In the wake of Hartley Sawyer's firing from Hartley Sawyer was being dismissed from The Flash, due to a series of racist and sexist comments he had made on his personal Twitter .
For three seasons, Sawyer had played the part of private investigator turned stretchy superhero Ralph Dibny. Season 6 of The Flash saw Ralph searching for a missing heiress named Sue Dearbon; a name familiar to comic book readers as the name of the woman Elongated Man eventually married. The Flash's take on Sue Dearbon proved a hit with viewers and many singled out the development of the relationship between Ralph and Sue as one of the best aspects of The Flash Season 6.
With Sawyer not returning for The Flash season 7, the show's writers have a bit of a problem on their hands. The Flash's season 6 finale ended with Sue Dearbon having been framed for the murder of Joseph Carver by Mirror Mistress. It was expected that Ralph would take a hand in clearing Sue's name, further fueling the romance between the two and eventually building towards a wedding, like in the comics. While the subplot could easily be abandoned, with the rest of Team Flash solving the case and Ralph and Sue going to their happily ever after off-camera, it seems a shame for actress Natalie Dreyfus to lose her role on the show because of Sawyer's actions. Thankfully, there is a way that a new actor can be introduced into the role of Ralph Dibny and the change in appearance explained in a way that is true to the comic book canon. This exists in the pages of the Secret Six comic book, where Ralph Dibny became someone else and took on a new identity as Damon "Big Shot" Wells.
The 2015 Secret Six series opened with six strangers locked in a cell together, tormented by an unseen figure called Mockingbird. While most of the assembled characters were established favorites of writer Gail Simone, some of them were seemingly new creations. One of the new characters introduced himself as a private detective named Damon Wells, who also went by the code name Big Shot. Like The Incredible Hulk, Big Shot seemingly grew bigger and stronger whenever he was upset and he was also more durable than the average human.
By the end of Secret Six #3, it was established that Big Shot had two big secrets; first that he was a mole placed among the prisoners to spy on them, and that he privately answered to the name "Mr. Dibny" when ed by Mockingbird. By the series' end, it was established that Damon Wells was Ralph Dibny and that Elongated Man had taken on the identity of Big Shot so as not to be recognized while working for Mockingbird, who was holding his wife Sue captive. Ralph's ability to change his size and facial features coupled with his natural rubbery invulnerability and super-strength made it easy for him to pretend to be a simple PI with no powers beyond becoming bigger and stronger.
The Flash season 7 could see a new actor cast as Ralph Dibny, who becomes "Damon Wells" to work undercover in those environments where Ralph Dibny's face is already known. This would be a clever way of keeping the storyline with Sue Dearbon going until it reaches a more natural conclusion. There's also a fair bit of comedy to consider, as Ralph could find himself unable to restore his original appearance and declare that his mother was right and that his face finally did get stuck that way. While this might be a bit more levity than is appropriate, the base concept of The Flash using the Damon Wells/Big Shot identity as a means of covering a new actor taking on the Ralph Dibny role is still a solid one.
