The Flash‘s season 2 finale, “The Race of His Life,” revealed the identity of the man in the iron mask. Now the actor speaks about the twist and what comes next.
Warning: This story contains major spoilers from The Flash season 2, episode 23, “The Race of His Life.”
We finally learned the identity of the man in the iron mask: the Earth-3 doppelganger of Henry Allen, Jay Garrick. Yes, the real Jay Garrick. Zolomon tried to steal his speed when he started suffering side effects from Velocity-9, but it didn’t stick. So, he kept Jay locked up on a cell in an iron mask that dampened his powers as a trophy. After Zolomon’s defeat, the team rescued him and removed the helmet.
John Wesley Shipp, whose Henry Allen was killed off in the penultimate episode of season 2, discusses how he found out he was the man in the iron mask and what playing Jay Garrick means to him.
The death of Henry Allen
Shipp tells Variety he didn’t know he was the man in the iron mask until he went to Vancouver to film in March. He figured this filming would feature the death of Henry, saying Henry dying “made perfect sense to me, because Henry had fulfilled his purpose.”
He elaborates to TVLine, “I figured from the beginning that my job was what they said it was: to play Henry Allen; to sort of graft my following onto Grant [Gustin], which was a joy and a pleasure to do; and to be a tool in Grant’s tool box, a place where Barry could come when the special effects stopped and really bare his soul to the audience, through Henry Allen. I figured once that was completed, and Barry had fully accepted his role as a superhero, my job was done.”
A new role
However, once he arrived on set, he started noticing some oddities. He tells Variety, “I was in a costume fitting for a shredded prison uniform, and then I heard a comment about an iron mask, and then I got in touch with Greg Berlanti.” Berlanti “laid out the whole improbable, wonderful, exciting tale, and I was speechless.”
He also tells TVLine that the stand-in actor playing the man in the iron mask was “remarkable.” Shipp says he “asked to meet him, and if you go back and watch the way he uses his hands, he was told to study three actors, and I was one of them.
“The man in the iron mask can only communicate in the way he uses his hands, and the day that he filmed those scenes, he was told it was me that he was to be imitating. And I was told by everybody that his work was remarkable in that way. It just proves that there are no small roles. Someone who shows that much dedication, my hat was off to him.”
Jay Garrick
Though fans wanted him to play Jay Garrick from the jump, Shipp tells Variety he was happy to play Henry because “go[ing] right from the superhero costume 25 years ago to a superhero costume 25 years later would’ve been a little daunting for me — but I got to have two years of this very grounded, gritty, emotion-based, truth-of-the-moment acting role with Grant in the interim. So now maybe I can put on the suit again and have a little bit of fun.”
He also laughs, “It also helps that Jay Garrick is chronologically 92 years old — however, he was exposed to age-reversing vapors, so he’s physically 50 years old. I thought, ‘I could do that. I could play that.'”
With this new character in mind, Shipp says that “the most important thing for me in this final script was, when the iron mask comes off, although he looks like Henry Allen, it’s got to be clear to everyone, including Barry, that this is not Henry.” And, unsurprisingly, this creates a major complication that Jay is completely unaware of.
“It’s this contrast of building this character who looks exactly like Barry’s father but is tonally and attitudinally very different from Henry Allen, who was very available emotionally and much softer; very much a warm blanket for Barry when he was at his most vulnerable. That’s not gonna be Jay. Jay’s a superhero, he’s an original superhero, so he’s not gonna know from all that – my job, at the beginning, anyway, is to differentiate between Henry Allen and Jay Garrick.”
Moving forward
Shipp is extremely excited about transitioning into a new character. “The fact that I’m now getting to morph into an entirely different character that is so important to the Justice Society of America, which also bleeds into Legends of Tomorrow, he’s such an important character to this whole world – it just opens up enormous possibilities for me as an actor going forward,” he explains.
He’s also interested to see how Jay’s presence will impact Barry “because Barry’s going to want to lean on this guy who looks just like his father but is not his father – that can create a whole bunch of psychological conflict too.”
He adds, “I hope there are those awkward moments where Barry tries to get from Jay what he got from Henry and it’s not gonna be forthcoming, and they’re going to have to make their own peace and form their own relationship based on the reality of what is. That opens itself up for all kinds of psychological possibilities.”
However, Shipp doesn’t know much about what is in store for his character yet. He tells IGN, “The only thing that I’ve been told is there is so much more that we can do with you — meaning me, John Wesley — than we could before. Andrew [Kreisberg] and Greg both said, ‘We can’t [wait] to start writing it.'”
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