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This season, COVID may have created some production challenges, and there’s some uncertainty about whether producers can get all the actors they want given the additional complications and costs. But The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace promises that there’s some good stuff coming — not just in terms of story, but in terms of some familiar faces. One of those familiar faces will be John Wesley Shipp, the man who played Barry Allen in the 1990 version of The Flash, and who reprised that role in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event. That character is, sadly, gone now, but Shipp will return as Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-3, in the coming season.
There’s just one problem: didn’t Jay Garrick lose his powers during his last appearance on The Flash? That’s not a problem, Wallace explains; that’s what makes it exciting.
“It’s a blessing that we have such a great roster of really wonderful characters from various seasons that we can bring into our stories, many of whom returned this season, I might add also,” Wallace explained. “We have one of my all time, favorite Flash villains from the first three seasons returns in graphic novel number three. It’s very exciting. I liked doing that, but at the same time, it’s funny. I was just in the process of breaking a story, which might have gone, but we’re shipping in it. The trick is to find a new way to bring them into the story that also gives a fresh character of Jay Garrick, not just the old thing. Cause as we recall, Jay Garrick lost his speed. So what’s he going to do on the show about speedsters? That has made for a real story later in the season.”
Given that the multiverse was folded into a single “Earth-Prime” at the end of the Crisis last season, and a timeline provided by Cisco revealed that Zoom’s attack from season two still happened, suggesting that Earth-2 and Earth-3 were likely folded into the new timeline, too. That means The Flash could plausibly keep its characters ignorant of the reborn multiverse, while also bringing Jay Garrick back in. That seems like a good way to bring him back in as a mentor, but…does a hero in his seventh season really need a mentor anymore? Certainly, it will be interesting to see where the new, powerless Jay fits in.
The seventh season of The Flash will launch tomorrow, March 2, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, just ahead of a new episode of Superman & Lois.