One of the biggest mysteries of Season 2 of The Flash was of just who was the man behind the Zoom mask. The show did a pretty great job of dropping hints for a number of characters to keep us bamboozled. The reveal that the man whom we had come to know as the friendly Jay Garrick is actually a supervillain is one of the highlights of the entire season so far. As it turns out, plenty of Flash fans are lucky that they didn't know about the big twist way ahead of time. According to Zoom actor Teddy Sears, IMDB originally posted a huge spoiler about his character.
So I signed the contracts, and great, I’m gonna do this for the season. It shows up on IMDB, like, I don’t know, I’m talking like a day or two later, and I’m on IMDB because I’m going to add a Masters of Sex credit. This is June, so I go on to add a credit and I remember, it says Flash – Jay Garrick/Zoom, spoiling it right there…I don’t think much of it because I think well, you know, someone put that there so someone must know what they’re doing. Like a day later, or maybe I don’t know, later that day, Kreisberg sees this, I don’t know how it came to his attention, but he sees it.
Teddy Sears shared the story of how all the world almost knew about his double role during a chat with Kevin Smith on the Fat Man on Batman podcast. It’s almost hard to believe that the big secret of Season 2 could have been ruined so far ahead of time. Season 1 had barely even come to an end as of last June. Flash executive producer Andrew Kreisberg was lucky to have discovered the IMDB spoiler before it got out too far.
Of course, most of us know not to believe every single little thing that we read on IMDB, but a character doubling as both Jay Garrick and Zoom would have felt awfully feasible after the way that Season 1 of The Flash came to an end. The first season finale featured the iconic helmet of Jay Garrick’s Flash falling into Earth 1 after Barry accidentally began opening breaches, and Andrew Kreisberg himself revealed early on that Zoom would be Barry’s nemesis in Season 2. IMDB connecting Teddy Sears to both Jay Garrick and Zoom could have been enough to add credibility to the credit.
Luckily, the IMDB spoiler went up in early summer before many of us were desperate enough for Season 2 information that we’d be trolling sites for tidbits, so the reveal that Teddy Sears would be playing two characters apparently went unnoticed to the public at large. Personally, I’m glad that Andrew Kreisberg found out about the IMDB leak sooner rather than later. Season 2 might have been distinctly less fun if we hadn’t been able to speculate about just who might be the latest sinister speedster.
There are only a few episodes left of Season 2, so we can only hope that The Flash is planning on finding the time to answer some of the biggest questions that have arisen about Garrick/Zoom. How is he related to Barry and Henry Allen? Who is the man in the iron mask in Zoom’s dungeon? How does that helmet stay on his head when he travels at impossible speeds?
Tune in to The Flash on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW to see more of Teddy Sears as Jay Garrick/Zoom, and don’t forget to check out our summer TV premiere schedule.
