Suicide Squad’s King Shark Just Officially Became a DC Superhero

The Suicide Squad‘s King Shark is finally transitioning from being a villain to a full-fledged hero, in more ways than one! The fan favorite Suicide Squad character has decided to use his role on that team to do good instead of just doing what Amanda Waller tells him to do. The change of heart comes after being doused with liquid from the Well of Evolution in the last issue of Suicide Squad: King Shark.

Suicide Squad: King Shark, a series written by Tim Seeley with art by Scott Kolins and John Kalisz, recently delved into King Shark’s backstory and motivations. King Shark is the alias of Nanaue, the son of the Hawaiian shark god Chondrakha. As a child, his father entrusted Nanaue’s custody to Amanda Waller, the commander of the Suicide Squad, a team of supervillains used by the government to deal with perceived threats to America. Chondrakha intended for King Shark’s time with Waller to make him strong enough to act as the Ocean’s champion in the Wild Games, a tournament held once every ten thousand years to determine what type of animal will be the dominant species on Earth. To ensure their species’ primacy, the victor of the tournament is allowed to bathe in the Well of Evolution, which will imbue their essence into the force that connects all animal life, the Red.

In issue #11 of Suicide Squad: King Shark, King Shark and the other attendees of the tournament all bathed in the Red after a climactic battle with the Man-King resulted in the Well of Evolution spilling its contents onto everyone in its immediate vicinity. This sent their genes thousands of years into the future, inspiring a generation of animal heroes shown to be members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. It also inspired King Shark to become a hero. When he returns to Belle Reve after the Wild Games in the issue 12, he tells Waller that he will rejoin her task force, but only if he gets to choose his missions. An example of one of these missions reveals that he is rescuing a group of caged children, an act far more heroic than anything he has previously done.

This decision stems from a realization he had while in the Wild Realms. King Shark tells Waller that he knows now that the world doesn’t exist just for him and he can’t keep acting like it does. While this epiphany comes partially from bathing in the blood of the Well of Evolution, it also stems from his newfound friendship with Defacer, a Suicide Squad member who accompanied him to the Wild Games. Before his time in the Wild Realms, King Shark was lonely and longed for someone to be his friend. Over the course of the tournament he kindled a deep, wholesome friendship with Defacer. The two are shown to be continuing to maintain this relationship even after King Shark returns to prison, and their descendants serve together in the future Legion of Super-Heroes.

It will be interesting to see what sorts of adventures King Shark will embark on now that he has become a hero. As he makes clear when setting his terms with Waller, he knows that nothing he does will change the fact that he is still a murderer. But King Shark’s decision to do good shows that anyone can become a hero, even the Suicide Squad‘s man-eating human-shark hybrid.