The Flash: Seriously, who is Zoom? The plot thickens…

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Tuesday’s episode of The Flash. Read at your own risk!

It’s the question that’s been plaguing fans of The Flash since it was announced that another speedster would be haunting Central City in the show’s second season: Who is Zoom?! (Theories, more theories, and even more theories.)

Thanks to Team Flash’s trip to Earth-2, we’ve gained a little more insight into the dastardly villain, but it’s only served for more confusion. For instance, the mysterious man in the iron mask at Zoom’s lair tapped out the word “Jay,” without providing any further explanation.

Could Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears) actually be Zoom? If you believe in the laws of physics, probably not, but he has provided enough ambiguous moments in the last few episodes to leave viewers wondering. (We’ll talk about speed mirages in a moment, promise!)

For starters, Jay lied about how he lost his speed. Initially, he told Team Flash that Zoom stole his speed — and we even saw a flashback to prove it — though the validity of that flashback remains in question. For one, Zoom can’t directly steal someone’s speed, otherwise he would’ve done that to Barry (Grant Gustin) already; he’s only keeping Wells (Tom Cavanagh) alive so he can take Barry’s speed. Secondly, Jay later admitted he actually lost his in a bid to get faster by taking Velocity 6.

We know that when Jay first arrived on Earth-1, he had no trace of the speed force in him — and that’s apparently because of the Velocity 6. Hypothetically, this could explain Zoom’s desperate need to steal Barry’s speed, and also why Zoom always sent lackeys to do his bidding, though doesn’t quite explain how he so freely passed through the breaches … if Jay is the one behind the mask.

Another red flag? Jay did mysteriously disappear when Geomancer attacked S.T.A.R. Labs. He claimed to be taking a nap after being injected with Velocity 9 and saving a building full of people. And yet, that coincided with when Zoom arrived at his Earth-2 lair and beat up Barry, effectively showing him how to escape by phasing through the glass.

Here’s where things get tricky: If you look at the final set piece of the episode, in which Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) was keeping Zoom on ice so Team Flash could return through the speed cannon, there’s almost no way Jay could simultaneously be on Earth-1 and Earth-2. He’d truly have to be the fastest man alive for a speed mirage — where one runs so fast it appears they’re in two different places at the same time — to put him in both locations, let alone literally stabbing himself through the heart as Zoom did to Jay Garrick just as the breach closed. Just to hedge it, if he really did pull off a speed mirage to that degree and closed the portal with everyone believing Jay Garrick had just died, it would be the perfect cover.

Even so, it’s hard to ignore the message tapped out by the man in the iron mask, whom Barry vowed to rescue before having to leave him behind. Guesses as to his identity go in the comments below! Eddie Thawne? Wally West? Henry Allen? Leonardo DiCaprio? WHO ARE YOU?!

It’s even harder to ignore some of the early facts we got about Zoom, including that Harry believes he created Zoom — but whether that means first-hand or simply because of the particle accelerator explosion on Earth-2 remains to be seen. Harry was always tough on Jay for not being able to stop Zoom, and maybe that’s because Jay never wanted to stop Zoom because he actually is Zoom. His Earth-1 doppelgänger’s name is Hunter Zolomon, which is literally the name of Zoom’s alter ego in the comics! How can we ignore the mounting evidence? Unless that was a speed mirage too…

On the other hand, The Flash masterfully kept the truth behind Reverse-Flash’s identity hidden in the first season — even when we suspected it was Harrison Wells, we were thrown for a loop in discovering that Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) had basically body-snatched him. So as much as the evidence could be pointing this way, there are still probably clues we either haven’t noticed or haven’t been given yet. For all we know, Zoom could be Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp) from either Earth, or another Jay Garrick/Hunter Zolomon from a different Earth, or he could even be The Rival, a.k.a Edward Clariss, the Reverse-Flash to Garrick’s Golden Age Flash, because… well, why not?

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.