Will the real Jay Garrick please stand up?
If you’re anything like me, and you’ve stayed up all night wondering who Zoom and the Man in the Iron Mask are, you’re probably not here for the recap. You know what happened already.
Unfortunately, not everyone stays awake at night trying to figure out the mysteries of CW shows, and a fair amount happened in ‘Escape From Earth-2’, so I’ll go ahead and recap what needs recapping.
Zoom is looking for Wells, even going so far as to pull a Dark Knight Rises and spell it out on skyscrapers. Only some quick thinking (and a magical wall-dissolving gun) from Wells keeps him hidden from Zoom.
Wells and Cisco begin planning their infiltration of Zoom’s supervillain lair, and they bring Iris, who’s there to avenge her father, and Barry-2, because why the hell not, along with them.
Barry-2 does some Felicity Smoaking and leads them to Killer Frost, the only person they can think of who might know how to find Zoom’s prison. She is eventually overwhelmed by Wells’s wall-dissolver and agrees to help.
In the prison, Barry and Jesse Quick are working on an escape plan of their own, when they are distracted by a third prisoner: a mute man in an iron mask (we’ll call him Iron Mask), who is tapping a code on the wall of his cell.
Why Iron Mask couldn’t just draw out the letters in mid-air is the real mystery here, but we’ll gloss over that one. Barry and Jesse put their heads together and begin working out the message he is trying to convey: ‘J… A… Y…’
‘Jay Garrick?’ asks Barry, to which the figure nods encouragingly, but Barry’s attempts to comfort Iron Mask, explaining that Jay is safe on Earth-1, do not go down well. Iron Mask writhes desperately, when they are interrupted by Wells, Cisco, Iris, Barry-2 and Frost.
Wells saves his daughter, but Barry can’t phase from his cell (because of Earth-2 science) and Frost can’t break through the carbide walls. A pep talk from Barry-2 is all Barry-1 needs to remember how to phase, but in steps Zoom.
Killer Frost, still angry that Zoom killed Deathstorm, surprises him with an ice beam just as he is about to kill Jesse, and she does enough to hold him off while the other make their escape.
Barry wants to free Iron Mask, but he’s forgotten how to phase again. He tells Iron Mask that he will come back for him, to which Iron Mask stands tall and triumphant, confident in Barry, and obviously, on his side.
Iris-2 and Barry-2 leave Central to be with family in Atlantis, and Jesse and Cisco make it back through the breach. Barry and Wells are about to follow, but Zoom only went and unfroze himself in time to see them off.
They just about make it through, and the breach is closed for good thanks to Jay’s detonation.
But without Jay there might not have been a breach at all. With Geomancer still causing havoc on Earth-1, Jay is making his way through all numbers of Velocities in an attempt to regain his speed.
When they reach Velocity-9, Caitlin finds that Jay’s cells have stopped degenerating, and he is able to use the speed force for an extended period of time. When Geomancer invades the ever-secure S.T.A.R. Labs, and destabilises the breach, Jay must steady it by circling it at super-speed.
Things are going pretty well. Caitlin stuns Geomancer, Jay sciences the sh*t out of the breach, and everyone makes it back through. Unfortunately, Jay ruins everything by standing right next to the closing breach with a stupid grin on his face, which allows Zoom to reach a hand through both the breach and Jay’s chest, and pull him back into Earth-2. So close.
Now, a lot of the theories I’ve read as to who Zoom and Iron Mask are suggest that Jay is not dead, but that he’s not actually Jay, and he’s working with/for Zoom.
The emerging theory is that Iron Mask IS the real Jay Garrick. Iron Mask’s cell was made up of the same carbide that held Barry, so it must be a speedster behind the mask, and anyway, Jay Garrick is supposed to be older than the one we know.
The Jay we know, then, has to be an impostor, infiltrating Team Flash for Zoom, and his apparent death at the hands of Zoom was planned between them.
So who is impersonating Jay? Well, Jay’s Golden Age rival, Edward Clariss, actually created Velocity-9, but was laughed at when he presented it as a way for anyone to achieve access to the speed force.
Clariss lost his mind and took the Velocity for himself, but during a battle with Garrick’s Flash, he reached light speed and trapped himself in the speed force.
Clariss was retrieved from the speed force in a comic book written by The Flash‘s own executive producer Geoff Johns, and returned a being of pure energy, who, conveniently, could possess the bodies of others.
Edward Clariss is not a name we know from the show, so if this is the way the writers are going, Clariss will likely have be changed to someone we’re familiar with.
Henry Allen and Earth-2 Wally West are still unaccounted for in all this, and you don’t just drop the name Hunter Zolomon in a season where Zoom is the big bad and leave it at that.
I’m still convinced Earth-2 Eddie is involved in all this; his first name matches Clarris’s, and he was sucked into the black hole at the end of season one. Who’s to say he didn’t become a being of pure energy in that hole of his?
Another theory proposes that Iron Mask is Johnny Quick, Jesse’s father in the comics. The Flash is obviously open to using the Quick/Chambers family, Johnny is a speedster himself, and on top of that, Johnny summons his powers by way of speaking a formula. It’s possible that Zoom put the mask on Johnny to keep him from muttering the formula. But what connects Johnny and Jay?
And if Jay is Iron Mask, why did he start his sentence with the word ‘Jay’? You don’t introduce yourself as ‘*Name*, I am,’ unless you’re in the Black Eyed Peas. What if Iron Mask is from the future, and was warning Barry of what was going to happen to Jay, who is in actual fact, the real Jay?
I’ll stop before this whole thing falls apart and my brain starts to melt, but I’m going with the idea that Iron Mask is the real Jay, the pretend Jay is Edward Clariss under a different name (one we would recognise) and Zoom is… someone else. I haven’t got time for Zoom right now.
The Flash returns to the CW next Tuesday.
