He’s  a long standing DC Comics hero who has never had a live-action incarnation before, but it looks like that’s about to change, as The Hashtag Show has revealed that Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, is joining The Flash on the upcoming fourth season of the show.

The casting breakdown for the part of Elongated Man that’s rather interesting is the mention that whoever ends up playing Ralph would have a series regular option for Season 5. Below is the description for the television version of Elongated Man.

“[RALPH DIBNY AKA ELONGATED MAN] Male, Mid to late 30s, Open Ethnicity. Think Ryan Reynolds or Chris Pratt, Ralph has the ability to stretch his body to super-human lengths and sizes…however, while resculpting his old body is easy to do, Dibny finds losing the old misguided sense of truth and slobbery, even after joining the team at S.T.A.R. Labs, is a far more difficult task to accomplish. MAJOR RECURRING GUEST STAR WITH A SERIES REGULAR OPTION FOR NEXT SEASON”

Elongated Man has been name dropped before, way back in season one of The Flash, as one of the people said to have gained powers in the particle accelerator explosion that gave Barry Allen his powers. But it’s taken this long for that little hint to pay off into something bigger. The Elongated Man has a long standing history with the Flash character and titles, as he first appeared in The Flash #112 in May of 1960, and soon became a recurring character and ally of the Scarlet Speedster.

The Flash comics editors wanted a new supporting hero for Barry to play off of, and the idea was to have an elastic hero like Plastic Man. The funny thing is, DC had the rights to Plastic Man already, who originated at another publisher, but the editor of Flash didn’t know that, and Elongated Man was born. In the comics, Ralph Dibny wanted to be a  contortionist, and developed a super-concentrated extract of the rare “gingo” fruit that was said to give contortionists their remarkable elasticity. It’s a very silly, Silver Age origin story, and I’d bet the producers of the Flash TV series will totally rework it.

For years, Elongated Man was one of the major players in the DCU. He joined the JLA  in 1973, and was the 12th member to join. He was an active member of many versions of the team for the next twenty-five years. One of the cooler things about Ralph was that he was a detective, and loved solving a mystery. He also had no secret identity, and had a super cool wife named Sue who was also a detective. The two of them would travel around the country solving mysteries, a kind of superhero sleuthing couple.

Then the 2004 DC event mini-series Identity Crisis killed of Sue Dibny in a horrible, brutal fashion, sending Ralph spiraling out of control emotionally to the point where he committed suicide to be with his beloved Sue again. A rather dark ending to such a happy-go-lucky character. In the afterlife, he and Sue became “ghost detectives”, but seemingly the New 52 reboot undid their deaths, and both Ralph and Sue are out there somewhere alive in the DCU. Hopefully the arrival of the character on The Flash means his comics counterpart may return soon as well.

In addition, it’s also been officially revealed what The Thinker and his assistant the Mechanic will also be the main villains for The Flash season 4 on the CW, as previously reported. The season premiere of The Flash will debut on Tuesday, October 10.

Are you excited for the long standing DC hero to finally debut in live-action? Let us know down below in the comments.

Images: DC Comics