Shazam! Fury of the Gods is now in theaters (you can check out our review here), and if you're not online very much and managed to avoid a recent TV spot, you may have been surprised to see a certain DCEU character show up towards the end of the movie.
Spoilers ahead.
Though her involvement had pretty much been confirmed via tie-in merchandise, anyway, the teaser in question blatantly spoiled a fairly significant cameo from Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, who shows up after the final battle to resurrect (you didn't think he'd stay dead, did you?) Billy Batson after he makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the city.
While speaking to THR, director David F. Sandberg admitted that he was "surprised" by the decision to show Diana in the spot.
"I was just getting back from the press tour, and I got a text, asking, “Hey, why spoil Wonder Woman?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” So I didn’t know, and they did apologize for not keeping me in the loop. But I understand why they did it, because they wanted to get people to see the movie. So, of course, I understand, but it’s a shame because these days, the only audiences who get to see these movies as intended are test audiences. When they saw the movie, they didn’t know Rachel Zegler’s character was a goddess, for example. For them, it was actually a twist that worked, but then, once marketing started, you have to show her in her goddess clothes and that whole thing is out of the bag. So no one is really going to be surprised that she’s a goddess undercover in a school."
Prior to Gadot's appearance being confirmed, we had heard that the sequel would feature a "fake Wonder Woman," who turned out to be part of a dream sequence with Batson imagining himself on a date with the stunning Justice Leaguer.
The Wizard then infiltrates the dream, and we see Djimon Hounsou's face superimposed into model Taylor Cahill's body.
So, was Gadot always going to be part of the movie?
"Right from the start and from the first script. She was always supposed to be in it, but I didn’t believe it was going to happen because of what happened on the first movie where we had to do a headless Superman cameo," recalls Sandberg. "I thought that was going to happen here, too. So I started to think, “Okay, when she can’t do it or when it falls apart, how do we bring Shazam back to life? Will we have to bring Helen Mirren’s character, Hespera, back? What are we going to do?” But then it actually did happen, which was great, because then we could poke fun at the headless cameo of the first movie, with the Wizard dream sequence and things like that. But we never could have done that if we didn’t actually have Gal at the end because people would’ve been furious."
What did you make of Wonder Woman's appearance? Was it spoiled for you beforehand? Drop us a comment down below.