Shawna Baez Is The Latest 'Flash' Metahuman

The Flash excels at a lot of things — teasing out the truth about Harrison Wells, creating deviously intelligent villains like Captain Cold and the Pied Piper, showing a heartfelt bond between Barry Allen and his adoptive dad, Joe West — but female characters aren't one of them. This isn't to say that Caitlin's Snow and Iris West are terrible characters, they're far from it. But they have a lot of untapped potential. It's especially frustrating with Iris since she is such an important character in the comics and actress Candace Patton has amazing chemistry with the rest of the cast. Thankfully, The Flash is switching things up this week by introducing a new female villain. In the Feb. 3 episode of The Flash, "Crazy for You," we'll meet Shawna Baez, or Lashawn, aka Peek-a-Boo, as she's better known to DC Comics fans.

Apparently, all the cooler villain names were taken. But don't look down on Shawna for her poor alter ego choice, she's actually an interesting character. In the comics, she isn't a villain the way Captain Cold and Professor Zoom are. Lashawn tried everything to help her father who was in dire need of a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, nothing was working and her latent teleportation powers were triggered when she tried to donate her own kidney. Teleportation powers sound cool, right? Especially, since she can also trigger an explosion when she teleports if she isn't being careful. The downside of her powers? She teleports anytime she's touched.

Lashawn turns to crime to find a kidney for her father, which leads her to cross paths with Wally West as The Flash. She is exceedingly difficult to capture and it takes not only The Flash, but Cyborg to take her down. At one point, Lashawn reveals that she wanted to be a hero and looked up to The Flash until he branded her a Rogue. This isn't a fake ploy from Lashawn — she had actually saved Wally's wife Linda Park in the comics as well. Lashawn exists in that gray zone of someone turning to crime because they see no other recourse.

It would be fascinating if the show decided to develop her character and give her a redemptive arc instead of her ending up like her comic book counterpart, who remains imprisoned and rather hopeless. The synopsis for The Flash "Crazy for You" episode states,"the team searches for Shawna (guest star Britne Oldford), a meta-human with teleportation powers, who just busted her boyfriend Clay (guest star Micah Parker) out of Iron Heights." Which means the show is handling her character much differently than the comics by jettisoning the ailing father storyline. Unfortunately, there's been no word about her character reoccuring, though Oldford seems very excited about the role and would surely be up for returning someday.

Metahumans tend to be one and done kind of characters on The Flash, except for new fan favorite Pied Piper. But I'm hoping they let Shawna stick around enough to break from the monotony of the mostly white dude villains The Flash seems most concerned with developing.

Images: Katie Yu/The CW (2)