Its names are many, from the Golden Perfect to the Lasso of Hestia.
But its purpose is singular — it compels those within its bonds to tell the truth.
Where did this fabulous rope come from?
Well, we're here to divine the truth of Wonder Woman’s lasso.
The lasso began as part of the goddess Aphrodite's magical girdle, an item bestowed upon the
Amazons that granted them strength and immortality.
Queen Hyppolita, intrigued by its properties, instructed her craftswoman, Metala, to forge
a golden rope from it.
Metala did so, creating the very first iteration of Wonder Woman's wonderful lasso.
It was a finely-wrought golden chain that didn't, in fact, compel its subject to tell
the truth but to obey.
It was unbreakable, magically elastic, capable of binding groups of people, and, once coated
in chemicals of Amazonian design, was able to transform Diana's civilian clothes into
her Wonder Woman costume.
Then DC's landmark event, Crisis on Infinite Earths, took place.
Wonder Woman's lasso was left relatively unchanged, save for two major alterations.
It now compelled the truth rather than obedience, and it was no longer an Amazonian design.
This post-Crisis lasso was instead forged by Hephaestus, god of metallurgy himself,
from the Golden Girdle of Gaea, tempered in the fires of Hestia.
But that wasn't the end of the lasso's changes, as the New 52 reboot of the DC universe changed
the legendary tool still further.
Nowadays, the lasso is known to the Amazons as "the Golden Perfect," a gift from the gods
passed down through the generations.
It's a symbol of sacred trust — that of the Amazons in the gods and the gods in the
Amazons.
Only an Amazon of purest heart can wield it, making Diana a perfect candidate.
Generally speaking, the lasso's powers seem fairly straightforward.
Wonder Woman wraps a bad guy in it, bad guy has to tell the truth about his evil scheme,
and the heroes rush off to stop it with their newfound knowledge.
But truth is a slippery slope, and Wonder Woman's deeply held sense of compassion will
never allow her to settle for convenience when there's honesty to be had.
Luckily, the lasso's powers are flexible enough to account for this.
Under the umbrella of "truth," the lasso can do everything from dispelling illusions induced
by hallucinatory gas to allowing people to communicate openly beyond a stubborn language
barrier.
In the recent "Year One" storyline, a neophyte Wonder Woman, dazzled by the delights and
depredations of Man's World, used the lasso, then still new to her, to accomplish both
of these feats.
When she, Etta Candy, Steve Trevor, and Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva all held the lasso at
once, they were able to communicate despite Diana's inability to then speak English.
Soon after, an insanity-inducing poison turned a squad of helpless men into manic murderers.
With the lasso, Diana was able to dispel the poison's effects immediately and discern the
men's innocence.
Truth might need to be delivered as a magical antidote or immersive, immediate language
course, but the lasso will always be able to fit the bill.
Despite its amazing powers, Wonder Woman's lasso is, in fact, a simple lasso.
Sure, it's an unbreakable one that can stretch, shrink, and form complicated nets and snares,
but it's a rope with a loop tied into it.
Wonder Woman uses it often in this manner, throwing it to catch midair villains and rampaging
animals alike.
Or when a disaster comes along, the lasso is useful for towing unlucky victims to high
ground, the shore, or beyond a fire's reach.
In the Golden and Silver Ages, however, Wonder Woman explored the lasso's physical properties
to the furthest extent.
As the character wasn't originally capable of flight, she could twirl the lasso furiously
enough to create air currents she could float on.
Wonder Woman was practically a cowgirl during this era, so skillfully did she wield her
magical chain.
Gal Gadot might be able to unleash devastating shockwaves from her bracelets, but we'd like
to see her give someone a serious earache with a particularly fierce twirl of the lasso.
Confronting foes with upsetting truths has its uses.
More than once, Diana has used the lasso's powers to force those within its bonds to
face a secret that motivates them to do ill or to face consequences they'd prefer to ignore.
In 2008's Wonder Woman #15, Diana confronted Captain Nazi, an old foe looking to bring
the Third Reich back to life.
Seeking to learn of his plan to invade Themyscira, Diana wrapped him in the lasso and discovered
his past, as well.
Facing his abusive childhood brought him to tears, which had the dual effect of stopping
his assault and forcing him to lose faith in his campaign.
Similarly, during George Pérez's run on Wonder Woman, Diana stopped an emboldened Ares at
the point when all seemed lost.
In the lasso's coils, he saw the result of his quest to cover the Earth in conflict and
bloodshed: a barren rock, void of followers, and thus void of the discord that fueled him.
The abject loneliness of this vision didn't just compel him to retreat, but it actually
wrenched tears from his eyes.
In the end, it wasn't violence that stopped either of these terrible villains, but the
truth that was lurking within their own hearts.
Unfortunately, not all who seek Wonder Woman's destruction can be constrained by the lasso.
Genocide, a villain envisioned by Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone as being the heroine's
ultimate antithesis, actually used the lasso to further her own depraved aims.
A superpowered juggernaut created from both Diana's corpse — retrieved from the future
— and soil from the sites of 20th-century killing fields, Genocide was a ruthless golem
of murderous intent, used to further the aims of Ares, the Cheetah, and other members of
Wonder Woman's rogues gallery.
In her first assault upon the Amazon, Genocide was actually able to steal the lasso and take
it back to her terrible masters, who surgically implanted it within Genocide's body.
Twisted into serving horrible aims, the lasso imbued Genocide with incredible power.
Suddenly, she could overthrow the will of Green Lantern Corps members, manipulate those
around her into disabling despair, and exude a general aura of rage and hopelessness.
All reason and rationality could be overthrown in one terrible flood of psychic energy from
the lasso that Genocide had buried in her own flesh.
Though Diana was able to retrieve it and Genocide was scattered to the winds, the memory of
what the lasso was capable of when put to evil ends was not so easily forgotten.
Being an object and not a power she herself is imbued with, Wonder Woman can use the lasso
upon herself.
Rarely does she need to employ this ability — she makes a point of being honest with
herself and others from the get go — but it's come in handy more often than you might
think.
Usually, this comes in the form of Diana wrapping herself in it to prove she speaks truthfully.
Sometimes it's a private practice meant to reconnect the heroine to her roots and her
mission.
But occasionally, she needs the lasso in a moment of extreme crisis, and those are often
the most spectacular uses of all.
During 2016's "Year One" storyline, Wonder Woman was exposed to a fear and rage-inducing
gas.
Plunged into a mindless fury, she promised to anoint the men of this new world with the
blood they seemed crave.
But clarity managed to shine through, and she managed to grab hold of her lasso and
wrap it around her own body, head to toe, as tightly as possible.
Her mind cleared of anger and despair, and she dispersed her own insanity in a dazzling
blaze of power, crying out:
"This is not true!"
The day was saved, the villains were caught, and Wonder Woman, fresh from Themyscira's
shores, had discovered just how much of a difference she and her wonderful lasso could
make in this strange new world.
Just as Wonder Woman has her lasso, the girls who've taken on the mantle of Wonder Girl
must have lassos of their own.
But they don't have lassos of truth.
Instead, they have lassos of very different powers, suited for very different heroines.
Donna Troy, a Wonder Girl of many divergent origin stories, wields a silver-blue lasso
with as much dexterity as the heroine she takes her name from.
In 2010's Justice League of America #44, she named it as the Lasso of Persuasion.
As she told the demon Etrigan, bound within it:
"Anyone whose will is less than [hers] has to do what [she] tells them.
And [her] will is iron!"
Cassie Sandsmark, the second Wonder Girl, wields a very different lasso, the Lasso of
Lightning.
This lasso is uniquely connected to her as a daughter of Zeus, channeling her godly father's
legendary lightning through its unbreakable bonds.
Moreover, as was revealed when the witch Circe had the Lasso of Lightning under her control
in 2006's Wonder Woman #4, it's also capable of inducing rage.
Whether its truth, persuasion, or lightning, the lassos of the DC universe are not to be
trifled with.
If there's one thing you know about Wonder Woman's creator, William Moulton Marston,
it's probably that he invented the lie detector.
But this nugget of common knowledge isn't precisely true.
Marston created the systolic blood pressure test, not the polygraph itself, and he never
accomplished his goal of introducing it to the court system.
He still managed to make good on his contribution, appeared in a series of Gillette advertisements,
and he got many of his ideas to the public through the comics he'd become best known
for.
But the common understanding of Marston's invention having something to do with Wonder
Woman's Lasso of Truth is solidly wrong, especially since his rendition of the lasso compelled
obedience instead of truth-telling.
In fact, Marston saw Wonder Woman's lasso as symbolizing something very different: The
natural allure he believed all women possessed, that the world would do well to heed.
As detailed in Jill Lepore's landmark book The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Marston
saw the Amazons as ruling through natural charm, grace, wisdom, and strength.
The lasso merely got people to accept them as rightful leaders a little more quickly
than they would have otherwise.
"Marston's really endlessly fascinating.
There's kind of almost not an effort in American culture that he doesn't have a hand in in
the first half of the 21st century."
Truth was important, sure, but accepting Amazonian guidance was the real path to a just and peaceful
world.
That's a little harder to turn into a soundbite than:
"[The] man who invented the lie detector also invented the Lasso of Truth."
The Lasso of Truth is, crucially, unbreakable.
What good would it be otherwise, in a world of razor-sharp batarangs and beings of godlike
strength?
Wonder Woman can't go around having it snapped by any old bad guy in a super-powered exo-skeleton.
No, as befitting a tool forged by the gods, the lasso is unbreakable.
Though it's always climactic and heralds an enormous change of stakes, the lasso has,
in fact, been broken before.
Sometimes it's the result of having its connection to truth weakened on the conceptual level.
Bizarro, representing the reversal of all things, was able to break it in 2003's Batman/Superman/Wonder
Woman: Trinity series.
But in 2003's Superman: Red Son, Wonder Woman broke it herself in a desperate attempt to
save Superman.
Occasionally, it's broken through Diana's own weakness.
For example, her dismay at learning a truth she couldn't handle in 1997's JLA #62 ripped
the lasso apart through the sheer force of the quandary at hand.
Naturally, it's always returned to wholeness.
But the lasso, as its mistress, is not invulnerable, which provides readers with a wealth of stories.
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