Flash EP Talks Wally West…and King Shark!

The Flash has slowly been picking up speed since it’s season premiere, and the most recent episode “Fury of FIrestorm” revealed two huge characters (one literally, one metaphorically) to the show in a way many probably didn’t expect, or even realize. Andrew Kreisberg, executive producer of the show, revealed at a press event (noted by IGN) how two big reveals connected to what we know, or thought we knew, about The Flash mythology.

First up, Iris West learned that she had a sibling. Wanna guess what his name is? “That’s Wally.” In the comics, Wally West is actually the nephew of Iris, but they changed it to brother in the show to make it more believable. Kreisberg stated: “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.”

But the truly huge reveal at the end of the episode was the arrival of King Shark from DC Comics lore. Who apparently was never going to be in the show, as they never thought they’d be able to do it. But according to Kreisberg:

“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.”