Ten Years Ago, The Flash Finally Brought an Amazing DC Villain to Life in Live-Action

The Arrowverse is home to plenty of lackluster villains. Countless bad guys of the week show up for an episode and give the hero some trouble, only to lose in the end after the person in the chair comes up with a solution to stop them. However, they aren’t the real troublemakers. The villains that give the Arrowverse a bad rap are the ones that fall on their faces despite having a lot of hype around them. Vandal Savage is a great example, being the Big Bad of a crossover and Legends of Tomorrow Season 1, while also failing to be interesting in the slightest.

For every Arrowverse underbaked villain, though, there’s another one that lives up to expectations. In The Flash Season 1, Reverse-Flash ramps up the evil meter to eleven as he torments Barry Allen. But Eobard Thawne isn’t the only bad guy from the show’s first outing that deserves praise.

The Flash Somehow Gets Gorilla Grodd Right

Comic book characters can be downright ridiculous sometimes, and Gorilla Grodd might be the most outlandish of them all. He’s a telepathic gorilla that goes up against the Scarlet Speedster in the pages of DC Comics. To prove that it’s not ignoring any aspects of the source material, The Flash teases Grodd early on, showing an empty cage in S.T.A.R. Labs with his name on it. The Easter egg is sweet, but it doesn’t feel like anything is going to come of it because creating a massive CGI gorilla on a CW show is a tall order.

The Flash throws caution to the wind toward the end of Season 1, revealing that Grodd has been living in the sewers of Central City after being affected by the particle accelerator explosion and has Reverse-Flash in his ear. The speedster unleashes the surprisingly comics-accurate Grodd on Team Flash, and it takes some fancy tricks to defeat the hulking beast. They go at it again in Season 2, but this time, with the multiverse in play, Barry sends his enemy to Earth-2, where there’s a whole city full of gorillas like him.

The vacation doesn’t last long for Grodd because he finds himself at the mercy of the leader of Gorilla City, Solovar. Using his big brain, Grodd is able to take control of the city and its army. He sets his sights on Earth-1’s Central City and once again battles the Flash in a solid action sequence. Sadly, the odds aren’t in his favor, and after he ends up in A.R.G.U.S. custody, his story takes a serious hit.

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Gorilla Grodd Goes Down With the Ship

Grodd becomes a victim of his own success in Legends of Tomorrow because the Arrowverse needs a fleshed-out villain to send on a bizarre mission. The demon Mallus wants to break free from his shackles, but he needs a major disruption in time to make that happen. He decides to send Grodd to 1979 to track down Barack Obama, the future President of the United States, and do away with him. The Legends stop the foolish scheme and send Grodd back to A.R.G.U.S. It only gets worse for the gorilla, though, as The Flash has him make a couple of other brief appearances before aligning him with another speedster villain who’s not even in the same league as Reverse-Flash.

The Flash goes deep in its bag in Season 9 to adapt a version of Red Death, an evil speedster who, in the comics, is a variant of Batman. Being unable to use the Dark Knight, The CW opts to go with the next best thing, Ryan Wilder, aka Batwoman, who has her moments in the Arrowverse but never really finds her footing. She goes after Team Flash in the show’s final season and promises Grodd she can restore his fellow gorillas’ minds. She’s lying, of course, and Grodd actually does the right thing when he finds out, helping out his arch-enemy. While the last arc Grodd appears in on The CW is a forgettable one, at least he gets to go out by turning over a new leaf after years of stirring up trouble.

The Flash is streaming on Netflix.

Were you surprised that The CW was able to pull off Gorilla Grodd in The Flash? How do you feel about the character’s story toward the end of the Arrowverse? Let us know in the comments below!