“Flash” producers have cast 38-year-old Teddy Sears as Jay Garrick!
The news is certain to set hearts aflutter among those who once thrilled to “Flash of Two Worlds,” the September 1961 storyline in The Flash #123 that essentially created the DC Multiverse.
In that issue, Barry Allen learned that Jay Garrick, the Flash introduced in 1940, was still active in 1961 – but living in an alternate universe on a planet that would come to be known as Earth-2. Eventually we’d learn that all of Garrick’s Justice Society pals from the 1940s – Alan “Green Lantern” Scott, Carter “Hawkman” Hall, Al “Atom” Pratt and the rest – were all still living on Earth-2 with Garrick.
We also came to learn that Kal-El, the Superman of the 1960s, was not the same guy as Kal-L, the Superman of the 1940s. At some point DC Comics stopped publishing the adventures of the Earth-2 Superman (son of Jor-L, later adopted by John and Mary Kent) and began publishing the adventures of an Earth-1 Superman (son of Jor-El, adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent). Precisely when that transition took place, though, is impossible for anyone to say!
Once Garrick and Allen became aware of each other, Earth-2’s Justice Society of America (featuring Jay Garrick and Alan Scott) and Earth-1’s Justice League of America (featuring Barry Allen and Hal Jordan) shared many adventures together, usually in the service of extinguishing some manner of trans-dimensional “crisis.”
In the comics, the Justice Society’s original Dinah “Black Canary” Lance, born on Earth-2, moved to Earth-1 to join the Justice League and (following the death of her husband Larry) serve as romantic interest to Earth-1’s Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen. (No word on any difficulty getting her mail forwarded to her new universe.)
Sears, whose extensive TV resume includes recurring roles on “Studio 60,” “The Defenders,” “Torchwood,” “666 Park Avenue,” “American Horror Story” and “Masters of Sex,” in 2005 played Batman on an episode of “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
"The Flash" returns to the CW Oct. 6.
