‘The Flash’: Teddy Sears On Playing Zoom

“The Flash” is back and Tuesday’s new episode will see the team once again taking on Zoom.

This time though, thanks to Cisco’s vibe, they know that the man behind the mask sure looks like Jay Garrick.

Teddy Sears, who plays the characters (Jay, Hunter and Zoom), told Access Hollywood he was told from the start about the big twist, but he still got to enjoy playing the heroic Earth 2 Flash — Jay — for much of the season.

“When I was offered the job, I got on a call with [‘Flash’ Executive Producer] Andrew Kreisberg and company, and he laid out what his plan was for the season,” Teddy said. “I was going to be play, and be Jay Garrick, and then I was going to die, and then I was going to reemerge as this other character/bad guy for the season, Zoom.”

Jay Garrick has been around all season long, and there was a time as they were shooting the episodes that Teddy wasn’t sure if what he learned on that early call would come to fruition, since there seemed to be no early indications in the scripts that the twist was going to happen.

PHOTOS: Men Of The CW

Men Of The CW

View Gallery

“I thought, ‘Well, they’ve probably changed their minds and this is great because I get to play Jay, and I was growing quite attached to playing Jay,” Teddy said. “I loved everything about being this golden age Flash. So it wasn’t until the episode where Caitlyn and I are walking in the park and I’m pointing out my doppelganger, Hunter Zolomon — once I saw that, I knew, ‘OK, we are in fact going to go down that road,’ and it was actually tough for me to swallow because like I said, I’d grown quite attached to playing Jay and I’d convinced myself that perhaps they’d changed their mind. And I was, of course, doing that because I was having so much fun being Jay.

“This being ‘The Flash,’ though, there’s always … twists and there’s always sort of things up their sleeve, so I imagine that door is not shut, but for the remainder of the season, I will be Hunter Zolomon and all will be explained in this upcoming episode, sort of how that whole ruse works,” he added.

In one of the actor’s most recent appearances on “The Flash,” his character, Zoom, appeared to reach through the last open breach to Earth 2. He grabbed Jay, pulled him back to Earth 2 and killed him. Or did he?

“That gets explained, so was Jay just killed? Who was just killed? Was a person actually killed?” Teddy said. “In sort of comic book ‘Flash’ form, there is an explanation and it sort of fits wonderfully in the world of the comic book genre of course.”

Earth 2’s Hunter Zolomon is not a good guy, and a look into his past in this Tuesday’s episode will explain more. Asked if his character’s speed addiction is also responsible for corrupting Zoom, Teddy said that it doesn’t help matters.

“That’s a really good point. Yeah, You’re absolutely right there. I think the foundation was laid at a very early age for this man to be irreparably damaged and broken and ultimately yes, a sociopath, but you’re right about that. He becomes a speedster and we’ll see visually the backstory, [these] sort of wonderful flashbacks of how Hunter became Zoom, so we’ll see how he gets his powers,” he said. “You layer on the existing personality with now, this ability to exist at super speeds and then of course, this sort of hunger and desire to be even better, even faster — this guy absolutely has that desire to want more and you’re touching on something that we’re going to expand upon in future episodes. But yeah, there’s absolutely an element of that exacerbating an already… sort of corrupted position. It makes it worse and it does cloud judgment.”

“The Flash” returns Tuesday night at 8/7c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash