Scans_Daily

Diana's weakness is her Lawfulness. Most of the wider comics fanbase looks at her and sees "female Superman" and thus they want some kind of kryptonite, so you can see where stuff like the "bound by a man" and "but she can still be hit by bullets" gets traction and attention, but really, in terms of weaknesses, she's of the Batman mold - it's not about some physical trick you can pull on her, it's about taking one of her strengths to its logical extreme to the point where it becomes detrimental (the way Bruce's self-sufficiency and preparedness can be manipulated into dangerous emotional isolation and paranoia).

To wit: Diana's an amazon. Part of that cultural identity is being beholden to gods who are not always good people, and to laws that don't always make sense. It means believing in prophecy and fighting murderers on their own terms or letting them go unpunished if they know the right ritual to hide behind.

Most of the time, this is a source of tremendous strength for her. As long as she's acting in accord with her code, she can't be unsettled or thrown off in battle by the headgames that trip other heroes up, and she doesn't struggle with self-doubt. When she's lost, when her friends abandon her, when her mother goes batshit on her or her people cast her out, when she doesn't know what else to do, she falls back on her duty and it gives her the comfort and purpose she needs to get back on her feet and back in control. (See also: why Gail's Warkiller arc makes no sense to me.)

It does mean, however, that she can be manipulated. Hiketeia was basically one big fail on her part - as long as the Furies play by the rules there's nothing Diana can do, and so because they do, Danny dies. The Medousa fight, in a stadium on live TV, was amazing; it was also an unacceptable risk to millions of lives that someone like Clark or Bruce would never have taken. Diana won the fight in the Embassy and was three seconds from smashing Medousa's face into the floor right then, but had to stop, and allow the possibility of Circe's plan going through, because she had to honor the Ares-sanctioned challenge.

Now, I personally think this is fantastic. Seeing Diana get trapped in a cage of code and honor like the Medousa fight and winning on those terms anyway is just amazing to me, proof of her heroism and badassery and a charge to me as a fan to a magnitude that Clark fighting off kryptonite has never achieved. Unfortunately I appear to be a distinct minority on that count; her writers, as a rule, would much rather free her of both those restrictions and the strengths that come with them, and waste time instead poking at mundane unimaginative "vulnerabilities" like brute force and/or threatening her friends.