The Suicide Squad: King Shark Plot Hole Makes Task Force X’s Plan Impossible

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Suicide Squad.

While James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad can boast an incredibly gripping story, bolstered with the director’s usual commitment to heart, one thing about King Shark doesn’t sit right. The hulking descendant of the Shark God, otherwise known as Nanaue, is in the top rung of characters, but one of his greatest strengths is one of the film’s only logical weaknesses.

Introduced as a savage monster sitting somewhere between the pure rage of Hulk and the heart and protective instincts of Groot, Nanaue is a formidable member of Task Force X. He may have a taste for human flesh but Sylvester Stallone’s monosyllabic killer is soft-centered and driven by a need not only to seem smart but also to have friends. Fundamentally, the former seems aimed at convincing potential friends that he’s not entirely a threat, despite attempting to eat Ratcatcher 2 on the first night of their Corto Maltese mission.

It’s not really the soft center that’s the problem here: it’s what’s wrapped around it. As The Suicide Squad goes to great lengths to show, King Shark’s skin is near impervious. But that poses the question of how exactly Amanda Waller’s Belle Reve doctors were able to inject the brain bomb required to coerce him into accepting the mission to Corto Maltese. Surely no needle would manage the job?

Nanaue’s only show of weakness comes when he lets down his guard and is attacked by the strange Clyrax creatures he attempts to befriend. Their bite marks aside, nothing else can pierce his skin: not bullets, not explosions, not falling rubble, or being used as a wrecking ball by Starro. He is shot repeatedly at very close range and seems mostly to just shrug it off, with only the Clyrax making a mark. Arguably, those wounds are more representative of emotional trauma given Nanaue’s attempts to make friends end with him almost being eaten alive. In the crazed world of James Gunn’s movies, bullets can’t hurt as much as the slapped hand of proffered friendship.

There, of course, could be an argument that Waller never actually needed to fit King Shark with a bomb because he’s so suggestible and willing to blindly follow orders. But that’s not backed up in The Suicide Squad’s events, because Nanaue’s trigger is shown alongside all of the other members of Task Force X. Convincing him to listen to orders in the field wouldn’t require those lengths, so it’s fairly reasonable to assume it’s a legitimate bomb. None of that explains how Nanuae is implanted, however, and makes the whole plan somewhat fall apart. After all, if King Shark decided he didn’t want to listen, or simply ate all of the smaller members of the team, the assault on Jotunheim couldn’t have been pulled off.

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Simon Gallagher
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Simon is a veteran editor who has been writing online since 2010 – long before anyone wanted to read his work. He loves Clueless. Like, a lot.

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