Shark Week: Celebrating Harley Quinn’s King Shark on this special week
By Mark Lynch
King Shark’s Shark Week worthy moments
Shark Week has become a time of the summer everyone looks forward to – the time of year where everyone tunes into the Discovery Channel to learn about sharks. Some of the information is cool. For example, sharks actually don’t like to eat people. Or that the hippos, elephants, and other animals kill more humans a year than sharks do.
On this auspicious week, it seemed like the perfect time to highlight one of the best characters on Harley Quinn. His name is Nanaue, better known the world over as King Shark.
King Shark has stolen the hearts of Harley Quinn’s fans on the DC Universe series. He’s an intellectual, emotional, and caring humanoid shark. His comic book counterpart can be smart, but not on the same level as the Harley Quinn version. While the Harley Quinn version is a fighter and killer, the comic book version is more ruthless.
Since it’s currently Shark Week, it seemed like an appropriate time to highlight some of King Shark’s best moments.
It’s Beyoncé!
King Shark is easily excited. We’ve seen him get happy for the smallest things. Once, he thought Harley was making a shark joke and he was absolutely ecstatic. However, he’s never shown more happiness than in the “Thawing Hearts” episode.
Mr. Freeze walked out like a popstar in concert and King Shark got so excited, he yelled out, “Oh my god, it’s Beyoncé!”
King Shark was never more excited in the entirety of the show than he was here. The best part about this was wondering why the heck would Beyoncé be in Gotham City? Even better question is why she’d be in Mr. Freeze’s part of town? Then again, weirder things have happened in Gotham City.
I don’t like blood
The first episode we meet King Shark, we find out that he doesn’t like blood. If you’re like this writer, you assumed that he was scared of the sight of it… as if it made him queasy. He seemed gentle. Unlike what people think of sharks. Why wouldn’t this be the case? Well, it’s not that he’s afraid of it… it’s what the blood does to him.
During the episode, King Shark smells some blood and goes into a feeding frenzy. A commonly known thing that happens to sharks when they smell blood and something we’ve probably learned from people watching Shark Week… or Finding Nemo.
This was the first time we saw King Shark just lose it. Had Batman not interfered, hek would have certainly killed Damian Wayne. The best part is when King Shark wakes up from the Bat-Shark Repellent he’s back to being cheerful as if nothing happened.
Telling his father how he feels
King Shark was supposed to wed Tabitha of the Hammerhead Clan. The problem was that King Shark didn’t love her. He didn’t even know her. Nonetheless, he was talked into returning to his kingdom and getting married.
When he arrived, he founds out that Tabitha didn’t want to marry him either. That’s when Nanaue got bold. He stood up to his father, told him that he wasn’t going to get married to Tabitha, and left. This was a proud moment for Nanaue. For the first time he stood up father and told him how he felt.
Though he later returned and got married to Tabitha, they made an arrangement that would allow them to date whoever they want in private.
King Shark Faints
King Shark isn’t squeamish at the sight of blood. We’ve seen him literally bite people’s heads off and get covered in their blood as he did so – so violence and bodily fluids aren’t an issue for him. However, there was one time when the site of blood made him faint. It involved a family reunion and the Three Little Pigs.
The Queen of Fables was helping Harley and her gang retrieve a weather machine. While on the mission, a family reunion was being held next to the facility and they saw Harley and her gang enter the building. The Queen of Fables said she’d take care of them. She conjured the Big Bad Wolf and had the entire family killed. Then there was the evidence. She summoned the Three Little pigs to eat the bodies (only on Harley Quinn). The site of that made King Shark pass out.
King Shark kills his brother
While being captured by Riddler and Dr. Psycho, Psycho made King Shark tell everyone his most embarrassing moment. The story he told wasn’t something that anyone expected.
When King Shark was a kid (or whatever young sharks are), he was playing with his brother. It was a friendly time that seemed like a great memory… at least it was until King Shark’s brother cut his knee. King Shark smelled the blood and killed his brother without realizing what he’d done.
What we thought would be embarrassing ended up being incredibly dark. Not something we’d see during Shark Week.
What was your favorite King Shark moment? Let us know in the comments below.