Is Wonder Woman's main villain directly tied into the chaos of Batman v Superman? It's no secret that Dawn of Justice will kick-start Warner Bros.' massive DC Comics universe. This epic adventure will set up Justice League Part 1 (November 11, 2017) and Justice League Part 2 (June 14, 2019), along with a number of stand alone movies featuring Suicide Squad (August 5, 2016), Wonder Woman (June 23, 2017), The Flash (March 23, 2018), Aquaman (July 27, 2018), Shazam! (April 5, 2019), Cyborg (April 3, 2020) and Green Lantern Corps. (June 19, 2020). While we wait for more official images and footage from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a new report from Heroic Hollywood sheds light on Wonder Woman's place in the story. If this latest rumor is true, it adds more evidence to the possibility that her standalone movie is a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Back in September, it was rumored that Sean Bean and Eva Green were being eyed to play the main villains Ares and Circe, respectively. While the actors' involvement has yet to be confirmed, Ares and Circe have been mentioned in numerous reports and are believed to be at the forefront of the action in Wonder Woman, with one report claiming Circe manipulates the government into starting "World War 3." Today's rumor claims that Ares, the God of War, is in possession of a mystical blade that he stole from the Amazons. This blade would make him the most powerful God on Mount Olympus, but it's locked, so he tries to start World War 3 in order to activate it. Ares draws his power from "malevolent psychic energy," which would certainly be bountiful if World War 3 were to happen, which he intends to use to unlock the blade and take over Olympus. This report also claims that the sword disappears after the climactic battle in Wonder Woman, which is reportedly what Diana is looking for in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

While none of these details have been authenticated by the studio yet, this report certainly does explain how Wonder Woman may be a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It isn't known how large a role she may have in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and it's possible that Wonder Woman's quest for this blade may even carry over into Justice League Part 1 and Justice League Part 2. Unlike Marvel, which released several stand alone movies before all of those characters came together in Marvel's The Avengers, DC is taking a different approach. While speaking with Collider, producer Charles Roven spoke about how Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will help set up the stand alone DC Comics movies.

"The...thing that I really love about what we're doing is we're also bringing in really talented other filmmakers and having them come in and create-I call it the sandbox. We've got this sandbox of the Justice League DC characters, and we are hoping to create-this series of movies that we've announced are somewhat interlinked. The characters move at a throughline that hopefully will take us all the way to Justice League 2 , but they also can interact in the other films as well in some way. So if, for example, The Flash movie or the Aquaman film is gonna come out after Justice League 1, it's not gonna be a completely different character; that character will have evolved from Justice League 1. Wonder Woman, when we see her in Justice League 1, will have evolved from Batman v Superman. Unless we decide that in one of these stories we're gonna do something that happened in the past and have it be more of an origination story, in which case you'll realize how that character became what they were in the movie that they were first introduced."

The producer's statement doesn't exactly confirm that Wonder Woman may actually be a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, though it does seem he's hinting at it. While unconfirmed at the moment, rumors have swirled that the Wonder Woman movie will take place in three different time periods and settings, which all span 100 years. If this rumor proves to be true, one of the settings is Diana Prince's home island of Themyscira, although an exact time period wasn't divulged for this setting. The second time period is in the year 1916, in the middle of World War I, and the third will be in present day, tying in to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League Part 1, the latter of which hits theaters five months after Wonder Woman. What do you think of these new details?