Warning: contains spoilers for Suicide Squad: King Shark #12!

In its concluding issue, Suicide Squad: King Shark #12 just dropped the bombshell that Amanda Waller and the humanoid shark Nanaue are far more deeply connected than even the most hardcore fan suspected. At the beginning of the series, Amanda allowed King Shark out of her custody to battle in the Wild Games - a metaphysical tournament of animal life that will decide which species holds dominion over the Earth far into the future. Now, Nanaue is back, ready to spill some home truths and establish a new status quo.

Waller's usual implanted bombs weren't enough to guarantee King Shark would obey her order to return, so when she allowed him to leave Belle Reve to visit his father - the Shark God Chondrakha - she sent along Defacer, a low-level criminal who Nanaue considered a friend, and who Waller would execute if he failed to return. While the Wild Games took Defacer out of Waller's reach, her unorthodox victory in the contest alongside King Shark means she's now back home, where she'll be vulnerable. The issue comes from Tim Seeley, Scott Kolins, and John Kalisz, and is currently available from digital retailers.

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Returning from the Wild Games, King Shark tells Waller that from now on, he'll be choosing his missions with the Suicide Squad, acting as a brutal hero rather than her villainous muscle. When Waller threatens to kill Defacer rather than agree to his terms, Nanaue reveals that he knows the Suicide Squad boss won't do something so cruel, because she considers King Shark her child. Earlier issues revealed that Chondrakha, wanting Nanaue to live a hard life so he would be ready for the Wild Games, handed him over to Waller as a living weapon. But it turns out that King Shark was so young, Waller wasn't just taking stewardship of a superhuman asset, but of a heartbroken child. "Having someone who needed you gave you something you didn't know you needed," King Shark says. "It made ya a parent."

Suicide Squad King Shark Amanda Waller Son

King Shark seems to be on the money, given Waller agrees to his demands, but this detail actually isn't surprising. From her earliest appearance, Amanda Waller has been characterized as someone who lost her husband and children to a chaotic world, driving her to adopt heinous methods in a bid for supreme control. It makes sense that having accepted the responsibility of raising a young child - albeit one who's a demigod shark - she'd end up falling back into the parental role that was stripped away from her years before. Bizarrely, the situation actually worked out - Waller may be so cold to her charges that Nanaue only just realized how she sees him, but from her perspective she got an unkillable son who will spend his life serving her larger mission of making a better world (through extreme force.)

Twisted as it is that Chondrakha gave his son to an adoptive mother set on turning him into a killing machine - against the wishes of Nanaue's biological mother, Kaikea - King Shark was ultimately raised by someone who appears to care for him, and whose resources he is shown using to rescue vulnerable children from trafficking at the issue's conclusion. It will be fascinating to see how this relationship continues in the wider Suicide Squad comics, giving Waller an unusual relationship with one of her soldiers and the DC universe an unorthodox new hero.

No story involving Amanda Waller and King Shark was ever going to be anything but twisted, but Suicide Squad: King Shark #12 offers as close to a happy ending as either of these characters is likely to get, giving each some semblance of family, and turning Nanaue into a better-adjusted demigod, and a real force for good.

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