Wait, The Flash Doesn't Feature A Teddy Sears Cameo After All?

With "The Flash" finally racing into theaters, many expected the conversation to finally shift away from the controversies plaguing DC's latest installment. However, after the movie bombed at the box office amid a string of embarrassing CGI moments, Warner Bros. might have to figure out time travel to ensure none of this ever happened. 

The latest "Flash" controversy focuses on one of the movie's nightmare-inducing CGI cameos. As Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) looks upon a crumbling multiverse, we see Jay Garrick — the first Flash — running in a black-and-white world, looking a lot like Teddy Sears. Sears played Garrick on The CW's "The Flash" before revealing himself as the villainous Zoom, so fans just assumed this was a nod to his time as the hero. However, it turns out the actor had nothing to do with bringing the Golden Age speedster to life. 

"People kept telling me that I was in the new 'Flash' movie," Sears told TVLine. "I mean, I'm sleep-deprived with a newborn at home, so my memory is a little foggy. But I'm pretty sure I would have remembered shooting a major DC Studios film. Sadly, I'm not in this." While everyone, even Sears himself, admits the movie's Jay Garrick looks like him, sources said the production used a generic model to bring the Golden Age speedster to life.

Despite looking almost exactly like him, "The Flash" did not use Teddy Sears for its Jay Garrick cameo. While this makes sense — given that Sears didn't even play Jay Garrick — it feels like the movie missed an opportunity to connect to The CW's long-running and beloved version of the Scarlet Speedster. However, it wasn't as if the idea never crossed Andy Muschietti's mind.

During a Q&A session after an early screening of "The Flash," the director revealed that Grant Gustin's Barry Allen nearly appeared in the DC movie, saying that the production considered cameos from all across the DC universe. "Of course, as I said before, the list of cameos was huge," Muschietti told Nerdist at the event. "So obviously, we played with the idea of including DC characters from TV, but we just had to pick." Although the appearance never came to fruition, the director praised Gustin's portrayal of Barry/The Flash and everything the show accomplished over its nine-season run. 

While a cameo from Gustin's version of Barry wouldn't have fixed all of the problems in Muschietti's "The Flash," it would've given fans a massive payoff from the time the two Flashes previously met in The CW's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover. Unfortunately, it looks like Muschietti chose to include previous versions of Superman, Supergirl, and Batman instead, leaving fans of the show theorizing what a second meeting between the two Flashes could've been like.