Spoilers ahead for Episode 18 of The Flash, “Versus Zoom.” Consider yourself warned.
For every episode of comic book-based television there will be some audience members who welcome changes to the established canon with open arms, and some who become pissed as hell that TV producers would dare to mess with an aspect of a comic book classic. Such is the case with the most recent episode of CW’s The Flash. Well, show creator Greg Berlanti has heard your cries and he has an answer for you:
Greg Berlanti posted this response on his Twitter page for everyone who has issues, or, you know, just plain hatred, for what happened in last night’s episode of The Flash, “Versus Zoom.” As you may recall, the artist formerly known as Jay Garrick was revealed to actually be Hunter Zolomon using the Jay Garrick/Earth-2 Flash persona as a cover for his life as A) a big time serial killer who escaped from a prison for the criminally insane and B) the super evil Earth-2 meta-human known as Zoom. So, what’s the big deal? Well, Jay Garrick wasn’t just some creation of the TV show, he has a very long history in the comics, and people are pissed that The Flash turned that history on its head.
See, in DC Comics, the Flash didn’t start with Barry Allen, it started with Jay Garrick. He was the first superhero to call himself the Flash back in “Flash Comics #1” in 1940. His Flash is known as a Golden Age superhero, and he was a founding member of the Justice Society of America, as well as the superhero group’s first chairman. He got his super speed as a college student by accidentally inhaling heavy water vapors in the lab where he was working. Jay Garrick is supposed to be a dyed-in-the-wool good guy, not the false alter ego of a maniacal serial killer/super villain.
When viewers of The Flash first met “Jay Garrick” he showed up on Earth-1 as a new friend to Team Flash, and became a mentor to Barry and a boyfriend to Caitlin. He made sure the superhero and his group of friends and supporters trusted him implicitly, only to take away all the hope he helped to bring to the team. Tuesday’s episode showed us that whenever Zoom and Jay were in the same place at the same time, it was actually Hunter Zolomon and a past version of himself who were playing at superhero and supervillain to fool everyone.
Notice how Greg Berlanti mentions that his version of Jay Garrick is “no reinvention” and we should “keep watching.” This sounds a lot like there are some more Earth-1/Earth-2 shenanigans ahead that may give us an official, real, good guy version of Jay Garrick. Who knows, maybe that’s who’s in the mask in the cell in Zoom’s lair. Hopefully it won’t be long before we get the answer to that question. The Flash airs Tuesdays on The CW.
