The Flash season ahead is not yet done with The Fastest Man Alive of Earth-3, nor his portrayer John Wesley Shipp.
The actor recently revealed to fans’ joy that the Golden Age Flash has survived Crisis On Infinite Earths. However, if not for the pandemic, we would have seen him by now.
“I know Jay Garrick is coming back [to The Flash],” Shipp says, “but they were supposed to be at a further point in the story. They didn’t get to play out the end of season six because of [COVID as we know. Eric Wallace] has said that he [wants to] talk to me about some ideas about Jay Garrick going forward.”
The Flash Season 7 – How is Jay Garrick Alive?
At the conclusion of last year’s dimension-shattering crossover event, The Spectre rebooted the universe and combined the paragons’ Earths into Earth-Prime. What that means is now Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning, and other CWverse heroes how share the same universe as the CW’s version of The Justice League.
But what about Jay?
“We know that [Jay and Joan Williams-Garrick] are on Earth Prime, ” Shipp confirmed. “We’ll see what they come up with. My experience with this group is that they’ve given you every reason to have faith that whatever they come up with is going to be interesting and you’re going to want to play with it.”
The manner in which they will bring Jay back brings up a host of challenges. Firstly, as evident on both Batwoman and The Flash, the rules of the Multiverse have changed. Even though – as evident in the epilogue clips – the Multiverse was reborn, Earth Prime science cannot detect it. If former Vibe and multiverse expert Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) cannot find it, everything thinks that it is actually dead. Further, doppelgangers can no longer share the same Earth without suffering fatal neurological deterioration unless one dies before the other. Case in point, Batwoman dealt with the doppelganger of Kate’s psychotic twin sister Alice showing up unexpectedly. Almost immediately, both Beth and Alice started to experience intense neurological effects of sharing space. Earth Prime Beth/Alice survived only with the murder of her doppelganger.
That being said, if Jay and Joan have survived, how are the writers going to explain the resemblance they bear to Barry Allen’s deceased parents? Shipp has played, in fact, three different characters on the show: Henry Allen, Jay, and Barry Allen of Earth-90, the version Shipp had portrayed in the 1990 Flash TV series. He even got to close out the latter’s journey in heroic fashion as he took the place of Earth-1 Barry to save the Multiverse. In the case of Jay, Henry Allen in season 2 mentioned that his mother’s maiden name was Garrick, so a familial connection to this Earth’s Barry could be possible.
Showrunner Eric Wallace would confirm their return but not reveal any secrets. “There are things that have not changed, but are a little different. [For example, a] Jay Garrick who used to be on another earth. Jay Garrick’s now on our Earth now, Jay and Joan are alive. So, at some point, we, hopefully, will run into them because they’re a part of our world. You never know what kind of familiar face you might run into.”
John, at the same time, is starting to feel the clock running in another area. “They need to hurry up because I’m not getting any younger.”
The Flash Season 7 is expected to return in January 2021.
