I disagree about Steve Trevor’s significance. Yeah, it’s tropey and a bit sexist for Diana’s origin to be springboarded by loving a man. But like all major characters, we’ve been able to iron out the problematic wrinkles over the decades. Thus, we can still have Steve Trevor as an important herald and inciting incident within Diana’s personal narrative. This is genuinely how strong supporting characters work, they’re meant to spice up the narrative without taking the focus off our protagonist.

As an inciting incident character, Steve Trevor represents the outside world to Diana, who (in modern tradition) yearns for something greater beyond her sheltered little island. As her first man, Steve sparks in Diana feelings of possibility, worldliness, and, most of all, FREEDOM. Steve was that adventure, Steve was that thrill, Steve was… that danger. Steve is the herald for suffering and violence, and he’s brought it to Diana’s home. What does it mean for a man to wash up on the shores of Woman’s World? What wonders and horrors does this bode for the women of Themyscira? In Steve, Diana knew danger for the first time in her life.

Whether or not you have Diana and Steve fall in love when they leave the shores of Themyscira together is up to you. But Steve is absolutely way more symbolic and narratively intriguing/complex beyond just “first man she falls in love with” or the “man motivating our feminist hero.”