Warning: there are spoilers from "The Fury of Firestorm" below:

While fans keep deliberating the validity of that King Shark rumor for David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, The Flash has already introduced him into the live-action — though CG-heavy — landscape. The end of last night’s episode of the CW series saw the famed Aquaman villain emerge from the shadows to strangle the scarlet speedster.

Earlier in the episode, “The Fury of Firestorm,” Barry’s love interest Patty Spivot (Shantel VanSanten) found shark teeth accompanied by witness testimony saying a “man shark” was walking around Central City. Barry (Grant Gustin) didn’t feel such things were possible and likened such a creature to a “bad sci-fi movie.” That seemed to be that, as most of the episode centered around the introduction of Dr. Stein’s Firestorm replacement.


Then the final moments came and King Shark, in similar CG styling to how Grodd was rendered in Season 1, attacked, shocking both The Flash and the audience. Watch the clip below:

Our own Christina Radish was on hand for a press screening of the episode and heard the story from executive producer Andrew Kreisberg of how the comic book villain came into the show:


We actually put King Shark in the comic book adaptation and said, “No one is ever going to let us do this. We’re never going to be able to do this.” We talked about it and it was really Todd Helbing who was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” It was a very expensive 30 seconds of the show, but our visual effects team are the best. They love challenges like this. Armen Kevorkian, the head of our team, got so excited. It was probably the thing that he sent me the most samples of. He was like, “Check it out! See how it’s coming!” I can’t believe it. It’s beyond feature quality. They realized it so well. It was just fun for us. We can’t afford to do an entire King Shark episode, so the idea that he’s one of Zoom’s minions is fun. He’s just the latest in the line. And it does mean that there’s a King Shark on Earth-1.

So even though we shouldn’t expect the big guy return this season, we still have Grodd!

The Flash airs Tuesday nights on the CW.

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Image via the CW
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Image via The CW