Tonight on The Flash, audiences got their first look at a villain who hadn’t previously been announced (although most everybody assumed he was coming): Shade.
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There are a number of characters in DC’s pantheon who have gone by the name of Shade, so here’s a little primer on the one you’re seeing tonight.
Richard Swift was first introduced in 1942’s The Flash #33. Created by Gardner Fox and Hal Sharp, Shade battled The Flash and other members of the Justice Society for years.
Depicted as a thief with a cane who could manipulate shadows, Shade was ultimately reinvented in the ’90s as a friend and mentor to Jack Knight, the post-Zero Hour Starman, whose father he had battled.
After becoming a major player in James Robinson’s acclaimed run on Starman, Shade was given his own miniseries at the start of The New 52 — one that acknowledged events that took place in that pre-Flashpoint series.
Will we ever get there with this version of the character? It’s hard to say. With Pied Piper, for instance, his rehabilitation has happened largely off-screen, so that he syncs up with his comic book destiny but they don’t have to pay the actor or dedicate valuable screen time (it’s already a pretty big ensemble) to seeing it happen.
Something similar could theoretically happen with The Shade, although in the comics more than anything it was age that mellowed the character — suggesting that he’s got many years of crime ahead of him.
That said, it wasn’t until Starman came along that Shade leveled up from a fairly interchangeable villain-of-the-month to an unforgettable character, and since we’ve seen other allusions to Robinson’s Starman in The Flash and its tie-in comics, they may be keen to explore that territory eventually.
The Flash airs on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
