- Title: The Flash – King Shark
- wiki: link
One of the coolest, and most unexpected moments of The Flash‘s Second Season came at the end of “The Fury of Firestorm” with the all-too-short cameo of King Shark. In his return, the character gets his own episode the second time around as King Shark escapes ARGUS custody and returns to Central City still intent on doing Zoom’s bidding and killing the Flash (Grant Gustin). Working with his team, and alongside the visiting Diggle (David Ramsey) and Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson), Barry will race to stop the sole remaining metahuman from Earth-2 (at least that we know about).
Picking up immediately following the events of last week’s episode, much of “King Shark” deals not with the admittedly awesome guest-villain but also the fallout of the group’s return from Earth-2. Here the show earns its emotional moments as Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) and Barry both struggle to deal with Jay‘s (Teddy Sears) death and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Barry both struggle with the events they witnessed on the parallel Earth. Barry’s Earth-2 hangover doesn’t help Joe‘s (Jesse L. Martin) attempt to bring Barry and Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) closer together (which from what we see here isn’t happening anytime soon). And in a humorous slant to a dramatic plot thread, Cisco fears Caitlin’s new closed-off attitude may lead her down the path of her evil doppelganger.
Relying heavily on CGI for its villain, King Shark appearance works well enough to sell the character, even if there are a few sequences where the effects could look cleaner. Given his capture we also are teased with a possible reappearance (perhaps with Task Force X?) somewhere down the line. And, as has been the show’s pattern in recent weeks, the episode ends on an abrupt cliffhanger teasing things to come. This one reveals the true identity of Zoom as some version of Jay Garrick (possibly from a different Earth or timeline?). Now that the villain stand revealed (at least to the audience) it will be interesting to see what Zoom has planned for our heroes when he will inevitably return despite being currently blocked from returning to Earth-1.
