Catching Up: The Flash Episode 215, "King Shark"

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Flash King Shark Diggle Grant Gustin David Ramsey

After escaping Earth-2, the members of Team Flash are operating under emotional duress. Barry (Grant Gustin) is still carrying the weight of the deaths he saw on Earth-2, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) is trying to hold it together after having seen Jay (Teddy Sears) killed by Zoom, and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) is concerned about Caitlin's behavior, worried that it might put her on the road to becoming Killer Frost.

Fortunately, they're about to get a giant distraction in the form of King Shark -- who was not killed in their brief prior encounter, but had been secreted away by A.R.G.U.S. to be groomed into a weapon. But as John Diggle and his wife Lyla Michaels (ARROW guest stars David Ramsey and Audrey Marie Anderson) clean up the black projects at A.R.G.U.S. after the death of Amanda Waller, King Shark escapes from Aquarium #3. (Which begs the question, what's in Aquarium #1 and Aquarium #2? Any Atlanteans?) King Shark has only one thing driving him -- the last order he received from Zoom: Kill the Flash!

While Team Flash prepares to take King Shark down, with help from A.R.G.U.S., they deal with the issues weighing heavily on them. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) has urged Barry and Cisco not to discuss what they saw on Earth-2, but you know that's not something that's going to last. And as Harrison and his daughter, Jesse (Violett Beane) adjust to the notion that they are now permanently stuck on Earth-1, we get to see him become more and more human. He's still the over-stressed one-man think tank, but having Jesse with him assisting with his equations seems to anchor him a little bit more.

In the West household, there's tension between Barry and the newfound West son, Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale). On the face of it, it seems that it's mostly on Wally's side, having heard about how great Barry is from Joe (Jesse L. Martin) and Iris (Candice Patton). But you can tell there's a little bit on Barry's side as well, when he refers to Wally as "Joe's son" -- a position that had been exclusively his for most of his life. Wally's opinion of Barry drops even lower when King Shark attacks the West household, looking for the Flash, and Barry 'disappears.'

This episode pulls out the "lightning throwing" ability again, but I'll forgive it because it's used in conjunction with one of the coolest demonstrations of Flash's speed used in the series thus far. The episode also wraps with everyone finally getting their heads together (with Caitlin goofing on Cisco in hilarious fashion), and refocusing on finding a way to re-open the breach to Earth-2 to ultimately stop Zoom and return Harrison and Jesse to their homes.

And speaking of Earth-2, my theory that Zoom's identity was going to be doppelganger Henry Allen has been shot to hell. Oh yeah, that's right -- the mask comes off! It's the OMG moment everyone's been waiting for, and it's going to raise some theory-inducing questions. Is Zoom from yet another Earth? Is he from the future? Is he from Earth-1 after all? If you haven't seen it yet, you won't believe the face behind the black mask!