Since the airing of The Flash’s 18th episode of it’s second season fans have been baffled and confused at the complexity that is Hunter Zolomon’s plan (and the actual logic/possibility behind said plan); below I’ve done my best to work out a rough – very rough – timeline of the events that began with Hunter Zolomon becoming Zoom and end with the [temporary] loss of Barry Allen’s speed.
As aforementioned the timeline above is fairly rough, some of the points on it are merely speculative, whereas others are set in stone. That said, I’ll do my best to break down the occurrences in shorter increments that what is being shown above in order to explain my rationale for including some of the more speculative elements of the timeline.
THE TIMELINE
The Serial Killer is Caught: Versus Zoom told the story of a boy whose early life began quite similar to that of Barry Allen with exception to a few minor details. Of those details are the fact that Hunter’s father actually killed his mother, and in front of a young Hunter none-the-less. Unfortunately, essentially homeless, a young Hunter was placed in the foster care system and eventually grew up to become a very twisted shell of a man. This man, became a serial killer, and as Harry Wells stated serial killers are a rarity on Earth-2, hence his existence (as the long haired, bearded, killer) being well known to the public.
The Flash is Born (?): While receiving experimental shock-therapy, in an attempt to “cure’ Zolomon, the facility (and therefore it’s occupants) were struck by a dark matter wave similar to the one released on Earth-1 the night Barry Allen was struck by lightning. Despite the fact that those around him seemingly died [or maybe they were just knocked out(?)] Hunter Zolomon not only gained speed, but then chose to put his speed to use in the most villainous way possible…inspire hope just to steal it away.
It is at this point that – apparently as a means of toying with the public – The Flash, a hero, emerged in the publics eye. “Jay” commented earlier in the season that his powers had emerged a little over two years prior to his appearance on Earth-1, and Harry Wells commented that Zoom first appeared as “blue lightning zooming around” when he killed a bunch of police officers; this would imply Zoom emerged after the Velocity-serums begun to take their toll on Hunter. That said, the show has also made clear that – due to suspension of belief – the public recognized Jay Garrick as The Flash (but not as Hunter Zolomon) and that Zoom’s chorines were never made aware of Hunter’s duel speedster personas.
And what of the Man in the Mask?:
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The Real Jay Garrick: Personally, I’m inclined to believe that the man in the mask on Earth-2 is the real Jay Garrick, someone whose may have had his speed drained from him [by Zoom], and has been left as a last resort just in case [whether he be from Earth-2, or another Earth]. I’d like to think that The Flash writing team gives us an actual reason behind Hunter Zolomon choosing the codename, “Jay Garrick” and the origin that he did for his alias, and I’d hope that their reasoning was merely that Jay arrived on “Earth-2” from his Earth, and was captured and interrogated by Zoom. I say all of this simply due to the fact that EP of The Flash, Greg Berlanti, recently stated on Twitter that they would “never make the real Jay Garrick a villain”, and because I think that Legends of Tomorrow‘s logic of making John Diggle Jr. chose the pseudonym “Connor Hawke” was spotty at best. It’s also worth noting that an apparently rare neck mole has revealed that Teddy Sears (“Jay Garrick”/Hunter Zolomon/The Flash/Zoom) is the man in the mask; regardless it’s also been confirmed that we won’t learn his actual identity until the season finale.
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Assuming we keep with the twins theory, it’s entirely possible that maybe Jay was adopted by the Garrick’s and became The Flash of Earth-2 and Hunter merely lied to Team Flash, and he was never truly The Flash
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It’s also possible that Jay Garrick (the real one) hails from a different Earth
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James Zolomon [Hunter’s Father]: Despite my personal hope that the man in the mask is Jay Garrick, there was a rather compelling piece posted on MoviePilot explaining why the man might actually be James Zolomon, Hunter’s father.
Velocity 1-5 Experiments Occur, Zoom is Born: Up until Dr.Wells begins his trials on Velocity serums (maybe to make The Flash faster in order to catch all of the evil metas that he [Wells] had created), I’m under the impression that Zoom did not exist. It was only after Hunter’s yellow “Flash” lightning began to turn blue that he adopted the Zoom moniker and began to terrorize the city as his own nemesis.
The Flash/Zoom Begin to Experience Speed-Force Issues: People have noted that there was a time on Earth-2 that both The Flash (“Jay Garrick”) and Zoom (Hunter Zolomon) co-existed at some point prior to the singularity opening and they’ve noted that it would have been “impossible” for this to be the case given the different colors of their lightnings (Flash – yellow, Zoom – blue), but I have a hypothesis. I hypothesize that at some point Hunter’s powers no longer were being derived from the Speed Force (this is also why Caitlin could find no traces of it in “Jay’/Hunter’s DNA in 2×02), but rather solely from the Velocity drug that had begun to PERPETUALLY circulate his system. This would also explain why – when “Jay”/Hunter was given Velocity 6 in 2×08 Legends of Today– his eyes glowed yellow with Speed Force energy, because that iteration of the Velocity drug sought to re-activate the Speed Force within Jay’s cells, hence the temporary yellow lightning.
Mind you, the previous paragraph was mere hypothesis, but I’d like to clarify at this point in time- prior to the breach opening – Hunter was no longer connected to the Speed Force and dying, but had just recently become Zoom and had begun to build his army of metahuman followers (such as Reverb).
The Singularity Above Central City Opens: After seeing Flash’s of other Earth’s for a few months (via Reverb) and keeping up his Flash/Zoom charade on Earth-2, Hunter is given the chance to travel to another Earth under the guise of another Flash in order to re-obtain the Speed Force energies he lost, as a means of survival.
Hunter Begins to Watch Barry and the Team: As we saw in the first and second episodes of The Flash’s second season, after crossing over from Earth-2 Hunter , as “Jay”, began to watch over Team Flash and draw his conclusions as to how to steal Barry’s speed from there. Given the recent betrayal by a mentor the team had experienced Hunter thought it best to use a similar ruse to break into the team’s ranks using a similar ruse because, what are the chances it’d happen twice?
Again commenting in a more theoretical sense, when “Jay” first appeared to Team Flash he was tested to see whether or not he was a speedster, to which Caitlin told the team that there was, “no trace of Speed Force” in his system [anymore]. If my previously mentioned hypothesis is correct this is due to the fact that the Velocity drug perpetually running through “Jay’s” system is what allowed Zoom to run, “the darkness”, and later iterations of the drug – specifically made to reactivate dormant Speed Force cells (NOT only to make him faster) reactivated the dormant cells long enough for “Jay” to run with yellow lightning in his wake.
“Jay” Throws Caitlin Off [The Hunter Zolomon Ruse]: While he’d initially been content with simply serving as a “speed-less mentor” to Barry, “Jay’s” plans were forced to take a turn when Caitlin discovered that “Jay” wasn’t only speed-less, but also dying. After revealing to “Jay” that she had already done some investigating on her own and that she “couldn’t find” a Jay Garrick on their world, “Jay” brought Caitlin to a park and revealed to her that he’d also “struggled to find his doppelgänger, but he’d eventually found him under an alias similar to the one that “Jay” had been using. “Jay” told Caitlin that Hunter Zolomon of Earth-1 had been adopted, bounced around from home to home, before being raised by the Zolomon family himself.
Zoom Travels Back in Time to Get a Time Remnant: Realizing the impossibility of co-existing in two places at the same time on two different Earth’s and as Barry and Wells began to realize how to close the breaches, Zoom travels back in time and grabs a past version of himself and explains to this past version of himself the situation at hand.
ScreenRant explained it best when they stated that:
To put it simply: he didn’t go back in time and kill himself, he killed another Hunter in the present.
The “blue area” of the timeline above [at the very top of the page] represents the time period in which I personally believe the new “Jay” was pulled from. I say this because – to our knowledge – the newest version of Caitlin’s velocity serum was only supposed to work on speedsters (unlike Trajectory’s formula) and that would mean that the version of “Jay”/Hunter would need to be familiar (enough) with the concepts of damaged speed, and Velocity serums.
Zoom is On E-2, While “Jay” is On E-1: Rather self explanatory here, but by this point the real and most recent incarnation of Hunter Zolomon was running around on Earth-2 tormenting Barry whilst keeping him imprisoned, and “Jay Garrick” was receiving a V-9 speed-boost on Earth-1.
“Jay” is Killed: Again this is rather self explanatory but as Zoom revealed in Versus Zoom, he had convinced his time remnant – “Jay” – that he [Jay] needed to be killed in order for Zoom’s plan of increasing Barry’s speed to come to fruition.
Zoom Takes Barry’s Speed: In an effort to protect the one’s he loves, Barry gave up his speed to Hunter Zolomon…and that, that is where Episode 18 ended. To clarify, Zoom had previously brought Wally West back to Earth-2 through the same breach opened earlier in the episode by Cisco.
BONUS!: BUT WHAT EARTH IS IT REALLY?
Over the course of The Flash’s second season there has been a lot of emphasis put behind just how arbitrary the Earth numbers are on the show. While Team Flash refers to Zoom’s Earth as “Earth-2”, Harry frequently points out that to him Earth-1 is Earth-2 and vice versa.
Given the fact that the comic books never really address this issue, and people seem to just accept that they are “from Earth-2”, the TV show has the potential to pull a very interesting twist on the fans, and that is to make Earth-2 (the one we’ve seen) the equivalent to DC comics Earth-3, and have the true Jay Garrick hail from the “true’ Earth-2.
In the comics, Earth -3 is known to house, “evil versions of the Earth-One heroes”, a notion that has thus far been proven true by [some of] the inhabitants of the TV shows Earth-2:
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Firestorm = Deathstorm
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Dr. Caitlin Snow = Killer Frost
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The Flash = Zoom [especially since it was just revealed that there was never truly a Flash on Earth-2]
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Working Man Albert Rothstein = Atom Smasher
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Scientist Shay Lamden = King Shark
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Black Canary = Black Siren
Point being, with Flash EP Greg Berlanti’s recent comments about the creative team “never making the real Jay Garrick a villain”, it’s quite possible that the real Jay Garrick, from some arbitrarily numbered Earth-2 still exists in the CWverse…possibly being kept in a speedster-proof cell under a metal mask…