The Flash’s Jay Garrick: A Closer Look

The CW has officially released a first look at Jay Garrick as he’ll appear on The Flash…and it’s an interesting look.

The official images are dark and somewhat blurry, but there’s still quite a bit to unpack, so let’s take a look at the suit, seen above, in a little more depth.

Let us know if we missed anything…!

The hat

The hat on Jay’s head looks a bit less shiny than we’ve seen in promotional images and in the season finale of The Flash. Whether that means the one we saw didn’t belong to Jay (could it be The Rival’s?), time-travel related or just a question of how the props were developed between when Garrick’s character was conceived and when he appeared on screen is anybody’s guess.

Jay’s slightly more tarnished look lends itself to the World War I comparisons that are often drawn, whereas the very shiny one seen in the ads and the season finale feels more like it ties to Mercury, the Roman god on whom so much of Jay’s look is based.

The pants

As in the comics, the pants are the most basic and boring element of Jay’s costume: here, they look to be just black and probably the same material as the top, and/or Barry’s outfit. In the comics, they almost look like blue jeans in a lot of shots, or perhaps navy blue tights. The most notable element is that they seem fairly true to the comics in that way, and that the boots look higher than the little booties/shoes that Jay often wears in the comics.

The boots

While we get shiny red boots, the most notable thing about them is the wings. It’s hard to tell whether the little Mercury wings really are there — but it looks that way when you zoom in and look at his left foot.

The top

This feels a little Smallville-inspired, something that might be seen as symbolic, since Smallville was obviously The CW’s first successful foray into the DC Universe.

The jacket itself — the leather and those ribbed sleeves — is reminiscent of something you might see on Smallville or in the early X-Men movies. Along with the snap collar (also a characteristic of X-Men costumes), the look feels somewhat like an older-style superhero costume, from an era of movies that’s now bygone. Maybe that’s intentional, given that Jay Garrick was introduced in the ’40s and then reappeared in the ’60s as the hero of an older generation.

In addition to the leather and the gloves, Garrick’s lightning design being a kind of piping thing rather than a solid color feels a bit like a nod and a wink to Bart Allen, Smallville’s speedster, who had a similar look to his costume.