John Wesley Shipp Explains How His Jay Garrick Differs To Henry Allen In The Flash

During The Flash‘s second season, we learned that “Jay Garrick” was in fact the villainous Zoom. However, it was in the finale that we learned the real Jay (who hails from Earth-3) was the Man in the Iron Mask being held by Zoom on Earth-2, but the real twist was that he was the doppelganger of Barry’s recently murdered father Henry Allen.

John Wesley Shipp actually played The Flash in the 90s TV series, but when he was asked in a recent interview to explain the differences between his performance as Jay and Henry, the actor shed some light on both that and the sort of role we can expect the older speedster to play in The CW series.

“I’ve had a blast setting the template for Jay and making sure that his temperature is almost the polar opposite of Henry. Henry’s very warm, very emotionally invested in Barry and Barry’s well being. With Jay, it’s more like, “Okay, I’m the keeper of the Speed Force, you’re a new Flash, what are you doing? Yeah, I look like your dad, sorry about that. Big boy rules. So you want to be a superhero?” And if he sees something about to happen that he thinks might have negative circumstances, of course that raises the question in what ways would Jay intervene? In what ways would Barry go to Jay for advice?”

“In those moments, we see two completely different characters relating to each other. I mean, Grant and I had to learn each other all over again from different character perspectives, which is a trip. We just started laughing sometimes, because it’s so different. Jay’s reactions to Barry are so different than the way Henry would react to Barry that Grant just starts laughing sometimes. [Laughs]”

It’s been confirmed that Jay will return in the second episode of The Flash‘s third season, and based on the comments above, it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing how his relationship with the Scarlet Speedster develops. Barry clearly isn’t going to find a surrogate father in him anyway, though it does sound like Jay could become a mentor of sorts.

The Flash returned to The CW tonight, so expect to hear more on Jay Garrick’s role in the show over the next few week’s as he continues to make his presence felt in the Arrowverse.