Why I love Wonder Woman

07 Nov, 2026

Fifty-one years ago today, on 7 November 1975, The New Original Wonder Woman, a made-for-television movie starring Lynda Carter, premiered on ABC. It would become the pilot episode of one of the most beloved television series of the 1970s and introduce a generation of viewers to a Wonder Woman who, for many of us, remains unsurpassed.

I was one of those children. But my love for Wonder Woman began with something more personal than a television program. It began with my father. Although my mother was the person to whom I was closest throughout my childhood, I have my father to thank for introducing me to the woman who would become one of my lifelong heroines.

If my father was particularly strict about anything, it was the television programs and movies his children were allowed to watch. Consequently, my brothers and I grew up watching mostly American and British productions. The relatively few Filipino television shows and films we saw at home were carefully selected. As a rule, the only Filipino movies we were permitted to watch were those produced before the 1970s. These were the days before Betamax and VHS became household fixtures, when watching a movie meant either going to the cinema or waiting for a television station to broadcast it.

My middle brother and I therefore had to visit our maternal relatives whenever we wanted to watch contemporary Filipino television programs or the newer local films being shown on TV. Their houses offered us a glimpse of a world of entertainment that was largely unavailable in our own living room.

Unlike most Filipino children of my generation, I was never required to take an afternoon siesta. Instead, I spent those hours watching old Filipino movies produced by LVN Pictures, Sampaguita Pictures, and Premiere Productions. If memory serves me correctly, these wonderful black-and-white classics were broadcast around 1:30 p.m. on GMA-7, after the immensely popular noontime variety show Student Canteen, as part of a movie anthology called Sine-Siete.

I watched them with my mother, from whom I was practically inseparable. I was an extraordinarily clingy child, and some of my earliest and happiest memories involve sitting beside her, watching those old movies together. Looking back, I realize that my childhood education in cinema began in those quiet afternoons, long before I knew enough to appreciate the artistry of what I was seeing.

My father, meanwhile, was almost always away at work. Although I was never particularly close to him, he doted on me when I was little and was remarkably affectionate toward me. We did not spend nearly as much time together as I did with my mother, but the few occasions when we did are among the memories I treasure most. Perhaps their very rarity has made them all the more precious.

One of those occasions occurred in early 1976, when I was about five years old.

My mother had enrolled in a free, month-long tailoring course sponsored by our parish and conducted in the church hall. During her classes, my father took care of me at home. For once, it was he, rather than my mother, who kept me company during those long, unhurried afternoons.

Although my father enjoyed the old Filipino films that my mother and I regularly watched, he preferred the American and British movies broadcast during the afternoon matinée on RPN-9. In the years that followed, I would discover many remarkable films through that program, including The Omega Man, The Abdication, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and, eventually, the 1978 adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Without either of us knowing it at the time, my father’s viewing preferences would help introduce me to a considerably wider cinematic world.

Then, one sleepy afternoon, something extraordinary happened.

My father and I were watching RPN-9 when the afternoon’s feature began. I remember the opening vividly: vintage footage from World War II, accompanied by a solemn, old-fashioned voice-over. Even at that young age, I already possessed some rudimentary understanding of what the war had been about, so the images were not entirely unfamiliar to me.

Then the screen suddenly came alive with a dazzling combination of comic-book imagery, animation, and live-action sequences, accompanied by one of the most gloriously infectious television theme songs of the 1970s . . .

I say “dazzling” because that is how I remember it—although I should explain that we were watching everything on a black-and-white TV set. Whatever magnificent colors the original broadcast possessed were translated into varying shades of gray on our screen. Yet even without color, the spectacle was unlike anything I had ever seen.

I already knew who Wonder Woman was. She was one of the Super Friends, and the original animated series featuring Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog was already among my favorite cartoons at that time. Naturally, the animated comic-book sequences in the opening credits caught my attention . . .

And then the animated Wonder Woman suddenly gave way to a real, living, breathing woman . . .

I was absolutely floored. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. Before me stood what I thought was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.

“Who is she?” I asked my father.

She was an American beauty queen and singer, he explained, whose name was . . .

He went on to explain that we were about to watch a “movie” showing how Wonder Woman came to the United States. He told me what he knew about the character, including things about her origins and adventures that were entirely new to me. Until then, I had known her only as the girlfriend of either Superman or Batman, living out her adventures in the modern world. I had no idea that her story reached so far into the distant past, or that her arrival in our world belonged to an earlier chapter of history. (It would be my mother who later explained to me what the word “Amazon” meant.)

I listened intently. Everything about this remarkable woman fascinated me: her face, her costume, her extraordinary powers. And now, astonishingly, she had stepped out of those comic-book pages and animation cels to become a living, breathing woman before my eyes. For a five-year-old child, it was nothing short of miraculous.

What I watched with my father that lazy afternoon was The New Original Wonder Woman. I have described the experience many times over the years, but I still cannot find a better way of putting it: watching it was almost a religious experience. It left an impression on me that has never faded.

Not long afterward, RPN-9 began broadcasting the first season of Wonder Woman on Wednesday evenings at 7:30. From that moment on, Wednesday nights became sacred to me.

✁

There’s another childhood memory involving Wonder Woman and a certain brand of instant noodles. I’ve told that story in a separate essay, which you can read → here.

I watched the series with a devotion that went far beyond ordinary childhood enthusiasm, and my fascination with Wonder Woman only deepened as the years passed. Even after the series was canceled in 1979, RPN-9 continued to broadcast reruns sporadically until as late as 1988, always on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. Whatever else was happening in my life, I made every effort to be in front of the television whenever the series returned. What began as an extraordinary discovery on a sleepy afternoon in 1976 had become an enduring part of my life.

Over the years, I have accumulated countless memories associated with Wonder Woman, including many involving my mother and brothers. Some are amusing, others deeply sentimental, and several could easily fill an entire essay of their own. Yet of all those memories, the one I cherish most is still the one with my father.

We never had as many moments together as I might have wished. Our relationship was not always easy, nor were we particularly close, and much of my childhood was spent in my mother’s company. Nevertheless, there were moments of genuine warmth and affection between us, and that particular afternoon remains one of the most precious. My father gave me something that would stay with me for the rest of my life: he introduced me to someone I would love, admire, and continue to find inspiration in for more than half a century.

I doubt he could have imagined how important that afternoon would become to me. He was simply spending time with his child, watching television and answering his questions. There was nothing particularly momentous about it from an adult’s point of view. No special occasion, no celebration, nothing that either of us had planned.

And perhaps that is what makes the memory so beautiful.

Sometimes the most enduring gifts we receive from our parents are not the things they deliberately set out to give us. They are the unexpected things that happen in their presence, the small discoveries they share with us, the passing conversations that become part of who we are.

I fell in love with Wonder Woman that afternoon. But what makes the memory truly precious is that, whenever I think of her, a part of me is also remembering my father.