the final act of Wonder Woman?

Well, eagle-eyed viewers (who may or may not be wearing golden-eagle chest plates) no doubt noticed the probably-evil lady in the trailer who’s wearing a half-mask on her face. She’s pretty clearly a bad guy, and it’s now looking like she’s a character from Wonder Woman’s past known as Doctor Poison.

We glimpsed her (played by Elena Anaya) in the first Comic-Con trailer from a few months back, but now this new preview also features her playing around with chemical weapons (like we said, this is the War to End All Wars), which not surprisingly also happens to be Doctor Poison’s strong suit.

The character debuted in 1942 in Sensation Comics #2 with a story called "The Menace of Doctor Poison." Created by Wonder Woman mastermind William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter, her real identity was Princess Maru, and she was a scientist working for the Nazis who worked up a drug called Reverso which, uh, made soldiers do the reverse of what they were ordered to do. So she maybe wasn’t as scary as the deadly gas glimpsed in the new trailer, but hey -- it was a simpler time.

Oddly enough, Doctor Poison was depicted as a man in her original appearance before Wonder Woman ripped off her smock-like disguise to reveal her true gender. Doctor Poison is… a woman! “Your delicate hands betrayed you,” shouts Wonder Woman at her foe. (Surely there was some underlying William Moulton Marston gender theory at work in that denouement, but that discussion is best saved for another time.)

Doctor Poison only showed up for a handful of appearances in those early days, but her granddaughter would arrive on the scene decades later with equally dastardly intentions. And a New 52 rebooted version also took to the printed page with the less obvious name of Doctor Maru earlier this year. The classic masked, green tunic-sporting version can also be glimpsed tending bar in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Of course, even if this does wind up being Doctor Poison/Maru in the film, she’s likely a subordinate to the real villain: the German officer played by Danny Huston. Some fans think there’s more to him than being a simple human soldier, but only time will tell if that’s correct.

Wonder Woman opens on June 2, 2017.

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