‘The Flash’ Season 2 Finale: Actor Talks Man In The Iron Mask Reveal (Spoiler Alert!)

“The Flash” found a new ally in the show’s Season 2 finale.

(Spoiler Alert: This story contains major details from “The Flash.” Watch first and bookmark this link to come back to later.)

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‘The Flash’ Season 2 Finale: Actor Talks Man In The Iron Mask Reveal (Spoiler Alert!) (The CW)

PHOTOS: ‘The Flash’ Season 2 Finale: Scenes From ‘The Race Of His Life’

'The Flash' Season 2 Finale: Scenes From 'The Race Of His Life'

‘The Flash’ Season 2 Finale: Scenes From ‘The Race Of His Life’

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Barry Allen may have lost his father when the villainous Zoom killed Henry Allen, but a man with his dad’s face turned up in the Season 2 finale. The multiverse expanded a little more in Tuesday night’s episode when viewers found out the man in the iron mask is Earth 3’s Jay Garrick, a hero now being played by the man who also played Barry’s dad – John Wesley Shipp.

John, who played Barry Allen/The Flash in 1990’s “The Flash,” found out about the twist in March, just as he was coming to the realization that Henry Allen had maybe served his purpose to his young, hero son Barry.

“The whole first season was so wonderful to perform that function for Grant’s Barry — to be the one place where, when all the special effects stopped, when the music stopped, when the lights went down, he had a place where he could come and bare his soul. And it was important also for the audience to be able to see that side of Barry, and I really felt that that was my role as Henry Allen was to provide him that tool in his toolbox. So, I think once we had achieved that, I figured that Henry Allen’s shelf life [was] coming to an end,” John told Access Hollywood. “I didn’t know everything that was going to come after that.”

John Wesley Shipp as Jay Garrick in ‘The Flash’ Season 2 finale
John Wesley Shipp as Jay Garrick in ‘The Flash’ Season 2 finale (Katie Yu/The CW)

After a costume fitting where he was “trying on this ripped prison looking suit,” John learned all on a phone call with his former “Dawson’s Creek” boss, “The Flash” Executive Producer Greg Berlanti.

“We had a long conversation, and they said, ‘Well, this is what we’re thinking.’ And at the end of it, my jaw dropped and I was like, ‘Well, first of all, let me just say — and not because it’s me — but this is brilliant television and it’s brilliant sort of channeling of… audience expectation, because all along they wanted me to be Jay Garrick,'” John said, referring to fans of the show, who at conventions around the world would often tell him they loved him as Henry, but wanted to see him as Jay.

John said now feels like the right time to play Jay.

“I would not [have] wanted to have come on and played Jay Garrick from the get-go, because to come on and play a costumed superhero again, 25 years later, without the intervening character…  Henry Allen was all about the truth of the moment, was a character part, was Barry’s link to vulnerability and truth and honesty and it was all about the work that we did actor to actor. Since I have grounded myself in that, I think maybe now I can go have some fun once again in a costume, although it blows my mind. I can hardly say it. Whoever expected to be running around in a superhero suit a quarter of a century later? It’s kind of unbelievable,” he said.

So what was the costume process like for John this time around?

“Well, I’ll tell you that so many improvements have been made in 25 years that I’m very grateful for. One is there’s an under suit and an outer shell, which means the under suit can be washed. That wasn’t the case 25 years ago. They’d just hang the suits in my trailer and spray them with Lysol. So, there are definite improvements,” John said.

John praised “The Flash” costume designer Maya Mani for crafting the Jay Garrick/The Flash suit.

“Maya and that group, you really have to hand it to them,” John said of their work. “And let’s just say I came out of those fittings looking a hell of a lot better than I looked going into those fittings through their wizardry. And when I walked on the set in the Jay Garrick uniform, the crew and the cast all burst into applause — a lot of that applause was from Maya. It was just very exciting, and the whole cast — and this is a testament to who this cast is and what makes them special — they just could not have been more affirming, because I was very, very – obviously I’m not who I was 25 years ago and nor do I pretend to be, but at one point, Grant turned the monitor on the camera around so I could see it and he was very excited. He said, ‘Look, look, look what you look like! Look at it. This is great!’ and Jesse said, ‘I’m just so glad man, that you agreed to do this,’ and Tom [Cavanagh] came to the trailer and was talking to me about how it had worked and that the true testament was not what the other actors or your friends said, but what the members of the crew — [they] would just come up spontaneously and give a thumbs up or give, ‘That looks fantastic,’ or be very excited. So, I’ll see. It’ll be my own standards [Tuesday] night, how I react to it, but I have to say, I got all the affirmation in the world from doing it.”

Going forward, John confirmed he’ll be a part of Season 3.

John Wesley Shipp as Jay Garrick in ‘The Flash’ Season 2 finale
John Wesley Shipp as Jay Garrick in ‘The Flash’ Season 2 finale (Katie Yu/The CW)

“I’ve been cleared to let you know that yes, there are lots of plans for me going forward in ways that will sort of excite me from a fun point of view and challenge me as an actor. So yeah, I’ll be around,” he said.

And it will be interesting to see how Jay reacts to Barry, who sees his dad’s face whenever he looks at him.

“I think that the psychological construct going forward of course [is Barry] has lost his dad. He always wanted to be mentored by Jay, but he couldn’t be because Jay was an imposter. And now he has the possibility of being mentored by a superhero, but he looks just like his dad,” John said. “So there’s going to be the impulse to want to relate to Jay like his father, and Henry and Barry had a very specific, very intimate, very vulnerable, hands-on relationship, and that’s not going to be who Jay is,” John said.

Although the reveal is now out, John said some of his friends in Hollywood actually figured it out by the hand movements of the actor who portrayed the man in the mask earlier in the season.

“They had him study three actors, and they said, ‘We want you to look at the way they use their hands, the way they gesture, the way their hands are in repose,’ because all he could do was tap and make hand gestures as you know, and then the day that he filmed it, they told him, ‘OK, it’s John. We want you to imitate John of the three,’ and when I go back now and I look at that, I’m amazed at the specificity of this guy’s work and it’s not only me, people were calling me – people in the business, actors, going, ‘Look at the way he uses his hands. It’s almost a giveaway, because it’s so specific to how you gesture,'” John recounted. “So I definitely wanted to meet that guy, and a lot of the credit goes to him because it was not me.”

“The Flash” returns Tuesdays, this fall on The CW.

Jolie Lash

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