Netflix dropped BoJack Horseman season 5 this past weekend with a new “Hollywoo” Easter egg: Wonder Woman.” Season 5 picks up with BoJack shooting his True Detective-homage crime drama Philbert at “Warbler Brothers Studios,” which the audience gets to tour throughout the season.
Season 4 ended with BoJack’s long-awaited glimmer of hope for redemption, as he connected with his sister Hollyhuck and finally made a selfless decision in his relationship with Princess Carolyn by agreeing to play the lead in Philbert. But as the BoJack Horseman season 5 trailer prophesied, BoJack’s re-entry to life behind the camera inevitably meant either a breakthrough or a breakdown. Instead of pantomiming the antithesis of his deeply abusive childhood as Horsin’ Around‘s happy-go-lucky sitcom Dad, BoJack’s saw his demons mirrored back at him through Philbert over weeks on set.
Related: BoJack Horseman Season 5 Review: Netflix’s Best Delivers Again
To introduce “Warbler Brothers” as Philbert‘s production site, a caricature of the Warner Brothers studio in Los Angeles is shown with a lot-sized Wonder Woman poster – or in the BoJack universe, “Wonder Worm.” The poster is seen in multiple establishing shots of the studio until the end of the season, when Philbert‘s snowballing success leads to the studio displaying its posters instead. See the Wonder Woman Easter egg in BoJack Horseman below.
BoJack fans may guess that this creative choice can likely be attributed to production designer and producer Lisa Hanawalt. She’s gained international recognition not only for the show, but for her work as a cartoonist in groundbreaking works like Coyote Doggirl and Hot Dog Taste Test. More news about Wonder Woman 1984 has continued brewing since the first peak was released at San Diego Comic-Con this summer.
As Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman has arguably become a modern icon in cinematic feminism, it pairs well with BoJack‘s exploration of where “Hollywoo” is in the afterlife #MeToo. The fourth episode, “BoJack The Feminist” takes a glaring look at a culture that cyclically forgives abusive men of celebrity status who apply the least possible amount of effort towards reconciliation. BoJack himself becomes centered in superficial media attention that labels him a hero for being a “male feminist.” Diane, ever the voice of reason, points out that women who make the same commentary are overwhelmingly labelled as shrill, just as she was in season 2’s “Hank After Dark”. Diane fully transcends as the show’s heart and broke the fourth wall this season in “Head In The Clouds”. She realizes that how she wrote the character of Philbert inadvertently led to BoJack rationalizing his own bad behavior – paralleling how viewers forgive and cheer for anti-heroic protagonists who persistently do bad things, like BoJack himself, or Scandal‘s Olivia Pope.
Those who know where BoJack is at by the finale can speculate as to whether or not the Wonder Woman reference was intended to do anything more than establish a location. As BoJack monologues at his mother’s funeral in “Free Churro”, one’s personal desperation to interpret meaning doesn’t mean it really exists. But it might. Maybe the antihero that so many fans have wanted, with what can only be described as a sometimes unbearable yearning, to truly become better will finally do it.
