Wonder Woman #800 Will Introduce Diana’s Daughter, Trinity

DC Comics has some big plans in store for Wonder Woman in the months to come. Like The Flash, the monthly Wonder Woman series is about to reach its 800th issue in June 2023. That issue will both serve as a series finale for the current volume of Wonder Woman and provide a taste of things to come when the relaunched Wonder Woman #1 hits stores in September. IGN can exclusively reveal that those plans include introducing Wonder Woman’s daughter, who goes by the codename Trinity.

Trinity will make her debut in a story from writer Tom King (Batman, Mister Miracle) and artist Daniel Sampere (Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths), which serves as a lead-in to their work on the relaunched Wonder Woman series. Check out the image below for a first look at the character:

Note that that image is an excerpt from King and Sampere’s story and will also be featured as a variant cover for Wonder Woman #800.

The Origins of Wonder Woman’s Daughter

Introducing Wonder Woman’s daughter is a good hook for a new series, but that’s not the only reason she’s making her early debut in Wonder Woman #800. This character is a core piece of King and Sampere’s plans for the series. In fact, King tells IGN that Trinity was one of the first ideas he developed for the series, even predating the overarching conflict of the Amazons being branded as outlaws by the US government.

“Hard to remember exactly, but I think I stole at least the first spark from Mitch Gerads, the brilliant artist whom I’m blessed to work with on so many things,” King says. “Mitch had a great idea for doing a sort of all ages short story to follow up on our Mister Miracle series where Jon and Damian would be babysitting Scott and Barda’s kid, Jack. This got me thinking about the son of Batman and the son Superman as older brother babysitters and how really the person they should be looking after is their little sister, the daughter of Wonder Woman. I have three kids, two of whom are close in age and then one who’s 5 years younger than those two, so I’m very familiar with this dynamic and its potential for comedy and drama. Super sons…and daughter. It was the kind of thing I’d want to read with them at any age. So, after I had that idea in my head, I couldn’t get it out.”

Batman’s son Damian and Superman’s son Jon have emerged as two of the most popular new DC characters of the past several decades, both individually and through their “Super Sons” team-ups. We were curious what lessons King might have taken from the introduction of Jon and Damian and how the Super Sons might be influencing Trinity’s DC debut.

“When Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert introduced Damian, it went off like an atom bomb in the DC Universe. It was about Batman having a son, yes, but it was more about this attitude Damian brought and how that played off of Batman and the Robins, how it immediately differentiated Damian as a character that was fun to read and write. So, part of this was saying it’s not enough to just have a generic daughter of Wonder Woman; she has to be a character, she has to have weaknesses and strengths and a personality that can play off her brothers and her mother. Dan Jurgens introduction of Jon was quieter and his growth in importance and popularity has been more organic but perhaps just as impactful as Damian’s. His strength seems to be his ability to talk to a new generation of readers, to show them both the relevancy of Superman’s ideals and the need to evolve those tenets.”

King continues, “This was a model for the impact we wanted for Trinity: someone who could reflect the greatness of Wonder Woman and still show a next possible step for the ideals embodied in that very impactful and very unique hero. And maybe more important than all of that, is that Jon and Damian are so great together: Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason gave us endless gold with Super Sons. For Trinity we wanted someone who could play in that same sandbox, who could add to that chemistry.”

King also admits that the character’s codename was the result of a lot of trial and error. In the end, it was podcaster Darrell Taylor who suggested the name “Trinity.”

“Darrell is a super comic fan and I’ve been bouncing ideas off him for a decade to try to see what works and what doesn’t,” King says. “I had gone through fifty very bad names when he said ‘Trinity’ and it just fit perfectly. She’d have three lassos; she would complete what Jon and Damian had started; she wasn’t another Wonder Woman, she was something new; and also, it was just cool. It’s nice to have nerdy friends.”

As for the look of Trinity, Sampere tells IGN that the character is meant to blend the classical Wonder Woman aesthetic with a more modern flair.

“Well, it’s not just the costume, it’s about creating her entire appearance, her face, body language, visual attitude,” Sampere says. “It really was a big challenge but a wonderful opportunity at the same time. Luckily, this one flowed pretty natural from the first attempt. Tom gave me some previous notes about how he would like to have the curly hair and ponytail and also the three lassos. Starting from there my idea was to make a balance between some classic wonder woman details (like the stars or the bracelets) mixed with a more modern look. I pitched a possible design for Diana when we started the run with her having long pants that finally we didn’t use, so I thought it was a nice opportunity to give Trinity those pants. I also wanted to give her a more superhero look and less warrior based so I reduced to minimum the armor parts.”

Sampere adds, “Finally, I loved Yara’s design and her chest plate and wanted to do something similar to Joëlle Jones design in ours, like establishing it’s a common piece young amazons use frequently. For the colors, I liked the idea of using blue as the dominant color over red to make the opposite of her mother and give Trinity her own personality in that aspect too. Trinity will be an incredible character and I’m very honored to have created her look. I hope fans will enjoy it!”

King’s Return to Monthly Comics

The new Wonder Woman series marks an interesting departure for King. Following his 85-issue run on DC’s flagship Batman title, King has exclusively worked on self-contained limited series like Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, The Human Target and Rorschach. For a while it seemed King’s days of writing ongoing series at DC were behind him. But it was specifically because he had grown so comfortable writing 9-12 issue books that King decided the time had come to branch out again.

“It was basically three things. First, I love where DC is going now, where Jim Lee and Marie Javins are taking us, all the energy coming out of DC Studios, and I just wanted to be a part of it, to be somewhere near the center of it. There’s this DC Renaissance going on and I wanted to help and, selfishly, arrogantly I wanted to show I could run at this new, awesome pace. The last big current continuity book I did was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and I hoped to do some more work in that style, a book that wasn’t a deconstruction of heroism but an embrace of it, something that shows why these caped people still matter, are still essential.”

“When you get scared of writing something, that’s when you have to write it.”

King continues, “Second, I love doing contained full story series. It’s the absolute best way to write. And I was starting to get scared of doing anything else. And when you get scared of writing something, that’s when you have to write it. If you’re not challenging yourself, pushing past your fears, then you’re not writing good. This was just a path I was afraid to go down, so I took it. Third, finally, it was a chance to work with Daniel, who is just stunningly gifted. I mean, you get a call saying here’s one of the greatest characters in fiction and we have one of the greatest artists in comics interested… it’s hard to say no to that.”

How Trinity Fits Into Wonder Woman’s World

While Trinity will appear as a young adult in the Wonder Woman #800 story, that doesn’t mean Diana has been hiding the existence of her daughter for the past several decades. King tells IGN that this story is set roughly 20 years after the events of Wonder Woman #1. In the present-day DCU, Trinity hasn’t been born yet, and the monthly series will trace her origins and how she grows into the heroine seen in Wonder Woman #800. She’ll continue to play an important role in the series even as it flashes back to the present.

“I think it’s safe to say we’ll see more of that future as we move forward with the story in Wonder Woman, which centers around how that future came to be,” King says. “But it’s important to add that the main focus of Wonder Woman the book will be Wonder Woman the hero. The point of every issue and every arc of our story is to show the readers how awesome Diana Prince is, how relevant she is to today’s world, and how kick ass her powers are personality are. Trinity is part of that story, but there’s a lot more than just Trinity coming. A LOT more…”

DC fans are probably wondering about the identity of Trinity’s father. Is she the daughter of Steve Trevor? Is her hair color a clue? King is remaining mum on when fans will learn the answer to that key mystery, but that in itself suggests a big reveal during the course of the monthly series.

For now, though, it appears as though Trinity’s relationship with her mother is King’s primary focus.

“Being the daughter of Wonder Woman, being raised with that particular and particularly historic superhero as your mother has an impact on Trinity that can’t be underestimated. In many ways the story of many of the Wonder Girls is them finding their independence from Wonder Woman’s legacy, discovering what makes each of them unique and special and wonderful and cool. In contrast, Trinity can never escape her parents. Good or horrible, absent or present, your parents’ legacy, their decisions are always with you, and you forever struggle to reconcile what they have done with who you are. It is not enough for Trinity to find her independence; she has to learn what it means to be the daughter of Diana.”

Wonder Woman #800 will hit stores on June 20, 2023. Wonder Woman #1 will follow in September 2023.

In other comic book news, we have the full breakdown on what happened in Marvel’s FCBD 2023 books and an in-depth look at the newest member of the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.