Who Is Zoom? My Favorite Theories about The Flash
WARNING! SPOILERS!
My favorite show on television right now is The Flash. Apart from the amazing writing and acting, the mysteries surrounding the identities of key characters have provided me with hours of entertainment. Last season, I obsessed over the identity of the Reverse Flash, and this season, I’ve been trying to figure out the identity of Zoom, of the prisoner in the iron mask, and of the man who claims to be Jay Garrick.
Initially, I thought Zoom might be the E-2 Wally West given the E-1 Wally’s obsession with speed and the jealousy developing between him and E-1 Barry, but the latest episode showed Zoom’s face to be one we associate with Jay Garrick.
So then I thought maybe each earth has a set of twins separated at birth–Jay Garrick and Hunter Zolomon. But neither Barry nor Caitlyn could find evidence on E-1 that a Jay Garrick ever existed. It’s possible that the E-1 Jay Garrick died in childbirth. So maybe E-2 Hunter Zolomon is Zoom, and he coerced E-2 Harrison Wells to steal his E-2 twin’s speed force (if Zoom could steal it on his own, why does he need Wells to help him steal Barry’s?). Wells may have secretly tried to restore the speed force to E-2 Jay Garrick with his Velocity formulas, which had the unforeseen consequences of destroying Jay Garrick’s cells. Jay Garrick then may have gone to E-1 hoping to find a way to restore his speed and defeat Zoom. The man in the iron mask could then be either the E-1 Hunter Solomon or the E-1 Jay Garrick (if that twin didn’t die in childbirth). However, this doesn’t provide me with a satisfying explanation for the reaction the prisoner has when E-1 Barry says that Jay Garrick from E-2 is alive on E-1.
The most satisfying explanation for the prisoner’s reaction is that he is, indeed, the E-2 Jay Garrick. It seems reasonable that the first thing a prisoner would try to spell out is his own name.
However, the tension between Wells and the man who calls himself Jay Garrick is so real and intense. I think Wells is too smart to have been fooled by an impostor of Jay. And even when the two characters are alone after “Jay” saves Wells’s life, Wells calls him Jay. If he knew he wasn’t Jay, he’d call him by his real name–unless he was E-1 Jay (but if that were the case, Caitlyn and Barry should have discovered some evidence of his existence).
Other people have suggested that Zoom, his prisoner, and the Jay that works with Team Flash are future, past, and present Jay. Future Jay travels back to the past and makes a prisoner of his past self as life insurance as he attempts to take speed force and healthy cells from his present self. The present Jay works with Team Flash to overcome the side effects caused to him by his future self (when he tells Caitlyn that he’s done some bad things, he may be referring to his future self). But he can’t give his own future self away for fear of bringing harm to his present self. This sounds like a great theory to me, and if it’s true, I think Wells would be aware of it all, and this would further explain the strange tension between Wells and Jay.
Others have also put forth a clone theory—that the three Jay Garricks are clones, possibly created by experimentation done by Harrison Wells. However, clones usually aren’t made as fully grown adults. Genetic material is cloned and fertilized in vitro. I don’t see how all three clones could be relatively the same age, but I suppose some strange new science could have caused it.
One other possibility I’ve thought of is that an E-2 Eobard Thawne came back in time to destroy the E-2 Flash (Jay Garrick) and failed and got stuck (like our E-1 Eobard) and then, instead of taking over Wells’s identity, he takes over the identity of either Jay Garrick or E-2 Hunter Zolomon. The prisoner could either be Jay Garrick, E-2 Hunter Zolomon, or E-2 Eddie Thawne (as E-2 Eobard’s life insurance). But I’ve had less faith in this theory lately, because I can’t shake the feeling that the Jay that works with Team Flash is the real Jay, in spite of the prisoner’s reaction to E-1 Barry’s statement that Jay Garrick is alive on E-1.
Other people have said that maybe Henry Allen is either Zoom or the prisoner behind the mask, but the E-1 Barry Allen discovers that his E-2 mom and dad are alive and well during his visit to E-2.
So, for now, I think I’m going with the Jay Garrick time-travel theory–which was not my own. It explains why Zoom looks like Jay, why the first thing the prisoner spells is the name Jay, and why Harrison Wells seems to believe that the guy helping Team Flash is Jay.
What are your theories? I’d love to hear them!
The post Who Is Zoom? My Favorite Theories about The Flash appeared first on Eva Pohler Books.
