‘Stargirl’: John Wesley Shipp To Reprise His Role As Jay Garrick
John Wesley Shipp is set to don the winged hat again, as he reprises his role as Jay Garrick, aka the original Flash, this time in DC show ‘Stargirl‘.
Stargirl’ follows high school sophomore Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger – ‘School of Rock’) who inspires an unlikely group of young heroes to stop the villains of the past. The series reimagines Stargirl and the very first superhero team, the Justice Society of America, in a fun, exciting and unpredictable series.
John Wesley Shipp will appear in episode nine of season two, which features a… well… literal Flash-back. According to the description from The CW, Garrick will appear “in a pivotal flashback episode” which shows “the Golden Age Flash as a member of Earth-2’s Justice Society of America.” This also properly establishes ‘Stargirl’ as part of the post ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’ “CWverse” (or Arrowverse to the rest of us) alongside ‘The Flash’, ‘Superman & Lois’, ‘Batwoman’, ‘Black Lightning’, ‘Supergirl’, and ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’.
This will actually be the first time we’ve seen Jay Garrick take his rightful place as part of the JSA in live-action, despite the team having been on-screen in various incarnations before. The group previously popped up on both ‘Smallville’ and ‘Legends Of Tomorrow’, but neither version included Garrick on-screen. In the comic books, Garrick has always been a key member of the JSA, so it’s nice to finally see him where he belongs.
John Wesley Shipp has a long history with The Flash, having originally played a version of Barry Allen in the CBS 90s tv show. He was then brought on board The CW series to play Henry Allen, father to Grant Gustin’s Barry, but went on to double up as pre-Crisis “Earth-3” Jay Garrick for the series. Post-crisis, a new multiverse was established, which moved some of the characters around onto different Earths. All the main Arrowverse shows were collapsed onto “Earth-Prime” with ‘Stargirl’ on “Earth-2”, ‘Titans’ on “Earth-9”, ‘Doom Patrol‘ on “Earth-21”, ‘Swamp Thing’ on “Earth-19”, and ‘Lucifer’ on “Earth-666”.
In the comic books, “Earth-2” is the home to all the “Golden Age” superheroes, so it makes sense that there would be a Jay Garrick on that Earth. However, as this version is appearing in a flashback, it is possibly not the same version that we have seen on ‘The Flash’… If your brain is now melting with all this, don’t worry, just roll with it!
‘Stargirl‘ Season 2 is set to air at some point in 2021 (likely Summer) on The CW in the USA. The series airs on Amazon Prime in the UK.
