John Wesley Shipp as Jay Garrick (photo: The CW)
Seeing Jay Garrick (the real Jay Garrick) for the first time was a punch in the gut to The Flash’s Barry Allen. But it wasn’t very simple for actor John Wesley Shipp, either.
“Resetting my relationship with … Barry was a very interesting experiment,” Shipp told the crowd at Atlanta’s DragonCon.
“Whereas Henry was very warm in temperature, was the soft shoulder … Jay comes in and is like, ‘uh, yeah. I look like your dad. Sorry about that.’”
Shipp said becoming the the Earth 3 speedster was like getting to know his castmates all over again. And there were some growing pains.
“It was a little uncomfortable,” according to Shipp. “I have to say, I missed the warm Henry-Barry relationship.”
The adjustment, mostly, was having to act distant toward his onscreen son until being called upon to take Wally West’s place in the Speed Force Prison. Shipp, of course, played The Scarlet Speedster himself back in the 1990 incarnation, but he’s certainly a fan of the new show. When asked what he would take from his Barry Allen universe to bring to the Flarrowverse version, Shipp flipped the question on its head.
“The new show is doing so many things right … I would go in the other direction. I would take the character arcs, and the story arcs, and the emotional content arcs of the new show, and pull it back into the O.G. Flash.”
Great sentiment, if only it wasn’t coming from the guy who told Barry that time travel fractures the space-time continuum, maybe we could have had this Flash 27 years ago. Oof, the paradox of time travel.
Despite the fact that the Crimson Comet is in a self-imposed semi-retirement, we have a feeling the Flarrowverse hasn’t seen the last of the O.G. Flash.
At least, we hope not!