THE FLASH Season 4 Welcomes The Elongated Man

The Flash may have hit a whole bunch of narrative and thematic stumbling blocks, but at least it's had no trouble staying weird... That's good, right? Well, we'll find out just how weird it's willing to get once it sets aside its repetitive time-travel shenanigans and introduces long-time DC mainstay Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man.

If that sounds like a terrible name, you can blame the creators not realizing DC had the rights to "Plastic Man" back in 1960, who's a slightly cooler yet somehow much more annoying character. Good ol' Dibny here is a P.I., and more of a straight-shooter like Marvel's Reed Richards (who he precedes by a couple of years), but instead of cosmic rays, he got his powers by experimenting on some kind of magic soda that contortionists used to drink. Silver Age, baby! Unfortunately, that probably won't be the route they go since they mentioned him among the victims of the superpower-granting collider explosion in season one. 

He'll be played by Hartley Sawyer of The Young and the Restless when The Flash returns this October.