Warning: Spoilers for The Flash are ahead. If you still need to catch up, you should stop reading...now
When The Flash slapped audiences with the realization that Hunter Zolomon is actually this season’s Big Bad, Zoom, they pulled out all the storyline stops. And, it looks like before Season 2 ends, we’ll mostly have an explanation for why Zoom has been zooming between Earths and scooping up Flashes to steal the hero’s speed. Teddy Sears, who portrays Zoom/Jay Garrick/Hunter Zolomon, has some interesting thoughts on how Zoom and The Flash actually share something in common.
We’re going to see what happened to Hunter as a child look almost exactly like what happened to Barry when he was a child...The template was set at a very early age for both characters. Hunter goes the opposite way that Barry goes; that’s what I can tease about where it all began, which of course gets into some really exciting stuff when Hunter and Barry begin to interact, because there’s a lot of stuff that bubbles up to the surface for Hunter that he didn’t realize was there.
Teddy Sears spoke with Entertainment Weekly about how the audience of The Flash will see a resemblance between what led to Barry Allen becoming a superhero, and what influenced Hunter Zolomon and made him a supervillain. It looks like the two are more similar than we could have imagined.
As we all know by now, Barry lost his mom when the Reverse-Flash broke into their home when he was 10-years-old and killed his mother. Barry’s father was then accused and convicted of the murder, meaning that Barry basically lost both his parents in one fell swoop. Judging by Teddy Sears’ words, Hunter Zolomon went through something seriously traumatic as a child that led to him thinking to hell with it and become a bad guy on a mad quest for as much power as possible. Since his childhood trauma apparently mirrors that of Barry’s, it’s likely that he lost someone, probably a parent or two, very close to him at a young age.
So, for Barry, losing his mother and having his dad incarcerated led him to work within the legal system to try to prove his dad’s innocence and find the person who really killed his mom. Meanwhile, Hunter used a similar event to grow angry, cold and desperate to keep something like that from happening to him again. Hunter also let that resentment fester, which would be easy to do, while Barry was able to live with hope after the tragedies of his past. Once they both see their similarities, it’s sure to freak them right out. And, whatever “bubbles up to the surface for Hunter” will surely be fuel for more cruelty.
Well, I can’t wait to see how two such different characters end up with some commonalities other than speed. The Flash will air more new episodes starting with Episode 18, “Versus Zoom,” which airs on April 19.
