Fanfic / Avenger Goddess

Avenger Goddess by Reyel is a crossover between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Wonder Woman (2017) (later adding at least some elements of the X-Men Film Series into the plot), transplanting Wonder Woman and some of her direct unique adversaries into the MCU. The storyline starts with a "flash-forward" to the final battle against Ares, and then goes on to both look at how Wonder Woman bonded with the Howling Commandos in the Second World War and some notable events that happened to her in the early nineties before the Avengers start to come together in the latter half of the early 2000s.

The author has also written Avenger of Steel, a story that serves as a Spiritual Antithesis to this one as it adds Superman of Man of Steel to another version of the MCU, and Avenger Knight, which features a version of Batman based on a blend of media adaptations, including the comics, the animated shows, and the Arkham games series.

Can also be read on AO3. The story is currently dormant, having not been updated since November 18th, 2021.

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Avenger Goddess provides examples of:

Tropes A-D

• Accidental Aiming Skills: In chapter 24, Tony kills a Grootslang—a giant creature that is half-elephant and half-snake—by dropping a diamond stalagtite on it in such a manner that the elephant and snake halves are cleanly separated.
• Action Girl: When the story-line features Wonder Woman it would be surprising if this didn't apply, but Peggy gets her moments, and Natalia takes an extra level of badass when she is essentially adopted by Diana as a child, becoming the leader of a S.H.I.E.L.D. team known as "the Amazons" consisting of her former "classmates" in the Red Room.
• Actor Allusion: It's more of a direct reference to the character's comic storyline, but Happy Hogan's reflection on his boxing career can also be seen as a reference to Jon Favreau's character arc as Pete Becker in Friends, as both attempted a career as a professional fighter only to find that they actually weren't that good at it (with the exception that Happy accepted that he wasn't good at it and moved on where Pete refused to give up despite taking numerous painful beatings).
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Wong shows up during the events of Iron Man 2, bringing an antidote to heal Tony's palladium poisoning at Diana's request.
• Affably Evil: The Skull and Paula von Gunther each make an attempt at this to win Diana to their side, although they always make their military intentions plain and Diana swiftly rejects their offer to join them.
• Age Lift:
  • Basically; while some adaptations of Spider-Man state that Ben Parker fought in the Second World War, this would make him too old to match the May Parker seen in the MCU, so instead his and Richard's father fought in the war.
  • As a more developed example, Thor and his immediate family are described as being older than they were in the MCU to give him a more explicit heroic history, such as allowing him to have actively taken part in Odin's war with the Frost Giants.
• The Ageless: While most races that are at the Physical God level are not completely ageless, having to use tricks like the Odinsleep or similar hibernation states to retain/regain their youth and power, the Olympians, due to their progenitor Chronos being a past user of the Time Stone, do not age after physically maturing at all.
• All Myths Are True: Diana explains as such to Tony, though she also makes it clear that many details have been warped or invented over the centuries.
• Almighty Mom: Beyond her potential position of Team Mom to the Avengers, Diana has also become the inspiration for "the Amazons", former students of the Red Room who are now a special division of S.H.I.E.L.D. led by Natalia and loyal to Diana's example above all else.
• Alternate Universe: Wonder Woman and a number of DC elements closely related to her exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a result, events play out much differently than they did in the original MCU canon:
  • Diana is introduced to man's world by Steve Rogers instead of Steve Trevor, and fights in World War II instead of World War I.
  • Steve and Peggy never develop a romantic relationship, with the former instead falling for Diana.
  • HYDRA makes use of other magical artifacts in WWII besides the Tesseract, using them to enhance their weaponry and create super-soldiers to fight in their armies.
  • Mutants exist, with Wolverine and a child Magneto joining the Howling Commandos in WWII.
  • The Howling Commandos visit Wakanda and help ward off a HYDRA attack led by Fritz Klau; in the original MCU, Wakanda never involved itself in WWII.
  • Diana was the one who allowed Mar-Vell to research the Tesseract.
  • Diana took the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. and hid it away on Themyscira after the events of Captain Marvel.
  • Howard Stark's death was orchestrated by Paula von Gunther, though the Winter Soldier still carried out the act.
  • Natasha is recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. as a child by Diana instead of as an adult by Hawkeye.
  • Obadiah Stane and the Ten Rings are being manipulated by Circe, who also aids Loki in his schemes during the events of Thor.
  • Obadiah Stane is apprehended before he can steal Tony's arc reactor, and is subsequently used by Circe and Raza as a power source for the Iron Monger armor rather than using it himself.
  • Raza survives Stane's attack and serves as the final villain of the Iron Man arc.
  • Diana is the first person that Fury approaches for the Avengers Initiative instead of Tony.
  • The Weapon X program that gave Wolverine his adamantium claws was one of many illegal attempts to recreate and/or perfect Erskine's super soldier project.
  • Thanks to Diana's meddling, Bruce is hiding out in Alaska instead of Rio de Janeiro during the events of The Incredible Hulk.
  • Diana and Wong use magic to help Tony and give him enough time to cure Tony's palladium poisoning.
• Amazon Brigade: Besides the Amazons themselves, there's the AMAZON Unit of S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Natasha and made up of girls rescued from the Red Room.
• Anachronic Order: The story initially focused on Wonder Woman's first meeting with Steve Rogers in 1944 and her subsequent role in the Second World War, but certain chapters also look at her life in the early nineties after Howard Stark's death as she hunts for the Winter Soldier and essentially adopts the future Black Widow. After the 1990s events have concluded, the fic's secondary story "jumps" to Diana's peripheral role in the events that led to Tony taking his first steps to becoming Iron Man, followed by her role in the week that saw Tony create his new element, Thor arriving on Earth, and Bruce Banner's battle with Emil Blonsky.
• An Arm and a Leg: In battle with Paula von Gunther, who has acquired the Gauntlets of Atlas and other supernatural weapons, Diana defeats her by cutting off both her arms at the elbow.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Quite a few people call Howard in particular out on this, as he is willing to accept the reality of Schmidt's advanced weaponry but still tries to find a scientific explanation for the Amazons' abilities despite Diana's insistence that it's magic.
  • Defied for Raza; after witnessing chi and other supernatural beings through his association with the Ten Rings, he has no problem accepting that Circe is who she claims to be.
• Arch-Enemy: Circe is shaping herself up to be this to not just Diana but to many of the future Avengers, as she is responsible for all of the major developments that have occurred in the 2010s segment of the story, including Obadiah Stane and Raza's campaign against Tony and Loki's release of Herakles.
• The Archmage: As in canon, the Ancient One, who is powerful enough that Diana, herself a skilled warrior and Physical God, is wary about the odds of victory with trying to drag her back to Earth to help cure Tony.
• Arc Villain:
  • Ares and the Red Skull function as the Big Bad Duumvirate of the 1940s section of the story.
  • Circe is shaping up to be this for the 2010s portion of the story, as she has been both directly and indirectly involved in all of the key incidences leading up to the events of The Avengers.
• Arc Welding: Diana reveals that the Ten Rings draw their name and origins from a set of magic rings stolen from K'un L'un by the founders of the Hand when they were exiled.
• Ascended Extra: From the perspective of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents such as Sitwell, Diana basically serves as one when she is given command of the investigation into Mjölnir.
• Badass Adorable: After Diana captures/rescues Natalia during the Red Room's initial assassination attempt, she muses that the small assassin is actually adorable even as she's yelling angrily at Diana; Natalia uses this to her advantage during a later trip to Disneyland when she confronts a group of terrorists wearing a borrowed Captain America costume.
• Badass Normal: The Howling Commandos and Peggy Carter might only be human, but they continue to fight alongside Captain America, Wonder Woman, and James Howlett as the war escalates.
• Batman Gambit: Apparently Circe's entire plan with the Djinn was for it to lure Diana to a primary temple of Lilith so that Diana would basically do the hard work of breaking the seals that stopped Circe claiming that power for herself.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: It's noted that when Djinn grant wishes, they provide what they're asked, not what the wisher needs. This is particularly directly acknowledged by Tony when Raza's wish for "the power to kill a god" is granted by turning him into an explosive that was probably capable of killing a god, if Diana hadn't wrapped him in the Lasso and thrown him upwards out of harm's way before he could go off.
• Becoming the Mask: Based on the descriptions, this appears to apply to Ares and Sekhmet, who sank so far into their Domains that they are now defined by War and Wrath rather than controlling these Domains themselves.
• Big Bad:
  • The WWII segments have The Red Skull, with Ares as a Greater-Scope Villain manipulating him.
  • Circe is the main villain in the 2010s timeframe, stealing the Grootslang egg, rescuing Raza and using him as a pawn to test Diana and so her Djinn will reveal the location of Lilith's Temple so Diana will use the Seal of Solomon to release the Djinn from Circe's servitude. She is also responsible for Loki releasing Herakles during Thor's exile in New Mexico, though she admits that particular bit was unintentional on her part and she does genuinely regret it.
• Blatant Lies: As far as Circe is concerned, Loki's claim that Odin is dead is one, as she would have sensed the dispersal of power if the Allfather had truly died.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • When initially taking Diana to London, Steve asks her to keep in mind that people are going to think she should be "protected" because she's a woman and she shouldn't resent them for it as they just don't know any better (while also assuring Diana that he recognizes her strength, citing examples such as Peggy Carter and his own mother as proof that he respects strong women in his life).
  • According to Diana, this is what makes the fae so dangerous, in addition to their magic; their sense of right and wrong, or punishment and reward, is utterly alien and nearly impossible for anyone else to understand.
  • Diana observes that this is the reason for the tale that Minos's wife Pasiphae was bewitched to fall in love with a bull and conceive the Minotaur as a punishment from Poseidon; in reality Pasiphae just had an affair with an existing minotaur, and Minos made up the tale of Poseidon's punishment because it was seen to be better to imply that she was compelled by a god than that his wife cheated on him through choice.
• Body Horror:
  • The Red Skull has created his own version of the Super Soldier Serum using the energy of the Tesseract that mutates its subjects into blue Hulk-esque monsters.
  • A lesser example in Auschwitz, as the only way for James Howlett to get a radio in with him was to hide a specially designed radio inside his own body that would shock him when the time comes for him to take it out and communicate with Peggy Carter.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Hinted at in chapter 24; Diana observes that Tony needs to learn some actual combat techniques so that he isn't purely reliant on the more obvious advantages of the armor in case he ever faces someone who can match the armour physically. Chapter 25 confirms that Tony has been receiving said lessons, and when Stane tries to take him out to gain the Arc Reactor, Stark demolishes Stane without even needing the armor.
• Brainy Brunette: Diana and Peggy qualify; by the 1990s, Diana has gathered a wide range of knowledge of ancient cultures and artifacts, and Peggy, despite approaching retirement, still has enough contacts to provide Diana with everything currently known about the Winter Soldier.
• Broken Bird: A lesser example of this in the 1990s story-line, as Diana felt that many of her allies in the Howling Commandos lost their way after Steve's death, such as with Howard's role in the Manhattan Project or Peggy condoning the plans to recruit Nazi scientists after the war ended. As a result, Diana withdrew from S.H.I.E.L.D. and her role as Wonder Woman after the war ended as she no longer knew if mankind was worth fighting for; it took the loss of Howard Stark, her last living "brother" from the war, to provoke her back into action.
• Broken Pedestal: Definitely Tony's reaction to learning that Stane tried to kill him before he shut down the weapons program, Tony spending a brief period basically trying to ignore it rather than consider that a man he thought of as a father wanted him dead.
• Bullet Catch: Diana demonstrates this when she, Howard and Peggy are attacked by HYDRA agents (with her bracelets).
• Busman's Holiday: Diana wonders why she always ends up finding a disaster on holidays when a trip to Disneyland with Natalia in 1992 reveals that the park's current Santa is part of a terrorist group attempting to provoke a new war.
• The Cameo: Just like in Iron Man 2, Elon Musk appears at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo in Monaco, where Tony is attending to watch the race at the Circuit de Monaco.
• Canon Welding:
  • As well as bringing Wonder Woman into the MCU, this fic also includes elements of the X-Men Film Series, starting when the Howling Commandos meet James Howlett and Eric Lensherr in Auschwitz.
  • It is stated that Chronos, the Titan who ruled Earth before the Greek Gods, gained his power through his command of the Time Stone, which was subsequently claimed by a mystic order after his defeat.
  • Diana makes reference to the Daywalker when discussing vampires.
  • The events of Iron Man 2 take place at the same time as Thor, The Incredible Hulk (2008) and X2: X-Men United.
• The Casanova: Tony had such a reputation with women before Afghanistan that he literally has a list of their names so that he won't hit on the same women over and over again.
• Cast from Lifespan: Invoked when the Iron Monger armor is modified so that Stane himself is the power source for it; after a few minutes inside the armor, Stane is reduced to a skeletal-looking version of himself, and even after he is removed from the armor it still keeps moving. Tony speculates it's trying to find a new "battery", and Diana mentions that something similar happened with the terracotta warriors of ancient China.
• Child Soldiers:
  • From a certain perspective; Eric Lensherr stays with the Howling Commandos after they rescue him from Auschwitz, but this is clearly stated to be because they recognise it would be dangerous to leave him anywhere else and risk him getting recaptured by HYDRA rather than because they want to use his powers.
  • The victims of the Red Room are a straight example, preteens brainwashed to such an extent they will kill or even suicide bomb on demand.
• Christmas Episode: Chapter 14 of the fic serves as this, alternating between Diana's first Christmas in 1944 with the Howling Commandos and a trip she took to Disneyland with Natalia in 1992.
• Clark Kent Outfit: As in the original film, Diana adopts glasses as part of a disguise during her first visit to London.
• Combat Pragmatist: When she is called out on her lack of honour in combat while fighting Temujin, the son of the Mandarin, Natasha muses that Diana has taught her that the goal of any battle should be victory at any cost, with rules only mattering in tournaments rather than genuine conflict.
• Composite Character:
  • Captain America has essentially become an amalgamation of himself and Steve Trevor, although they were both very similar anyway as soldiers dedicated to doing the right thing rather than making moral compromises, barring the obvious fact that Rogers has his super-soldier-enhanced physiology where Trevor was just very good at his job.
  • Due to both Marvel and DC owning different versions of the character, Herakles in this fic is an original character with traits borrowed from both iterations.
  • The Eternals are merged with the Titans/Olympians, due to Marvel having based the former on the latter to begin with.
• Contrived Coincidence: When Natasha and Logan's Quinjet they are using to go to Alaska gets shot and begins to fall, Erik Lensherr is there to save them and their plane.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Natasha's assignment as Tony's PA is intended to be this; Fury was annoyed to learn that Natasha was reporting to someone else the whole time she worked for him, but he can't actually be that angry as she was only reporting to Peggy Carter and Diana, both people Fury recognises he can trust.
• Crossover Relatives: Due to Zeus being merged with Zuras, Diana and Thanos are cousins.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In the 1990s storyline, Diana lives up to her "Godkiller" alias by tearing through the forces of anyone with any kind of connection to the Winter Soldier to try and find the assassin who killed her last living brother.
  • Tony destroys Vanko during the fight at the Stark Expo.
• Defector from Decadence: Captain Mar-Vell defected from the Kree Empire to help protect the Skrull refugees, coming to Earth to complete her work in secret.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: What Diana ends up doing for a very young Natasha, breaking her brainwashing and teaching her there is more to life than obedience to the Red Room and Madame B. That's not to say adult Natasha isn't as lethal as her canon self but she fights for a just cause and having been saved much earlier doesn't have the "red in her ledger".
• Deliberately Cute Child: Natasha uses this to her advantage in the 1990s story-line when she and Diana intercept a terrorist attack on Disneyland, and Diana keeps a photograph from that trip showing Natasha being hugged by Pluto as a demonstration of how Natasha wasn't always a badass.
• Demoted to Dragon: A good description of Stane, who goes from being the original Big Bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to just being a power source for the Iron Monger as part of Circe’s own long-term plot.
• Demoted to Extra: From a certain perspective, this applies to Stane; he is still responsible for Tony being captured by the Ten Rings and has made illegal sales of Stark weapons, but thanks to Diana's insight, Tony stops Stane before his former mentor can take the arc reactor from him and activate the Iron Monger suit, and even when the Iron Monger is used, he is only acting as a power source for it rather than using it independently.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In chapter 24, Diana attempts to use this to convince a Grootslang to stand down after it reveals that it attacked a nearby village only because the locals destroyed its last clutch of eggs, but the Grootslang will not be satisfied unless all humans are destroyed.
• The Dreaded:
  • Just the news that the Godkiller is interested in their activities is enough to ensure that most supernatural entities will start talking, and Ivan Vanko pauses in shock when Tony mentions Godkiller by name even though he believes she's just a legend.
  • On a wider scale, Earth has been declared "quarantined" by the wider universe ever since Ares' actions; initially those alien forces aware of Ares' nature were terrified at drawing his attention, and after Ares was defeated, those same forces are now terrified of drawing the attention of the thing that killed him.
• Drowning My Sorrows: As in canon, Tony spends his birthday party getting drunk to escape his fears about his potentially imminent death.
• Drunk with Power: Paula Von Gunther attempts to use Ares's Gauntlet to match Diana in battle, but the Gauntlet enhances power at the cost of sanity, which leads to Paula becoming so enraged that she loses her focus on the fight, allowing Diana to outmaneuver and defeat her.

Tropes E-G

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Indirectly; Diana witnessed a fight between Happy Hogan and Battlin' Jack Murdock in the early 1990s, and Happy mentions that Murdock was reportedly killed by the mob.
  • A pre-teen Peter Parker appears at the Stark Expo, and Tony gifts him a replica Iron Man helmet.
• Eldritch Abomination: Apep is presented as this, being described as massive enough to devour stars whole, having Complete Immortality (something even the gods lack), being powerful enough that only Ra (who is a Celestial) can match him in power, and being of unclear origins, with no one having any idea where he came from.
• Empathic Weapon: Mjölnir's status as this is referenced when Diana comes into its presence, as she can sense the hammer trying to encourage her to pick it up even if she chooses not to learn if she actually could use it.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • The Wakandans have no fear about giving Howard access to their technology, as they recognise that Howard would prefer to create his own inventions inspired by what he has seen and working to surpass Wakanda on his own, rather than try to steal anything to reverse-engineer it directly.
  • When Howard Stark first learns that the Kree Supreme Intelligence is an AI combining the minds of their greatest scientists and leaders that the Kree basically consider a god due to their own sense of superiority, he muses that if even he thinks something sounds arrogant, it's really arrogant.
  • Bierut may be an agent for the Soviet Union under Stalin, but he finds the Holocaust abhorrent.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • The Red Skull clearly demonstrates this when he initially learns of Diana's appearance in the war; despite the fact that she was clearly fighting alongside Captain America, Schmidt is certain that he can win this "goddess" to his side by offering her power, incapable of comprehending the idea that she might not want that.
  • Paula von Gunther is genuinely incapable of understanding why Wonder Woman would object to the death of Howard Stark, one of her last still-living allies from the Second World War and a man Diana considered a brother; Diana explicitly tells Paula that if she has to ask why Diana would care if a particular mortal died, no answer she can give would make Paula understand.
  • Ares makes it clear that he believes Diana will inevitably serve him as she is nothing but Zeus's weapon against him while he is the master of all weapons, unable to comprehend how her humanity will drive her to oppose him.
  • While Circe certainly understands that Diana cares for mortals, she doesn't seem to understand why, or just how much she cares, and seems to assume that Diana will stop caring as much once she chooses a Domain.
  • Circe assumes that Diana is only helping Thor in order to seduce him and lay claim to Asgard by means of a shared child. She's genuinely confused when Diana refutes this.
• Evil Former Friend: Flashbacks in chapter 23 confirm that Sekhmet and Bast were close when they first came to Wakanda before Sekhmet tried to lead Wakanda on a path of conquest.
• Expecting Someone Taller: When Thor first meets Diana, he says that he was expecting the Godkiller to be bigger.
• Eye Scream: In the Battle of Wakanda, James kills the commander of the Iron Cross Legion by stabbing him in the eye with his claws.
• The Fair Folk: Diana confirms to Tony that they exist, and are very much the traditional fearsome kind rather than the Disney version.
• Fallen Hero: Herakles is defined as this, as he was initially a true hero before he became corrupted by his power.
• Family of Choice: As well as her unconventional "family ties" to Tony and Natasha even before the Avengers form, Diana is officially considered an aunt by Sharon Carter, Peggy's niece, Sharon musing that when she was a child Peggy was her role model while Diana was the "fun aunt" who played with her.
• Fate Worse than Death: When Stane is used as an unwilling power source for the Iron Monger, he explicitly asks Tony to kill him rather than continue in that state.
• Fish out of Water: Diana essentially assumes this role early in the 1944 portion of the storyline, as she has to learn how the rest of the world works once she has left Themyscira.
• Flawed Prototype: The Hulk is essentially the perfected version of the monstrous results of the Skull trying to use the Tesseract's energy to reproduce the Super Soldier Serum.
• Foil: This entire fic is essentially a foil to the author's first fic, Avenger of Steel, which saw Superman joining the Avengers; where Diana is active as a hero long before the Avengers are formed, Kal-El only goes public when Zod comes to Earth after the Battle of New York, with the result that he is essentially the Avengers' over-powered "little brother", learning from the rest of the team despite being far more powerful than any of his teammates.
• Forced Transformation: Applies to Circe; as in the comics, she transforms most men who come to her island into the beast forms they are most similar to.
• For the Evulz: Under the Lasso, Madame B admits that she ordered one of her students to shoot the girl's own little sister because she thought it would be funny.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • Thanks to Diana's intervention, Tony discovers Stane's criminal acts before he has a chance to steal Tony's Arc Reactor, thus preventing him from activating the Iron Monger suit with himself in full control.
  • Following the events of Captain Marvel (2019), Carol gave the Tesseract to Diana for safekeeping, who in turn sent it to Themyscira for the Amazons to protect rather than returning it to S.H.I.E.L.D..
• Foreshadowing:
  • Witnessing Schmidt's experiments at recreating the Super Soldier Serum using the energy of the Tesseract, Howard recalls some of his and Erskine's earlier experiments with the serum, recalling a time he contemplated using gamma rays with the serum before he dismissed them due to the potentially mutative side-effects...
  • It can hardly be a coincidence that Sekhmet, the violent cat-goddess of Wakanda, is represented by a cheetah.
  • Howard devises a set of gloves with vibranium sheaths for Logan's claws.
  • Aside from Schmidt, the sole survivor of HYDRA's attack on Wakanda is Colonel Fritz Klaue, who vows vengeance on the country even if his descendants have to carry out his vow.
• Fusion Fic: Between Wonder Woman (2017), the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the X-Men Film Series.
• Glamour Failure: Loki is almost subject to this when his astral self manifests in Diana's presence, as the Lasso of Hestia makes her aware of his deception even if Loki escapes before she can make contact.
• Glass Cannon: HYDRA's super-weapon, Mjölnir, is explicitly described as this; it might be a vast cannon capable of destroying an entire city with one tesseract-energy-powered shot, but it can be destroyed with little more than standard explosives in the right place.
• Gone Horribly Right: Chapter 23 reveals that Sekhmet only became the figure of violence she is now in an attempt to stop Ares by letting herself be consumed by Wrath in the belief that she could defeat him.
  • The people in Weapon X who experimented on Logan died because they decided to give sharper claws to someone who was already lethal, then try and wipe his humanity completely. This resulted in the animalistic side of his brain taking the reins and butchering them before escaping.
• Groin Attack: When confronting terrorists at Disneyland in 1992, Natalia stabs one of them in the groin with a broken plastic copy of Captain America's shield.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Disregarded as Diana prefers to fight hand-to-hand, to the point of explicitly stating that she doesn't like guns.

Tropes H-K

• Happily Adopted: Natasha and Diana might have an unconventional family relationship, considering that they met when Natalia was eight and now look like they’re the same age, but while Natasha doesn’t call Diana her mother explicitly, she has privately referred to Ares as her ‘uncle’ and later explicitly refers to 'Uncle Apollo'.
• Happy Ending Override: Natasha tells Tony how she and Diana once helped a neighbour realise that she had cancer in time to get treatment, but a year after they moved away Natasha checked on that neighbour and found that she was run over by a bus, which she's never been able to bring herself to tell Diana about.
• Heroic Lineage: When the Howling Commandos take part in D-Day, they save the life of Private Peter Parker, who mentions his family motto "With great power comes great responsibility"; while Private Parker muses he isn't even married yet, he is confirmed to be the father to Ben and Richard Parker, making him the grandfather of Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In-Universe, Herakles' more vicious nature was downplayed as his exploits faded to myth and legend.
• Ho Yay: In-Universe example. At one point Tony reflects that he would have had his doubts about his father's relationship with Steve if it wasn't for Howard being a notorious womanizer.
• Honey Trap: Jane, Darcy and Selvig initially assume that Diana is intended to be one to Thor, playing on his "delusion" of godhood, before she demonstrates that she genuinely is a goddess.
• Hot Witch: Naturally applies to Circe.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Diana is constantly unable to accept that humanity could commit the Germans' crimes of their own accord, when canon affirms that all Ares did was give everyone involved a nudge. This is particularly referenced in chapter 21, when Tony first learns of Diana's real history and finds himself wondering how she must have felt when her desperate hope to end war by killing Ares proved to be impossible.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Diana shows no knowledge that Clint is married despite his long friendship with Natasha.
• Ignored Epiphany: According to Diana, the Twelve Labors were intended to help Herakles learn humility after he was temporarily driven mad and killed his family, but instead he viewed them as an opportunity to hone his skills and avenge his family by training to kill the gods themselves.
• Ineffectual Death Threat: Admittedly he probably wasn't intending to use an actual death threat, but Fury's attempt to intimidate Diana with Goose during his first meeting with her backfires as Diana and Goose already consider each other friends.
• Info Dump: A large chunk of Chapter 24 is Diana explaining to Tony the true nature of the world's mythological beings.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Comes up from Diana more than once after her centuries of living on Thermyscira, to the point that she doesn't realize why Eric Lensherr became uncomfortable at the idea of accompanying her and Peggy to the baths in Wakanda.
• Insecure Love Interest: Even early in her relationship with Thor, Jane immediately feels jealous when Diana shows up and Thor recognises her in turn.
• Internal Reveal: The moment when Tony discovers a photograph of the Howling Commandos among his father's things and recognizes Diana from the day after his parents' funeral.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Loki firmly believes that humanity will go extinct on its own, and deserves to be ruled by gods. Namely him.
• Irony: Tony wonders if this applies to Stane’s final fate, as the man dies after becoming the very power source he tried to steal from Tony.
• It's All About Me: Stane’s inner thoughts make it clear that he considers himself the true head of Stark Industries, while regarding Tony as nothing more than a skilled employee who shows up occasionally and brings in a few brilliant ideas while Stane deals with the hard parts of running the business.
• It's All My Fault: Tony blames himself for the deaths caused by Vanko's attack even as Diana assures him that men like Vanko would find some reason to kill even if he didn't choose to focus on Tony.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Howard Stark might come across as sexist, but even after Diana parted company with him for his role in the Manhattan Project and similar weapons programs, she was one of the first people he contacted after Tony was born, and Diana still considered him as much her "brother" as the rest of the Howling Commandos, swiftly acknowledging Peggy's point that Howard wouldn't recreate the super-soldier serum just because he wanted to make money from it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Diana mostly rejects Paula von Gunther’s rants about the need for a new war, she has to concede that the other woman has a point when she talks about how Diana gave up on trying to help the world after the end of the Second World War, with that part of her speech inspiring Diana to start taking a more active role in global affairs.
• Kill the God: The story opens with Diana's battle against Ares. No surprises what she does to him. She's even refered to as "the Godkiller".
• Ki Manipulation: Temujin is a powerful chi-user martial artist.
  • Diana isn't but she knows a few fellow Themysciran Amazons who are.

Tropes L-N

• Let's You and Him Fight: Basically Loki's reasons for releasing Herakles, as he believes Herakles will kill Thor before Odin can awaken from the Odinsleep and forgive his son.
• Like Brother and Sister: Possibly the best description of Tony's initial assumption when he first learns that Natasha is Diana's daughter, as he briefly wonders if Steve Rogers was Natasha's father before they clarify that Natasha is adopted.
• Loophole Abuse: The army basically uses this when modifying the armor Tony gave Rhodey; while the contract prohibited them from taking the armour apart to copy it, there was nothing to stop them making additions to the armour.
• The Lost Lenore: Steve is a male version of this to Diana in the post-WWII segments, as Diana has believed him dead for decades but has still been unable to properly get involved with anyone else, despite even Natasha attempting to set her up with men or women.
• Love Triangle: Comes up when Diana admits to Peggy that she's in love with Steve, but Peggy uses the Lasso to affirm that she might care for Steve, but she isn't in love with him, and she assures Diana that she will accept Diana pursuing him.
• Mad Doctor: Zola and Schmidt explore this from different angles as they combine their expertise to create new weapons, both technological and biological.
• Made of Iron: Natasha observes that Vanko's suit includes a magnetic forcefield that deflects bullets, justifying how he could walk around with so much skin exposed and still not get hurt.
• Magitek: Through the influence of Circe, the Iron Monger armor is modified to use Stane as a power source and is shown to be capable of fighting on its own, even regenerating itself after Diana tears off one of its own arms to hit it with; the armor even briefly acts as though seek a new power source after Stane is removed before Tony manages to destroy it with a full-powered blast from his chest repulsor.
• Manipulative Bastard: Fury tries to be this, but his efforts are thrown because he has no knowledge of the Godkiller/Wonder Woman beyond that Howard Stark and Peggy Carter must have edited S.H.I.E.L.D. records about her to keep such knowledge secret. Once he does learn about her, however, he manages to tempt her with the Avengers Initiative by noting that it's a good way for her to help the world, something he knows she can't refuse.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The 1944 story-line sees Diana meeting Erik Lensherr, the future Magneto, and T'Chaka, who will become the father of Avengers ally T'Challa, while both are just children, and the 1990s storyline sees her essentially adopting the future Black Widow when she saves the young girl from the Red Room.
• Mistaken for Romance:
  • When Diana visits Tony immediately after his parents' funeral, he initially assumes that she is Howard's mistress before she violently corrects that assumption.
  • When meeting Diana for the first time, Clint wonders if she and Natasha are dating as he's ignorant of their more detailed history, prompting exaggerated expressions of disgust from both.
  • When Diana attends Tony's charity gala, everyone assumes she's his newest fling. With Pepper, at least, she takes steps to correct this misconception. Of course, this doesn't stop at least one tabloid later speculating that Diana, Tony and Pepper left a party to have a threesome...
• Mook Carryover: Basically applies to Raza, who is saved from his canon death at Stane’s hands by Circe, deciding to accept her as his new superior after witnessing the Ten Rings being decimated by ‘the Godkiller’.
• Mook Maker: A good description of the Red Skull and Circe, who use their resources to create various enhanced minions to battle Diana.
• Mook Promotion: Raza goes from just a high-ranking member of the Mandarin’s army to the personal Champion of Circe (although that doesn't last very long).
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Chapter 17, James Howlett assists Diana, Cap, and the Howling Commandos in liberating a Death Camp, saving Erik Lehnsherr in the process. The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes showed Howlett as a member of the Howling Commandos, while X-Men: Evolution had a flashback episode where Logan and Cap rescued Erik while liberating a concentration camp.
  • In his first meeting with Diana, Clint observes that half the problems that occurred in Greek mythology are the result of Zeus being unable to keep it in his pants.
  • This exchange when Stane first meets Diana:
  Stane: You know, I’ve known a few women like you.
  Diana: Oh, I don’t think you’ve ever known a woman like me, Mr. Stane.
  • When Diana is surprised at Tony using "diplomacy" when he is giving the military an Iron Man suit:
  Diana: Diplomacy? You?
  Stark: Don’t sound so surprised, I am capable of it. Weren’t you the one constantly complaining that I should learn how to play with others? Something about ‘little boys’ being born with no natural inclination to share?
  Diana: That was not exactly what I meant and you know it.
  • Diana's minotaur chef friend Ferdinand is a minor character from the comics who worked at the Amazon embassy.
  • When Natasha and Logan are looking for Bruce Banner in Alaska, Natasha mentions faking a trail to Brazil by means of poisoning a crime lord with gamma radiation from a drink.
  • Tony's suit is capable of absorbing energy to shoot more powerful blasts, but here he does it when fighting Vanko instead of Thor.
• Never Mess with Granny: Peggy Carter might still be approaching senility by 2011, but she shows up at the Stark Expo to shoot Justin Hammer in the leg and order the AMAZON unit to attack Hammer Industries and capture Vanko while arresting Hammer.
• Never My Fault: Hammer protests that he's the victim even though he broke a notorious terrorist out of prison and gave him access to advanced technology that allowed him to kill again.
• No-Sell: Natasha is able to deflect Vanko's whips with her own Bracelet of Submission (worn under her clothes).
• Noodle Incident:
  • Between the end of the Second World War and her adopting Natalia, Diana acquired various powerful artifacts, recalling how she battled the minions of Arachne and a Sphinx to retrieve the Sword of Athena and the Shield of Achilles respectively, as well as traveling to K'unn Lunn and learning about the origin of the Ten Rings.
  • Diana has heard a tale of how "the Asgardian God of Thunder" defeated a Djinn powered by sunlight by fighting it for a whole day until the sun set and its powers were drained.
  • During the events of Captain Marvel (2019), Diana was busy in Japan dealing with an angry Tengu clan, some renegade Skrulls trying to resurrect one of their old gods, and a sword that absorbed the souls of its victims.
  • In what is probably related to the above, Goose apparently ate Natalia's motorcycle.
  • Thor recounts a story of how Loki set up a complex joke to make Thor believe that he was the son of Odin and the Phoenix Force by creating the illusion that Thor was immune to fire.
• Not Afraid to Die: Considering Diana as a potential opponent, Thor acknowledges that he would have enjoyed the challenge of fighting her in his prime, but deprived of his power he would have feared losing to her and endangering his new friends.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Loki reflects that Odin and the Godkiller each share the (to him) mistaken belief that mankind should be allowed to forge its own destiny, save for the difference that "Godkiller" takes part in the affairs of man while Odin operates from a distance.
• Nuke 'em: Upon learning that Herakles and Thor are on Earth, Fury apparently suggested nuclear weapons as an option, but Diana affirms that they won’t work, speculating that Herakles could easily survive such a weapon even if he didn’t just throw it back at the source.

Tropes O-Y

• Oblivious to Love: Flashbacks show that Thoth was oblivious to Maat's interest in him, much to Sekhmet's amusement.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Diana wasn't involved in Carol Danvers' visit to Earth because she was dealing with a crisis in Japan.
• Older and Wiser: In the present day, Diana has grown as a person compared to how naive she was when she first entered Man's World.
• One of the Boys: The Howling Commandos soon become used to having Diana on the team with them, treating her as a valued comrade even as they witness her more impressive feats, showing no serious concern about her gender or greater powers.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Darcy basically does this when she calls "Hercules" a hero and is immediately corrected by Diana.
• Our Demons Are Different: Diana explains that "demon" is a broad term for beings from many different worlds and Realms.
• Our Dragons Are Different: According to Diana, there are many different types of dragons.
• Our Genies Are Different: Djinn are reality-warping beings who were created in the Primordial Chaos of another dimension, and can be bound to any object with the proper seal.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: When Diana takes Tony and Pepper for a meal to tell Pepper the truth about herself, their chef is Ferdinand, a minotaur.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Diana states that there are many different breeds of vampire in the world.
• Outside-Context Problem: Basically applies to Diana's circumstances after she is shown publicly meeting with Tony; she was expecting to attract interest from terrorists or criminals, and is instead plagued by paparazzi who assume that she's Tony's latest girlfriend or even his wife.
• Papa Wolf: Selvig clearly considers himself this for Jane, initially wanting to discourage a relationship with Thor to stop her being drawn into his "delusion".
• Physical God: Ares counts as one, though the Olympians now fall under the category of sufficiently advanced aliens.
• Place of Power: It is strongly implied that Wakanda is this for Eric Lensherr, as he is keenly aware of the vibranium all around him.
• Power at a Price: The more powerful members of the various races of Physical God in the cosmos and other similarly powerful beings can, with effort, tie themselves to one or more specific Domains, such as Storm, Death, Magic, etc., extending their reach over the universe. The catch is that, while how much control a god has over one of their Domains depends on the power of the god in question and how tied they are to it, which comes at a cost; cause and effect, the more a god affects a Domain, the more if affects them in turn. Ares went further than any god before him, at least until Sehkmet gave into her Wrath Domain in an attempt to fight him, sinking so deeply into his War Domain that it became impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, to the point that while he has incredible power, every act of violence on both sides of a conflict strengthening him, and allowing him to be run through and simply absorb the sword in question to repair his armor without any sign of being actually injured by it, but at the cost of losing everything about himself that isn't tied to War, becoming controlled by his Domain instead.
• Precision F-Strike: How Diana sums up her explanation to Tony about The Fair Folk.
  Diana: Fuck Tinkerbell is what I'm saying.
• Properly Paranoid: Fury is so paranoid he is even concerned about his lack of knowledge of Wonder Woman despite the fact that he knows that only Howard Stark and Peggy Carter could be responsible for the lack of information on her he's found so far.
• Read the Fine Print: Tony decides to use this to his advantage when giving one of his suits to the military when faced with his "imminent" death; the contract will only allow Rhodey to use the suit and forbid the military from trying to copy it, Tony guessing that the Department of Defence will be so eager to get the suit that they won't notice such details. And not only does he have failsafes in case they try to copy it anyway, if they do try he can legitimately sue them for doing so.
• Ready for Lovemaking: When Steve is trying to deal with his clothes getting wet after he and Diana end up in a lake, he turns to see Diana has stripped naked and is inviting him to swim with her.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Circe at least suggests that the Cold War came about because Diana didn't officially claim the title of "Goddess of War" after she killed Ares, leaving an entire Domain essentially wild and unfocused.
• Red Baron: Diana is known as "The Godkiller".
• Relative Error: In a sense; Diana might not be a biological relative of Howard Stark or Natasha, but she considers them her family to the point that she is disgusted and outraged at the implication that she might have been romantically involved with either.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Hinted at for Peggy; she starts to show signs of her future senility when she says that Howard always gets into trouble when she and Diana were talking about Tony.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A minor, humorous example; after Diana accidentally sets a printer to print multiple copies while frustrated by a printer jam, Natalia decides to leave her to deal with it herself.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Chapter 28 foreshadows the reveal that a maddened Herakles is sealed in Mount Olympus, having been stirred to activity by Thor crashing to Earth.
• Secret Test of Character: After Diana captures Natalia, the Lasso basically serves as this; by leaving Natalia bound in the Lasso while she carries out her investigation, Diana gives Natalia the chance to analyse her own motives and beliefs to question if she truly "belongs" to the Red Room.
• Seppuku: After being "rejected" by Diana and with her arms severed, Paula von Gunther uses her feet to maneuver her fallen sword so that she can fall on it.
• Shipper on Deck: Diana actively encourages Pepper to hook up with Tony, after seeing the mutual feelings they have for each other.
• Shipping Torpedo:
  • When she realizes that Diana is in love with Steve, Peggy puts her own feelings aside after "testing" herself with the Lasso of Hestia, recognizing that Diana's love for Steve is stronger than what Peggy feels for him at this point.
  • Although Circe speculates that Diana is helping Thor to seduce him and claim the thrones of Olympus and Asgard, Diana can only think of Steve when considering any future children she might have, making it clear that she almost cannot think of Thor that way.
• Shout-Out:
  • In order to identify Bierut, a code is used between him and Captain America, namely if Bierut can borrow a match, only for Steve to state that he uses a lighter, which is "better still". "Until they go wrong".
  • The Heliopolitans (the Egyptian gods) used a Stargate to make travel between their world and Earth easier.
  • When asked if vampires are real, Diana confirms that there are several vampire species in existence but they are generally dealt with by their own enemies, privately musing that the Daywalker has things under control most of the time.
  • When Natasha and Logan are preparing to hunt down Banner/Hulk, Natasha notes that if he becomes belligerent they'll "either bring him in warm or bring him in cold."
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • As Paula von Gunther continues to make her speech about everything that her forces will accomplish with Diana leading them as the Goddess of War, Diana cuts Paula off, as regardless of the fact that the Lasso of Hestia proves Paula’s intentions are genuine, Diana refuses to work with the woman who killed Howard Stark.
  • When Vanko tries his Badass Boast during the Stark Expo, Tony fires back that, for all his boasting, Vanko is just blaming the Starks for his own mistakes.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Referenced by the title of chapter 28.
• Spared by the Adaptation: When Stane double-crosses Raza like in canon, the attempt by his men to finish the terrorist off are interrupted by Circe, who saves Raza and takes him with her. Then he ends up getting himself turned into a living bomb in an attempt to kill Diana.
• Spit Take:
  • When she overhears Clint's comment that most problems in Greek mythology stem from Zeus being unable to keep it in his pants (to Diana, who is of course Zeus' daughter), Natasha chokes on her champagne.
  • Diana sprays her milkshake all over Tony when she sees that Natasha has been assigned undercover as his new assistant.
  • Circe's suggestion that Diana's plan with Thor is to have a child with him leads to Diana spitting out her ambrosia.
• Spotting the Thread: After killing the Grootslang because it was prepared to kill all humanity after a village of humans destroyed its eggs, Diana helps Tony realise that the scenario described doesn't fit a small village that came to the nest to mine diamonds from the Grootslang's nest, as an isolated village would have left the eggs alone but someone with a long-term plan would have smashed them, even if she can't be sure what that long-term plan was.
• Sprint Shoes: As Tony spends time training with Diana, he develops the ‘Winged Sandals’, which are arc-reactor-powered boots that enhance Diana’s speed in flight.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Natasha points out to Tony that, even if Diana can't heal him herself, she still has plenty of contacts in the magical community who could at least alleviate the symptoms of his poisoning, if not cure him.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Diana doesn't like Paula von Gunther's fanatical devotion to her at all.
• Stupid Evil: The terrorist attack on Disneyland in 1992 was officially intended to inspire further conflict from the USSR, with Diana noting that the Cold War is already over; the captured terrorist confirms under interrogation via the Lasso of Truth that nobody else wanted to participate in the plan but the five that Diana and Natalie have already dealt with.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Olympians and the Egyptian gods (including Bast, who's also worshiped in Wakanda) are revealed to be, like the Asgardians, merely visitors to Earth from other worlds. Later, this is stated to also be the case with the Tuatha de Danann (the Celtic gods) as well.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: When Darcy learns about Ares' role in the Second World War, she asks why Thor and his people didn't get involved, Diana clarifying that Ares used magic to stop any other gods being aware of his actions until he was defeated.
• Supreme Chef: The greatest chef Diana knows is Ferdinand, a friendly minotaur.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In chapter 24, Diana and Tony face a Grootslang, a monstrous creature that is part-elephant part-snake in appearance; the creature argues that it has been hunted by gods for centuries when its ancestors were the ones who committed crimes when it has done nothing, but although Diana has some degree of sympathy when it reveals that it destroyed a nearby village after the locals destroyed its last clutch of eggs, she cannot countenance its declared intent to kill all humans in response.
• Take That!:
  • A minor one to the canon story of The Incredible Hulk (2008), where Bruce was hiding in a Favela at the start of the film. When Logan hears that Natasha faked a lead to Bruce there, he wonders why Ross would fall for that kind of tip, because Bruce hiding in a Favela would be stupid for person looking for peace and tranquility.
  • In Chapter 31, Thor mentions one time he thought his birth mother wasn't Frigga but a host for The Phoenix Force, only to later learn it was one of Loki's pranks. Reyel is evidently not a fan of a certain retcon in The Avengers (Jason Aaron).
• Team Mom: Diana seems set to become this for at least a third of the original Avengers, as she is essentially the adopted mother of the Black Widow and has all-but-explicitly stated that she considers Tony to be her nephew due to her regarding Howard as a brother.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • With a fully-powered arc reactor available, Tony manages to completely vaporise the upper half of the Iron Monger armor (after Stane has been removed from it) with a full-powered blast from the chest repulsor.
  • When Diana fights Herakles for Mjölnir, she is only able to drive him back by unleashing such an intense blast of energy from her bracelets that she creates what is described as a miniature Grand Canyon.
• Title Drop: During a conversation with Peggy about Diana’s last vacation, Peggy mentions that Diana dealt such a blow to European crime syndicates that to this day the relevant crime families are afraid of doing anything that will attract the attention of the "Avenger Goddess".
• Token Good Teammate: For a given value of "good", at least; where the rest of the commanders of HYDRA's forces in the attack on Wakanda genuinely believed in HYDRA's doctrine, Fritz Klaue is a Dutch soldier who only joined HYDRA for the money.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Through training from Diana (received in the 1940s and the 1990s respectively), Peggy and Natasha each enhance their already-formidable combat skills with Amazon fighting techniques, allowing Peggy to defeat the Hydra assassin Warrior Woman and Natasha to battle the son of the true Mandarin, each woman winning their respective fights with far greater ease than if Diana hadn't taught them anything.
    • As of Chapter 24, Diana has also expressed her intent to start training Tony in actual combat rather than relying exclusively on his armour; a couple of chapters later, after a few training sessions with Diana, Tony is able to disarm Stane and throw him across a room without even putting the armor on.
  • On a negative note, Ares gives Schmidt a few subtle prompts that allow him to use the Tesseract to teleport himself and others, rather than just using it as a power source, although it is doubtful Schmidt is aware of this to the point that he could do it on his own.
• Training from Hell: A young Natasha spent a summer training with Wolverine in the Canadian wilderness, which included at least one instance in which she had to kill a bear with a spear, open up the corpse, and sleep in the carcass for warmth.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: In 1944, the Howling Commandos arrive at Auschwitz while Erik Lensherr is still learning what he is fully capable of, and witness him hurl a mass of metal at the HYDRA soldiers.
• Two-Person Pool Party: Diana and Steve make love in a lake while in Wakanda.
• Tyke Bomb:
  • Natasha is raised as this for the early years of her life by the Red Room, but she and the other students are rescued by Diana in 1992, and by 2010 have become a special "Amazon" division of S.H.I.E.L.D. loyal to Diana above all else and taught how to fight the Amazon way.
  • Could also apply to Eric, except that HYDRA were just curious about his DNA rather than trying to use him as a weapon himself, and the Howling Commandos have never shown any interest in having him become a weapon even if they recognize his power, keeping him back from the Battle for Wakanda and only asking for his help when Howard and Peggy need to evacuate the royal family and the hanger door is sealed shut by every means other than Eric's powers.
• Unskilled, but Strong: In the Battle of Wakanda, Azzuri - the current Black Panther - privately muses that the Howling Commandos are a great asset as Wakanda's army, while possessing superior weapons, doesn't have that much experience at actually fighting on the scale required for this conflict.
• Underestimating Badassery: To be fair, Stane would have been successful if he'd just been dealing with Tony as he was in canon, but thanks to Tony's lessons with Diana the younger man manages to take down Stane without even needing to put on his armor.
• Unstoppable Rage: During the Battle of Wakanda, Logan tears his way through HYDRA's Iron Cross Legion — essentially WW2-era Iron Men — because his powers and rage mean that he literally won't stop until they're dead despite their greater physical power.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Chapter 23 confirms that for all his grand ambitions, Schmidt is just Ares' unknown pawn, provoking conflict to test or break Diana.
  • Circe never intended for Raza to actually kill Diana, he was just a pawn, both to test Diana and to help Circe find the Temple of Lilith and the Seal of Solomon.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers:
  • Ares believes that if Diana had killed Sekhmet, she would have absorbed the power and Domains of the latter goddess.
  • It's eventually explicitly confirmed that Diana didn't claim Ares' control over War after killing him, which Circe at least speculates is the reason for the subsequent Cold War.
  • Herakles intends to kill Thor to take control of his Domain of Storms and use that control to break the final defense around Olympus.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Tony gets the upper hand against Vanko and shoots down his Badass Boast, Vanko goes berserk.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Most of the HYDRA leaders present in the Battle of Wakanda try to present themselves as this to convince the Wakandans and Diana to join them, but even if they are now separate from the main Nazi party, the fact that they condone the concentration camps tells Diana everything she needs to know about their true motives and agenda.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Diana starts out like this, believing that all the evils in the world came from Ares and all she had to do was kill him and everything would be okay. After Steve's death and half a century of horrors following her killing Ares, she's long past this. She even muses how foolish and naive she was back then.
• Wild Goose Chase: S.H.I.E.L.D. manage to do this to General Ross, planting a series of fake clues to lead him to Rio de Janeiro searching for Bruce Banner while Bruce was actually hiding in Alaska.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: As it turns out, this is a Parker family motto, going at least all the way back to the Private Peter Parker who served in WWII.
• Worthy Opponent: Prior to the Battle of Wakanda, HYDRA’s commanders offer King Azzuri a deal where they will work with Wakanda, claiming to recognize its status as a powerful nation, although their words of respect prove to be hollow when they fire their new Mjölnir cannon at the capital city.
• Written by the Winners: Upon learning of Herakles' status as a villain, Clint initially assumes that this applies to the historical/mythological interpretation of him as a hero before Diana explains his true history. The archer is subsequently heartened to learn that the Trojan War happened basically as recorded.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Briefly applies to Darcy when Diana reveals that Herakles tried to claim Mjölnir; Darcy immediately thinks of the Disney movie before Diana corrects her, giving Darcy a chance to remember what Herakles did to the Amazons in the original myth.
  • She also assumes that the reason all records of Diana having fought in World War II were erased was because the patriarchy couldn't handle the idea of a powerful woman before Diana explains that Peggy and Howard did that in order for her to better blend in among mortals. Darcy admits she watched a feminist documentary recently and got carried away.
• Xanatos Gambit: Ares engineering Sekhmet's awakening and Diana being there to fight her is this. No matter what happens, it will end with a goddess dying in combat, thus massively empowering him. Bast outmaneuvers him on this, instead intervening so that Sekhmet is instead banished from Earth back to Heliopolis, ending the fight in a draw.
• You Killed My Brother: Diana’s rejection of Paula von Gunther was resolved when the woman began to talk about her plans for a great future war in the name of ensuring peace, but she was already opposed to von Gunther’s agenda because her agents had killed Howard Stark, one of Diana’s last remaining allies from the Second World War and a man she still considered a brother.

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