Patty Jenkins has a typically great rationale for setting the new Wonder Woman in 1984

Ever since plot and setting details for Patty Jenkins’ second Wonder Woman movie started leaking out onto the internet, there’s been one question (or two, if we count “Steve’s totally a ghost now, right?”) that’s been poking at fans of the series: Why 1984?

Now Jenkins has given an answer, and it goes way past “I thought Gal Gadot would look cool in leg warmers.” (Although, to be fair, she probably would.) Jenkins—who co-wrote the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 with Dave Callaham and Geoff Johns—got into the topic during the film’s portion of Warner Bros.’ Comic-Con panel this afternoon, and her answer went surprisingly in-depth.

Per Deadline:

One of my favorite things about making the original was that it took place during World War I in 1917, an era full of metaphors like modernity and the mechanized world. I grew up in the ’80s, and this has its own look and feel. The reason I am excited is it showed mankind at its best and worst. It was grand and wonderful, there was great music and there were elegant and beautiful things. But other things about the decade revealed the worst of us. To have Wonder Woman in that period of time that was us at our most extreme, is wonderful.

That’s a very cool and thoughtful approach to the symbolism of the era, suggesting that Wonder Woman 1984 won’t just be set in the ’80s, but will also be about them, too. Jenkins also showed off some Con-exclusive footage from the panel, reportedly showing Diana kicking the crap out of some bad guys in a mall, that palace of ’80s culture and excess. Meanwhile, still no word on that Steve question; we’ll presumably have to wait until the film hits theaters in November 2019 to get that one out of our heads.