The initial news that actress Tala Ashe would be portraying a Muslim computer hacker from the future named Zari Adrianna Tomaz and that, per executive producer Marc Guggenheim, she was a character, "not original to the show but not from the comics and not from any of the other DC Arrowverse shows" was a bit of a head-scratcher.
Then, comic book sleuths quickly realized that Zari Adrianna Tomaz was a derivative of Andrea Thomas, the star character in the the 1970s watching Saturday-morning television The Shazam/Isis Hour. The character would also go on to have her own DC comic book titled The Mighty Isis, which didn't last very long.
The character remained in comic book limbo until 2006, when the DC Comics mega-event 52 introduced readers to Adrianna Tomaz, an Egyptian servant of Black Adam who eventually won his heart and convinced him to change his ways from outright villain to reluctant anti-hero.
It appears Adrianna Tomaz's introduction to DC's Legends of Tomorrow was a byproduct of the current U.S. political climate and President Donald Trump. Speaking at the TCA's Guggenheim stated, "You might have heard there was this election. Not to get political, but something that we all gravitated toward in the writers room was making this character Muslim...It’s not just politicians — a lot of the heroes of real life are letting us down. We’re being let down as a society."
Fellow executive producer Phil Klemmer echoed, "We’re all looking toward the day when 2017 is in the history book and hopefully isn’t the last day in the history book. I find the current world difficult to comprehend."