Mr. LaShade

Season: 3, Episodes: 1, Faction: N/A

Overview

Mr. LaShade, portrayed by Billy Dee Williams, is a main character on the hit television show Exposé. LaShade is a “suave, smooth-talking nightclub owner” under whose tutelage strippers-turned-crimefighters Crystal and Autumn fight evildoers.

Fertility (Earth)

Fertility (Vegetation)

Fertility (Water)

Sun (Fire)

Death

3×14 – Exposé

In the final episode of the show’s fourth season, Corvette, a third heroine guest star portrayed by Nikki Fernandez, discovers that Mr. LaShade is also the Cobra, Exposé‘s main villain. It is this discovery that leads to the death of Nikki’s character on-screen.

Mr. LaShade leads Crystal and Autumn to believe that Corvette was working for the Cobra when they come in to find her dead. (“Exposé”)

On the Island

3×14 – Exposé

Charlie discovered Nikki’s script for the final episode of the show’s fourth season. Hurley read the script and described Mr. Lashade as a “suave, smooth-talking club owner”. Hurley was shocked to learn about Mr. LaShade’s deceit and true identity as the Cobra. He describes the Cobra as “this big bad guy” whose identity “has been shrouded in mystery for four seasons”.

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Related Character Images

Decoded Season 1 Characters

Hurley Reyes

Charlie Pace

Decoded Season 3 Characters

Nikki Fernandez

Autumn

Crystal

Wiki Info

In Greek mythology, Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Greek sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent. He presided at the Delphic oracle, which existed in the cult center for his mother, Gaia, “Earth,” Pytho being the place name that was substituted for the earlier Krisa. Hellenes considered the site to be the center of the earth, represented by a stone, the omphalos or navel, which Python guarded.

Python became the chthonic enemy of the later Olympian deity Apollo, who slew him and remade his former home and the oracle, the most famous in Classical Greece, as his own. Changes such as these in ancient myths may reflect a profound change in the religious concepts of Hellenic culture. Some were gradual over time and others occurred abruptly following invasion.

Versions and Interpretations

There are various versions of Python’s birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, now thought to have been composed in 522 BCE during Classical times, a small detail is provided regarding Apollo’s combat with the serpent, in some sections identified as the deadly Drakaina, or her parent.

The version related by Hyginus holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not deliver wherever the sun shone. Thus when Apollo the infant was grown he pursued the python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill him with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on his tripod. Robert Graves, who habitually read into primitive myths a retelling of archaic political and social turmoil, saw in this the capturing by Hellenes of a pre-Hellenic shrine. “To placate local opinion at Delphi,” he wrote in The Greek Myths, “regular funeral games were instituted in honour of the dead hero Python, and her priestess was retained in office.”

The politics are conjectural, but the myth reports that Zeus ordered Apollo to purify himself for the sacrilege and instituted the Pythian Games, over which Apollo was to preside, as penance for his act.

Erwin Rohde wrote that the Python was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the Omphalos, and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another.

The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which Greeks explained as named after the rotting (πύθειν) of the slain serpent’s corpse in the strength of Hyperion (day) or Helios (the sun).

Karl Kerenyi points out that the older tales mentioned two dragons, who were perhaps intentionally conflated; the other was a female dragon (drakaina) named Delphyne in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, with whom dwelt a male serpent named Typhon: “The narrators seem to have confused the dragon of Delphi, Python, with Typhon or Typhoeus, the adversary of Zeus”. The enemy dragoness “… actually became an Apollonian serpent, and Pythia, the priestess who gave oracles at Delphi, was named after him. Many pictures show the serpent Python living in amity with Apollon and guarding the Omphalos, the sacred navel-stone and mid-point of the earth, which stood in Apollon’s temple” (Kerenyi 1951:136).

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