'Wonder Woman 1984': Kristen Wiig's first look as Cheetah is a lot like her comic book counterpart
While a poster for Kristen Wiig's character in 'Wonder Woman 1984' was released months ago, it was a completely human look — featuring her as Barbara Minerva in the days before her transformation into Cheetah. Thanks to an online leak from merchandising in Brazil, we had a pretty clear look at what she looks like when fully transformed and it's pretty close to what Cheetah currently looks like in the pages of DC Comics.
How well that leaked image will compare to her actual appearance on screen is in doubt, but given how comics-accurate the image is it is hard to imagine the film's Cheetah will significantly differ from what we have seen. Until more is revealed, this image is really all we have to go on.
The first two versions of Cheetah were women who donned bright, orange, spotted cat costumes to fight Wonder Woman — neither incarnation actually had superpowers. The third, and now the most famous version of Cheetah is Barbara Minerva, who first appeared in 1987. This version of Cheetah actually did have powers — ones that made her more than a match for Wonder Woman. Minerva's transformation into Cheetah has been retconned many times, but in all versions, she has been an archaeologist who is cursed to become a human-cheetah hybrid with only a tenuous connection to her humanity.
For many years, as the Cheetah, she retained very human, dark brown hair on her head and wore a leather costume on top of her fur. In the more recent comics, however, she has taken a much more feral appearance. Her long locks are gone, making her head more directly like an actual Cheetah's, and she abandons all clothing, walking around in nothing but her fur.
Wiig's Cheetah appears to lean much more towards the more feral version. Long, human hair is seen combed back from her head, but it's been dyed bright yellow to match with the rest of her fur. She also appears to retain her human ears as opposed to large cat ears coming from off her head. The shot is only from the neck up, so it is impossible to know whether she will wear clothes over her fur, but Cheetah is a distinct enough character to not need a costume to identify her.
'Wonder Woman 1984' releases in theaters in June 2020.