Actress Katherine McNamara - best known for playing the role of Clary Fray on Shadowhunters - has been cast in a major reoccurring role in Arrow season 7. A child prodigy who graduated high school with honors at 14 and college summa cum laude with a degree in business at 17, McNamara possesses an equally impressive resume as an actress. She got her start on Broadway at the age of 13, starring opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury in A Little Light Music.
Since that time, she's taken up a number of roles on stage and screen, while continuing to work towards a Master's Degree in Literature. In addition to her role on Shadowhunters, McNamara is also well known for playing the role of Sonya in the Maze Runner movies and the role of Becky Thatcher in 2014's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. And now that Shadowhunters has ended, she's looking to move onto another TV series: Arrow.
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TVLine reports McNamara will be playing Maya, who is described as "a scrappy street fighter and thief from Star City" as well as "Buffy the Superhero Slayer.” Curiously, this description sounds rather close to that of Konomi Rhodes - a character teased by one early season 7 casting announcement for Arrow, who was described as "a formidable fighter who ends ups clashing with the heroes of Star City" and having extensive experience as a military tactician and street fighter.
It's unknown if Maya is meant to emulate a previously established character from the comics, but there are two possibilities that seem likely based on her name. The first is a teenage girl named Maya Ducard, who became an enemy of the Damian Wayne version of Robin while utilizing the code-name Nobody. Maya assumed the identity of the original Nobody, her father, to avenge his murder at the hands of Damian Wayne. The two later became allies when Damian renounced the murderous ways of his mother and The League of Assassins and sought to atone for his past.
Another possibility is that Maya may be intended to be a reworked version of Myrra Rhodes, which would further connect the descriptions of Maya and Konomi Rhodes. She was part of The Creature Commandos - an elite American combat unit composed of various monsters. Myrra was a Gorgon and a medical doctor who acted as the team's combat medic under the code name Dr. Medusa. While none of this seems to match up with the character descriptions of Maya and Konomi Rhodes at first, Dr. Medusa was also a master marksman and expert in hand-to-hand combat.
Whoever Maya turns out to be, adding Katherine McNamara to the cast of Arrow is another great choice for the producers of the various series making up the Arrowverse. McNamara's casting follows hot on the heels of Grimm star Elizabeth Tulloch being cast as Lois Lane and Ruby Rose taking up the mantle of Batwoman. All in all, it's looking like one big year for the Arrowverse.
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Arrow season 7 premieres on October 15 on The CW.
Source: TVLine