♡ character study. diana of themyscira : character arc wherein she blinds herself when fighting medusa.
medusa is brought back from the dead by the witch , circe. medusa then intent of bringing her revenge to the entire world along with athena’s champion , wonder woman. fighting through the halls of the themysciran embassy and turning a boy to stone in the process. finally issuing a challenge to wonder woman , a fight to the death. diana agrees.
the fight takes place in a football stadium where over forty million people are watching , whether in person or on the television , medusa planning to kill wonder woman and then turn everyone watching to stone. she was confident and taunting diana through the beginnings of the fight eventually managing to pin diana to the ground , demanding that she look at her. only to discover that wonder woman had secured a blindfold under her helmet in order to ensure she would not look into medusa’s eyes.
while diana was able to gain the upper hand for a moment , medusa then impaled her on her sword along with removing the blindfold. leaving diana vulnerable. determined not to look at medusa , diana seeks out one of the snakes she had previously severed from medusa’s head , blinding herself with the venom from that snake. claiming that : one mortal life if worth more. losing her eyesight enabled wonder woman to finally face medusa properly and sever her head from her shoulders. killing her quickly and efficiently.
while an easy decision to make at the time , this had consequences. the members of the justice league no longer trusted her and she took the initiative to leave the league. diana had little friends or support during this time , even the public lost faith in her abilities due to her blindness. while the timeline of her blindness is uncertain , the publishing time of the wonder woman comics along with her appearance in other character’s runs , means she would have been blind for around a year.
diana remained blind for so long because even though athena was willing to return diana’s sight , the only gift diana wanted was for the life of the boy turned to stone by medusa to be returned , never wavering in this demand no matter how many times she was asked. it was eventually granted back to her along with her original wish when diana , along with ferdinand and cassandra sandsmark journeyed to the underworld to save hermes.
