The Flash: Could Zoom Be a Twin?

Spoilers ahead.

This week on The CW’s The Flash, fans were finally shown the true face of Zoom.

It did little to answer questions about the nature of his identity or motives.

When Zoom finally unmasked on Earth-2 at the end of Tuesday’s episode, it was Teddy Sears — the actor who plays Jay Garrick — who provided his face. Was it a betrayal by a trusted member of Team Flash, like last year when Harrison Wells turned out to be the Reverse-Flash?

Maybe? Probably? Kind of?

According to post-show interviews, the answer is yes: they’ve been betrayed by Jay Garrick, who has been among them all along. He’s Hunter Zolomon, though, which left a lot of fans wondering whether there was a real Jay Garrick or not, and if so, are he and Zolomon really one and the same?

A popular theory is that Garrick is the man in the iron mask, seen in captivity at Zoom’s base on Earth-2. It’s not a bad theory, but it does raise other questions: if the man in the maks is Jay Garrick, and Zoom is Hunter Zolomon, then how many of each man are there? Do they look alike?

Because unless there’s some kind of crazy misdirection going on, we have an Earth-1 Zolomon, the man we’ve known as Jay Garrick, and Zoom. All of whom share Teddy Sears’s face. Even accounting for Earth-1 and Earth-2 counterparts, Zolomon seemingly has a third “self” in the mix.

It’s The Flash, so time-travel is obviously a possibility…but one would think that Zoom would be the ultimate version of himself, not a middle step — which would mean “Jay Garrick” was a younger self, and killing him would be more than a momentary problem for the villain.

And of course, Jay being Zoom kind of begs the question: what about all those Earth-2 denizens, including Harry and Jesse, who have seen him as The Flash and believed in him? Who knew his name?

A popular theory online, one that explains all of this, is that Zoom and Garrick might actually be twins.

The role of twins in the universe of DC Comics’s The Flash is an interesting one.

First off, let’s acknowledge that Zoom is essentially a doppelganger of The Flash. This is the second year in a row The Flash’s primary nemesis has been a mirror image of himself, with the Reverse Flash showing up last year to stir up trouble. Jay Garrick had Rival, who is basically a Golden Age version of this same idea.

But more than that, there’s the issue of actual, literal, biological twins.

Barry Allen’s children are twins. Born in the future to Barry and Iris while they were staying in the thirtieth century, the pair are called the Tornado Twins.

Wally West — who succeeded Barry as The Flash — and Linda Park also had twins, who also had powers and became sidekicks to Wally briefly during Mark Waid’s second run on the title just prior to The Flash: Rebirth.

And, of course, Barry Allen has a twin.

Established very late in the game, Malcolm Thawne — better known as the villain Cobalt Blue — is a twin brother of Barry’s revealed during Wally’s time as The Flash. Malcolm was taken away from Barry’s mother at birth and given to another family because a drunk doctor thought that was a sensible approach to one mother having twins and another having a stillbirth. Later in life, Thawne — aside from being the start of the Reverse-Flash family tree — developed a hatred for The Flash.

Given Cobalt Blue’s blue lightning, some people had speculated early on that he could be tied to Zoom…but what if he is, only in a very theoretical way?

Giving Barry a long-lost twin — especially so soon after having done that to Iris, who in this continuity is a member of Barry’s adopted family — could present some major storytelling problems for the show. Giving one to Jay Garrick, though? It would explain the (at least) three Teddy Sears characters, and give a story that’s similar in structure to the Cobalt Blue thing.

After all, when Wally was The Flash, Barry was “the previous Flash.” For Barry, the previous Flash is Jay.

…Or is it Zolomon? All this stuff is so confusing.