Legends of Tomorrow Casts Tala Ashe as A Member of the Shazam! Family

Russ Burlingame

06/06/2017 12:59 pm EDT

Tala Ashe (American Odyssey) has been cast in the series regular role of Zari Adrianna Tomaz, a new member of the team aboard the Waverider, for Season 3 of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Savvy audiences might recognize Adrianna Tomaz as Isis, a member of the Marvel family who is an embodiment of an Egyptian goddess and at times the wife of Black Adam in the comics. Her name, which seems unlikely to appear on TV for political reasons, is Isis.

A Muslim-American woman from the year 2030, Zari lives in a world of contradictions. Technology has brought about incredible change in her future — too bad human nature hasn't kept pace. Fear, prejudice, and a lack of care for the planet have forced Zari to become a "grey hat hacktivist." A computer nerd with a wry, combative attitude. A woman living a double life who doesn't realize that she has secret, latent powers derived from an ancient, mystical source.

"We're drawing on an established character who is not from the comics," showrunner Marc Guggenheim said back in March. "Let me be very clear: not original to the show but not from the comics and not from any of the other DC Arrowverse shows."

This appears to be that character: The DC version of Isis first appeared on TV, although with the Anglicized name of Andrea Thomas. A live-action Saturday morning adventure series, The Secrets of Isis was the first-ever weekly superhero series to star a female lead. The series acted as a companion to Shazam!, with which it crossed over numerous times, and starred Joanna Cameron as Thomas, a high school science teacher who gains the ability to call upon the powers of the goddess Isis after finding an Egyptian amulet during an archeological dig in Egypt.

The Adrianna Tomaz version of the character first appeared in 52, the weekly comic book event series that ran in 2006 and 2007. She was a member of a revolutionary movement in Black Adam's country of Kahndaq, whose beauty captivated Black Adam and so she was taken prisoner rather than killed. Ultimately she won him over to a more populist way of thinking, and he granted her a portion of his powers -- again, as Isis, this time alongside Adam and her younger brother Osiris as a kind of alternate take on Shazam's "Marvel family." Her death later in the series would push Adam further over the edge than ever.

Given her importance to Black Adam's post-Infinite Crisis journey, and the fact that so many of those stories were written by DC chief creative officer Geoff Johns, fans have expected to see Isis show up in the forthcoming Black Adam movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The CW's superhero shows have often featured characters who would later appear on Gotham or in the movies, though, so Adrianna's presence on board the Waverider is no guarantee that won't happen.

Ashe was last seen recurring on the NBC series American Odyssey, opposite Anna Friel and Peter Facinelli and starred in the off-Broadway production of The Who and the What at The Lincoln Center Theatre. Her TV credits include the NBC series Smash, 30 Rock, Law & Order, and Covert Affairs.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow returns in the fall, airing on Tuesday nights at 9/8c following The Flash.

After the defeat of Eobard Thawne and his equally nefarious Legion of Doom, the Legends face a new threat created by their actions at the end of last season. In revisiting a moment in time that they had already participated in, they have essentially fractured the timeline and created anachronisms – a scattering of people, animals, and objects all across time! Our team must find a way to return all the anachronisms to their original timelines before the time stream falls apart. But before our Legends can jump back into action, Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) and his newly established Time Bureau call their methods into question. With the Time Bureau effectively the new sheriffs in town, the Legends disband – until Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) discovers one of them in the middle of his well-deserved vacation in Aruba. Seeing this as an opportunity to continue their time travelling heroics, Sara (Caity Lotz) wastes no time in getting the Legends back together.

We reunite with billionaire inventor Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), the unconventional historian-turned-superhero Nick Heywood (Nick Zano), and Professor Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Jefferson "Jax" Jackson (Franz Drameh), who together form the meta-human Firestorm. Once reunited, the Legends will challenge the Time Bureau's authority over the timeline and insist that however messy their methods may be, some problems are beyond the Bureau's capabilities. Some problems can only be fixed by Legends.

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