The Flash Season 5: 6 Ups & 2 Downs From 'King Shark Vs. Gorilla Grodd'

4. The Main Narrative Is Still Important To The Episode

Though Cicada wasn't featured in the episode (more on that later) and we instead got a war between two different foes, that doesn't mean that the episode was filler - quite the opposite, in fact.

Upon successfully completing the metahuman cure, it was time for Team Flash to test it on a metahuman who actually wanted to be cured of their gifts. After some deliberation, Barry suggested that King Shark would be the perfect candidate because not even he would class his metahuman abilities as a gift. This then presented the team, and us, with the chance to see the cure's effects up close and personal as they discovered that, given Shark's animalistic mind, there were still some kinks that needed to be ironed out.

This, and Iris' worries over Cicada's recent invasion of her office, tied what once seemed like nothing more than a villain-of-the-week encounter to the main narrative rather beautifully and gave the episode a purpose that none of us really expected it to have.