Zari Tomaz
Zari Tomaz is a fictional character portrayed by Tala Ashe in The CW's Arrowverse franchise, primarily the television series Legends of Tomorrow. Loosely inspired by the characters Andrea Thomas and Adrianna Tomaz, both of whom use the moniker Isis, Zari was created by Phil Klemmer and Marc Guggenheim, and introduced in the series' third season episode "Zari". She is a hacktivist from a dystopian 2042 and joins the time-travelling Legends of Tomorrow, assisting them on their numerous adventures through season four. Due to the events of the season four finale, Zari's history is changed in a way that she never lived in a dystopian future; the new version introduced in season five, Zari Tarazi, is instead a socialite and social media influencer before eventually joining the Legends.
Fictional character biography
Season three
Zari Tomaz is introduced in season three as a Muslim hacktivist living in 2042 Seattle, which is being ruled by a fascist A.R.G.U.S. who have banned metahumans and religion. She is wanted for multiple crimes, including practicing religion. The time-travelling Legends of Tomorrow arrive in 2042 via the Waverider and find Zari, who demands help in rescuing her brother from an A.R.G.U.S. black site. The Legends assent, Zari retrieves her brother's mystical amulet from the site, and admits to duping the Legends before flying away using the amulet. Ray Palmer pursues Zari to a place where her family was to rendezvous, but Zari finds it destroyed and her family not there. She tells Ray her brother was killed by A.R.G.U.S. who then took his amulet. The assassin Kuasa attacks Zari, but retreats when the Legends intervene. Mick Rory and Amaya Jiwe convince Zari to join the Legends, rather than remain a fugitive from A.R.G.U.S. Amaya explains that Zari's amulet is actually a totem, similar to her own. Zari tries hacking the Waveriders AI Gideon's system to find a way to prevent her home from being destroyed in the future, but fails. Gideon later tells Zari that she cannot do so without the Legends. Sara Lance assures Zari it might be possible to save her brother. To kill the demon Mallus, Zari, Sara, Mick, Amaya, Nate Heywood and Wally West use their totems to create an enlarged Beebo, and succeed.Season four
In season four, Zari continues operating with the Legends, assisting them in capturing magical creatures called "fugitives", which have been released throughout time. She feels sympathy for one named Charlie, who later joins the Legends. After Zari is hired by the Time Bureau, she investigates Nate's father Hank and suspects he is embezzling Bureau funds to experiment on fugitives. Zari later realises her love for Nate, while Nate discovers his recently murdered father was, contrary to Zari's belief, not torturing fugitives but training them for a proposed theme park. Sara sends Zari and Nate on a mission to 1933, mainly to get them romantically involved. The mission ends with Zari and Nate admitting their love for each other, and the acquisition of a dragon egg. While Zari and Charlie infiltrate the Bureau to save the fugitives that Neron plans to abuse, the egg, accidentally left in Zari's childhood home, hatches in young Zari's possession. The dragon makes young Zari popular, inspiring the Legends to open Hank's proposed park to botch Neron's plans of painting all magical creatures as monsters. After Neron's defeat, by teaching tolerance, the Legends avert the dystopian 2042, creating a new timeline where Zari's brother Behrad Tarazi was never killed and Zari never acquired his totem, resulting in Behrad becoming part of the Legends instead of her.Season five
In season five, Nate discovers that Zari, before being erased from the timeline, filmed a fail-safe video that would play for him if she ever disappeared. He plays the video, in which Zari asks him to find her. Nate encounters the new timeline's version of Zari, who is radically different; she is Zari Tarazi, a wealthy socialite and social media influencer. She realizes Behrad has been time-travelling without their parents' knowledge, and before she can expose him, he transports her to the Waverider. Zari escapes after briefly recollecting her computer hacking skills from the old timeline and is later attacked by serial killer Kathy Meyers, but uses her Dragoness spray on her before Kathy is taken down by Behrad. While seeing why Behrad has the family totem, Zari ultimately decides to stay with him and the Legends for a while. She later befriends team member Ava Sharpe, and starts recollecting more of her memories from the old timeline. Zari searches for answers as to why she is experiencing memories of the old timeline. She eventually finds her past self in the wind totem and they talk about their different lives; reconciling their differences and granting Zari control of the totem once more. After Behrad is murdered by Atropos, Zari decides to stay by John Constantine until they get all the pieces of the Loom of Fate to resurrect him.While Constantine tries using everyone's energy to summon the last piece of the Loom, a ring, he and Zari accidentally end up in 1918 when Constantine's house was a boarding house. Zari and Constantine check-in, and find several Encores sent Lachesis are after the same ring. Zari and Constantine destroy the Encores, find the ring and return to the present. After the Legends acquire the Chalice of Dionysus, which will make a drinker immortal for a day and allow them to help Charlie use the Loom, everyone but Zari does so, allowing them to finally use the Loom. Tarazi also begins a relationship with Constantine; however, Atropos and Lachesis gain all pieces of the Loom and use it to rewrite reality, causing Zari, a resurrected Behrad and the Legends to be trapped in various TV shows. Zari Tomaz emerges from the wind totem and possesses Zari Tarazi's body. After the Legends manage to break out of their shows, Charlie splits Zari between her Tarazi self and her Tomaz self to gain control of the Legends, but to no avail. Following Atropos and Lachesis' defeat, Tomaz realizes her existence is a temporal disturbance that endangers Behrad; her timeline where he dies, and Tarazi's timeline where he lives fight for control of Behrad's life, so she returns to the wind totem to save him.
Development
In June 2017, Tala Ashe joined the third season of Legends of Tomorrow as Zari Tomaz, initially described as a "Muslim-American woman from the year who lives in a world of contradictions Fear, prejudice and a lack of care for the planet have forced Zari to become a "gray hat hacktivist." She lives a double life and doesn't realize that she has secret, latent powers derived from an ancient, mystical source." The character was loosely inspired by two characters using the moniker Isis: Andrea Thomas from the TV series The Secrets of Isis, and the DC Comics character Adrianna Tomaz, a reworking of Thomas. Zari was created by Phil Klemmer and Marc Guggenheim, who said it was "very important to me that certain elements from were reflected." The character is a Muslim American, and Guggenheim explained that part of the motivation for adding her to the series was the "political climate" in the United States after the 2016 elections. He said another reason was his sister-in-law, a Muslim, once telling him about "how difficult it is to be a Muslim-American in the current political climate." Gracelyn Awad Rinke portrays a younger Zari.The producers decided not to give Zari the moniker Isis because of the sound-alike militant organization ISIS; instead, the character goes by the nickname Z, and a Halloween costume she wears in the episode "Phone Home" was inspired by the superhero costume worn by Thomas in The Secrets of Isis. Her actual superhero costume, introduced during the "Crisis on Earth-X" crossover event, has a yellow and gold color scheme. Zari served as the central character of the bottle episode "Here I Go Again". Ashe described Zari's initial relationship with Gideon as antagonistic because "Zari has messed with her operating system before, as a hacker", adding that she respects Sara as the Waveriders captain, and has a "a very sweet friendship" with Amaya, despite both of them having "lived a hundred years apart." The season four episode "Séance and Sensibility" explores Zari's romantic side, with Ashe explaining, "Given her tumultuous past and that she was always essentially fighting for the life of her and her family, love was on the back-burner. So we're going to see her start to grapple with that in a very big way." Like "Here I Go Again", it was also written as a Zari-centric episode, with Klemmer saying this was done because "she's such a tough nut to crack She's not like Jane Austen heroine, but she is like kind of defined by just how closely she guards her feelings."
The fifth season of Legends of Tomorrow explores a different version of Zari due to the dystopian 2042 being averted at the end of the fourth season; Klemmer said the season would explore what Zari would look like if she "lived a more charmed life" and did not come from a "dystopian, authoritarian future". The new Zari, whose last name is Tarazi, is a social media influencer; Klemmer compared her to the Kardashians because of how she runs her "giant media empire and personal brand", while her "brother's been running around secretly saving the world all Zari 1.0 wanted was for her brother not to die and her parents not to die and her future to not be this terrible, intolerant place, and she succeeded at all those things, but despite all of the things she fixed, their relationship isn’t as great as it is between many siblings. She was like a child star, effectively, and Behrad had to live under her shadow." Ashe later said, "I had spent some time developing Zari 1.0 and really felt she had come a long way and had opened her heart at the end of the previous season, and then to lose her I think was hard for the fans Even though I was excited, as an actor, by the challenge of playing such a different take on the character, I do feel like I resisted it for a little while I feel like it took me a minute to find and accept and bond and submit to this new reality, and to the new Zari."