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As Farooq, Blackout is a character introduced by The Flash executive producer Geoff Johns in Flashpoint. He was part of Cyborg’s planned team to take down both Emperor Aquaman and Wonder Woman and stop the Amazon and the Atlantean war, which has devastated Europe and cost millions of lives in the Atlantean and Amazon attempts to take over the world.
The DC Wiki notes, “During a meeting with Batman, the Outsider revealed that had been hunting Blackout, because he wanted to use Blackout’s electric powers to light India. This hunt resulted in the loss of Blackout’s girlfriend and his departure from his school. The Outsider was also recruited into Cyborg’s team. Blackout voiced his reluctance working in a team with his worst enemy.”
That same site also notes a pre-Crisis group of Batman villains called the Blackout Army, but they were basically just glorified burglars in all-black bodysuits. There was a Teen Titans villain who went by the name Blackout at some point, as well, but there is no entry for that character and s/he made so few appearances it seems unlikely to influence the character’s depiction on The Flash.
Here’s how TVLine phrased it:
Looks like Central City will get hit with a Blackout in Episode 7, when Farooq, an electricity-wielding metahuman, seeks vengeance against Dr. Wells. Flash to the rescue? Mayyyybe not, seeing as Barry will be suffering a “powers” outage just when this new baddie arrives.
Seems pretty early to be delving into the whole “I lost my powers” thing already, unless maybe there’s a speed force or energy-thieving story at play…or maybe that’s just us.
In terms of who might play the character onscreen, Farooq looks pretty white in the image above, but Farooq is a common Arabic given and family name derived from an honorific of Umar, an early Muslim leader. Given that Geoff Johns is of Lebanese descent and got a lot of press out of introducing the Arab-American Green Lantern character Simon Baz, don’t be too surprised if the eventual casting reflects those sensibilities.
There have been a number of characters and concepts from Flashpoint to be referenced in the run-up to The Flash so far, but for the most part, they’ve been properties that also applied to the main-line DC Universe (such as the murder of Barry Allen’s mother by a Flash villain, introduced in The Flash: Rebirth). Farooq seems more definitively rooted in the alternate-reality story which gave birth to the New 52.
