Chris Pine Knew He’d Be Back For Wonder Woman 1984 While Shooting The First One

Chris Pine as Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman 1984

Steve Trevor appropriately made his theatrical debut last year in Wonder Woman, but his time was Diana of Themyscira was short, as Chris Pine's incarnation of the character sacrificed his life for the greater good. Or so we thought. As announced this past June, the DC Extended Universe's Steve will be back for Wonder Woman 1984, and according to Pine, this is something that director Patty Jenkins was planning to do even when the first Wonder Woman movie was shooting. When asked how surprised he was to learn he'd be appearing in Wonder Woman 1984, Pine responded:

Not all that surprised. Patty had told me this idea somewhere in the middle of the first one. And when Patty gets an idea, it's a pretty powerful thing 'cause you can see the kernel land in the dirt and then all of a sudden it just starts growing and become a tree. You know? She could make you do anything.

A few weeks after Wonder Woman was released, DC heavy hitter Geoff Johns revealed that he was already writing a sequel treatment with Patty Jenkins, and Wonder Woman 1984 (as it would eventually be titled) was officially announced at San Diego Comic-Con the following month. But even when Jenkins was in the middle of making Wonder Woman (presumably in the spring of 2016), she was already formulating a plan to bring Steve Trevor back from the dead.

So when Wonder Woman 1984 was given the green light, Chris Pine wasn't surprised when Patty Jenkins called him back into action, as he noted during his BBC Radio 1 interview. Jenkins confirmed Pine's return on social media, but there's still no hint of how Steve is still alive given that we last saw him detonating the plane carrying Doctor Poison's gas while he was still aboard. Was he somehow saved from the explosion itself and has made it to the 1980s without aging for some reason, or did he indeed die and is resurrected during Wonder Woman 1984? We're still a long way from having this mystery solved.

Of course, we know that Diana and Steve Trevor's story still can't end in happiness. In Justice League, she talked about Steve as if he's been dead a long time. This was hardly a shocker for those who'd watched Wonder Woman beforehand, but even taking into account the events of Wonder Woman 1984 and how Steve will be active there, that's still more than a three decade gap between the upcoming sequel and Justice League.

Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see how Steve Trevor finds his way back into Diana's life in Wonder Woman 1984, though that won't be the only crazy thing to happen to the Amazon warrior. She'll also have to tangle with Barbara Ann Minerva, a.k.a. The Cheetah, and presumably there will be other magical/mythical goings-on in the sequel.

Originally scheduled to come out on November 1, 2019, Wonder Woman 1984 was recently pushed back to June 5, 2020. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for continuing coverage on how the sequel is coming along, and in the meantime, you can browse through our DC movies guide to learn what else this superhero franchise has in development.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.