Can We PLEASE Talk About That ENORMOUS Surprise on The Flash Last Night?

Jill Pantozzi | October 28th, 2015

It’s not often in this line of work that I’m truly surprised by a TV show but last night’s “The Fury of Firestorm” did just that. Spoilers to follow!

Earlier in the episode new addition to the cast Patty Spivot mentioned finding shark teeth and was trying to figure out if they were from a metahuman. I giggled to myself and my fiancé asked why. “Oh there’s this great DC character named King Shark, that was a nice nod to him,” I said, never believing for a second they’d actually bring the character to life on the small screen. And then…

I SCREAMED.

Not only was King Shark on The Flash, he was enormous and beautiful!

No seriously, LOOK HOW GOOD THIS IS!

I can’t recall when I first read a comic with King Shark but I do know I fell in love with the character thanks to Gail Simone’s Secret Six work in which he took on quite the personality.

Wait. A certain shark was on a certain show? Was he a SHARK?

— IMPALE SIMONE (@GailSimone) October 28, 2015

But really, although the character’s appearance shocked me last night (apparently, the character had first appeared in a tie-in comic for the television show), it was how good the effects looked that made me even happier. The show has featured Gorilla Grodd before and he looked ok for a TV budget but King Shark looked extra great.

IGN has a few words from executive producer Andrew Kreisberg on that topic.

‘Since we knew we weren’t going to be using the [Suicide] Squad anymore and we were talking about it, it was really [Flash writer] Todd Helbing who was just like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” It was a very expensive 30 seconds in the show. But our visual effects team are the best and they really love challenges like this. Armen Kevorkian, who’s the head of our team, got really excited, and it was probably the thing he sent me the most, like, “Check it out! Here’s how it’s coming!” And I literally can’t believe that. That’s beyond feature quality and they realized it so well. Obviously we can’t afford to do an entire killer King Shark episode.’ However, since the King Shark who confronted Barry was sent by Zoom, Kreisberg said, ‘That does mean there is King Shark in Earth-1.’

If you’re also wondering about the other possible big reveal of this episode, the existence of Iris’s brother, Kreisberg also confirmed who that would be.

‘That’s Wally.’ In the comics, Wally was originally Iris’ nephew, but Kreisberg said he and the Flash team decided to make it a sibling Iris never knew about, noting, ‘We always hated on TV shows that it’s year two and somebody’s like, “Well, Cousin John’s coming!” And it’s like, “Oh, good ol’ Cousin John!” who no one ever mentioned before. It was always weird. The notion that they don’t know Wally was sort of where that came from and then that was the idea that Francine was still alive and then that whole storyline.’

Actor Keiynan Lonsdale (Insurgent) has already been cast in the role.

So, what did you think of last night’s BIG episode? Once again The Flash proved itself to me as really keeping with the spirit of comic book superheroes.

(GIF via thisisteamflarrow on Tumblr)