Ralph Dibny, AKA the Elongated Man, quickly became the worst part of The Flash season 4, and his promotion to a series regular for season 5 leaves us with one question: What are you doing, Flash writers?
For a network that certainly listens to their viewers, if not a little too much sometimes, blatantly ignoring fans as they complained about Ralph eating up screen time with his unnecessary “I’m not a hero” moment in every single episode and giving him an even larger role is astounding.
The problem with Ralph is, well, everything. His misogynistic behavior is gross, his need to always be the center of attention is off-putting, his powers aren’t really even that interesting (Mrs. Incredible did it better), and his constant struggle to be the “hero” is too much.
Watching Ralph debate weekly during season 4 over whether or not he was going to be a decent human being and use his powers to save someone, even Barry and the team, was infuriating because actual heroes, like Wally West, are treated so poorly on The Flash. If viewers wanted to watch someone contemplate whether being a hero fit their personality and mission, we can just watch Oliver Queen struggle not to kill someone for the millionth time on Arrow.
Instead of Ralph’s need to be the center of attention being a “quirky” personality trait, it became how the stories were written. While Barry was in prison, Ralph was the only person allowed to shine, even though Caitlin and Cisco were both also around with unexplored powers, and neither have really questioned whether helping people was in their DNA, it just happened naturally.
Even after Barry was released from prison, each episode was still focused on Ralph Dibny.
First, he was a target of DeVoe’s, leading to another meltdown about whether to protect himself or be a hero. Then, he “died” and we had to watch the team grieve for him. Even when Ralph was physically present on the show, and the writers knew they would be bringing him back in the finale, we had to watch, yet again, everything be about Ralph. And, finally, Ralph was brought back when DeVoe was defeated and quickly rejoined the team.
While Ralph was at least slightly interesting at first, his behavior quickly destroyed the mystique. He literally referred to Iris and Caitlin as their measurements, which is a “skill” he’d practiced, and it wasn’t funny or lighthearted to see Ralph’s misogynistic behavior used as a punch line.
Whatever the reason Ralph was brought on, it’s long since time that he leave Central City and leave Team Flash. He doesn’t fit with the characters we have on Team Flash, nor should he with how he treats all of them.
In the words of Cat Grant, Ralph is the walking personification of white, male privilege, and the writing treats him as such. His terrible actions are always written off, he’s basically babied by the other characters when he’s usually the one doing something wrong, and he literally believed he could lead Team Flash better than Barry and Iris.
Also, why should the writing be focusing on Ralph when we have Iris, Cisco, Joe, and Caitlin, all of which suffered due to the obscene amount of time spent on developing Ralph? Not to mention the reason the writers wrote Wally off was supposedly due to having too many characters, but then they brought on Ralph two episodes later.
At this point, there’s nothing that could make Ralph a more bearable character, and he should have been written off at the very latest when DeVoe “killed” him. How much worse will Ralph Dibny be on The Flash season 5?
The Flash returns in October on The CW!
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.