‘The Flash’s most mystifying cameo proves the DC multiverse truly is in tatters

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Flash.

The Flash is finally here, offering the DC cinematic universe’s first deep-dive into the multiverse. As it’s arguably playing catch-up with both the MCU and Sony’s Spider-Verse, the Ezra Miller vehicle attempts to make sure fans get enough bang for their buck by featuring a range of cameos for beloved characters running the full gamut of DC media throughout history.

Unfortunately, the cameos director Andy Muschietti and his team decided to go with are somewhat questionable, as is the janky CGI used to make them a reality. For context, during the film’s third act, Barry Allen’s attempts to rewrite the timeline over and over to ensure everyone survives the fight with General Zod causes the walls of reality to begin ripping asunder, thereby opening portals to other universes.

Among those heroes glimpsed through these portals are (chilling computer-generated avatars of) Christopher Reeve’s Superman, Helen Slater’s Supergirl, Nicolas Cage’s Superman, and George Reeves’ Superman. The glimpse into Reeves’ universe also allows The Flash to tip its hat — or metal winged helmet, as the case may be — to the original version of the Scarlet Speedster in the comics, Jay Garrick.

While giving Garrick a moment in the movie is an appreciated gesture, the choice of actor to bring Garrick to life is enough to take any hardened DC fan out of the moment. The Garrick of the George Reeves universe is played by Teddy Sears, star of The CW’s The Flash. Sears joined the cast of that series in season two as the Garrick of Earth-2.

The only problem? That same season later revealed he was not Garrick at all, but supervillain speedster Zoom in disguise. John Wesley Shipp, who first played Barry Allen in 1990’s The Flash show, was ultimately outed as the real Jay Garrick. All this is in recent memory too, as both Sears’ Zoom and Shipp’s Jay just returned for The Flash‘s recent series finale.

So with Sears having no actual connection to the Garrick character, it’s a bizarre choice to cast him in that role in The Flash. Especially when Shipp is sitting right there as a much more logical pick. It’d be interesting to hear the thought process behind this, but at present it seems like The Flash‘s production team may have accidentally admitted that they stopped watching The CW series somewhere in the middle of season two on the biggest platform possible.