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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 5 Episode 15: King Shark Vs Gorilla Grodd

March 6th, 2019 by Todd Black Comments

Funnily enough, this episode has been teased by the team behind Flash for some time. The question though was whether they would have enough budget to do it. After all, these are two all-CGI characters, so that would cost a lot. Thankfully, they found the budget to do it, and “King Shark vs Gorilla Grodd” was all it was hyped up to be.

To my knowledge, this fight hasn’t happened before in DC Comics history, so this is a fun, and rare, case of a show beating a comic to the punch. The fight itself was very intense. With them going from building to building and using everything they had to beat the other. Barry and Nora giving King Shark a shock to the system (I appreciate those who get that reference) was really cool, as was King Shark stepping up to the plate and going, “King Shark wants you gone!” A callback to his Season 2 debut.

The inclusion of King Shark though thankfully wasn’t random, with the cure in hand, they needed a volunteer to test it. And who better than a man who is now a shark? Turns out, the Earth-1 wife of King Shark’s human persona was helping him get better, and it was working. And the cure does work, so there is that.

However…the love story between King and wife was a bit over the top. There was no guarantee for her that this version of King Shark would be like her former husband (who if you recall died when the accelerator exploded). And all of this became the Flash version of “Shape of Water”. Seriously, it really went there…minus the lovemaking, but there’s still time for that I suppose…

It was all hokey for me. But, Barry once again embracing his darker side and forcing the cure on King Shark was a nice twist. And though he apologized, this isn’t the first time Flash has done something like this, and it might not be the last.

Having Joe back was great (as his actor Jesse Martin was on hiatus due to a back injury), and using that hiatus to help Iris overcome her new fear of Cicada was nice. A little on the nose, yes, but nice. It honestly would’ve been weird if all of them just shook the Groundhog Day event like nothing ever happened.

Now though, the final showdown with Cicada appears to be looming, but will it finally happen? That’s the question. It’s clear the cure won’t be taken willingly by Cicada, but there may be another way around this. Of course, if Cicada does get taken down…who is left to finish the season? Eobard Thawne anyone?

 

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!