User blog:Primus95/Is Earth-2 Wells actually Edward Clarriss/The Rival?



Since Season 2 begun it has been made clear that Jay Garrick and Zoom are bitter enemies like Barry and Eobard are. We still don't know who Zoom is though there are theories, most of which seem to indicated that Eddie is Zoom. Recently it has been revealed that Jay Garrick’s Earth-1 doppelganger is Hunter Zolomon who is the traditional Zoom in DC comics. This seems like an odd change up if Hunter is Zoom considering that Hunter Zolomon is the primary enemy of the Wally West version of Flash and not Jay Garrick or Barry Allen. However Eobard Thawne / Reverse-Flash is still alive from an earlier timeline who will now continue to terrorise Barry’s life until he catches up to his older self, and now Wally West and Hunter Zolomon are both in the play it and makes sense that Wally and Hunter will come to odds somehow if indeed Wally does become the third Flash in the show. One question I have is what about Jay Garrick's nemesis?

In the DC comics one of Jay Garrick’s enemies is Edward Clariss who was a professor at the university Jay attended who replicated a formula to replicated Jay's speed called Velocity-9. After the scientific community shut down his program he used the serum on himself and became a criminal named reffered to as "The Rival", who wears almost the same uniform as Jay but with darker colors of Jay's suit and wears a ski mask in addition to his the helmet. However Dr. Clariss' formula proved to be only temporary and Jay is able to defeat his enemy to forcing him to run until the serum runs out, and he is able to imprison him and they fought a few more times after this but that's about all there is to Edward Clariss.

Throughout the season we’ve seen how far Harrison Wells of Earth-2 will go to rescue his daughter Jesse Quick from Zoom which includes going as far as to work for him, murder Turtle to replicate his powers of slowing down time and before that was in the process of developing a speed enhancing serum for Barry which was originally designed to assist Jay called Velocity 6. Jay used it to save Wells after being shot by accident by Patty Spivot and was temporarily given back his speed, but only for a brief few seconds. It has recently been confirmed that in an upcoming episode called “Escape from Earth-2” the formula will have been continued to Velocity 9.

I think the show is setting Dr. Wells up to become a new version of The Rival. If you observe Wells isn’t exactly the most likeable character, in fact Wells/Eobard was arguably a nicer guy despite the fact that he was a murdering psychopath. Earth-2 Wells created the particle acclerator but when it failed and caused the existance of metahumans, he covered it up and begun designing counter technologies in order to profit from actions of the metahumans he helped create. The only thing that made Wells even care about his role in the metahumans was Jesse’s abduction but even still since being on Earth-1, Harrison is generally an asshole to everyone. Cisco especially. That being said Wells has demonstrated there are no limits to how far he’ll go to get his daughter back from jumping between physical realms to find Earth-1 to seek Barry’s aid, agreeing to help Zoom steal Barry’s speed and murdering Turtle to harness his powers to stop Zoom. Wells and Jay don’t get along that well as Jay knows Wells is the cause of the existence of metahumans on Earth-2 and has been profiting from it rather than taking responsibility or even trying to stop it, and Wells doesn’t like Jay because he knows this but also knows that Jay has had chances to stop Zoom and hasn’t out of fear and dislikes him for this especially since it has lead to Jesse's abduction.

What if when enough time passes Wells gives up on Barry, Jay or even Wally (if indeed he is a speedster by this point) and takes matters into his own hands and decides to use the Velocity 9 serum on himself and gains an artificial version of the Speed Force and becomes a speedster and sets out to stop Zoom himself. But during the encounter something goes wrong and Zoom does something to Jesse as punishment for defying him, possibly kills her out of spite.



Wells blames Jay for Jesse’s fate, as Jay had chances to stop Zoom but didn’t and if he had Jesse may not have been taken, and uses this powers to try and kill Jay instead. It makes sense since Barry and Wally’s enemies Eobard and Hunter have now appeared that Jay get his Edward Clarriss or at least a version of him, after all Malcolm Merlyn / Dark Archer in the comics is named Arthur King / Merlyn so renaming villains isn’t entirely new for the Arrowverse. This would be a very dramatic turn of events for Dr. Wells’ character as though he may be taking the footsteps of his Season 1 counterpart, he’d have a much more sympathetic background than Eobard as he’s a father trying to save his daughter but loses himself in the process and becomes the very thing he despises the most.

There is also a second Reverse-Flash suit at S.T.A.R. Labs which I originally thought was going to be for Eobard when he made his return but the version of Eobard we’ve recently seen already has his own suit, and Wells still has the second suit. Maybe if Wells becomes a speedster he will use the Reverse-Flash suit or use it as the basis to make another suit.

This is just a theory one but I have over time noticed a few hints that imply that Wells will at least become a speedster himself so why not take Edward Clarriss place as the Rival? Let me know what you think.