The Flash Star Hartley Sawyer Says Ralph is Ready for a “Serious” Relationship in Season 6

On The CW’s The Flash, the newest member of Team Flash Ralph Dibny has undergone quite the transformation since his arrival in Season 4. A disgraced former cop turned questionable private investigator, Dibny gained superpowers as one of the “Bus Metas” impacted by dark matter and slowly went from careless, somewhat self-centered would-be hero to a valuable member of the team, ultimately being the person to figure out Eobard Thawne’s nefarious plan. Now, as the Arrowverse series heads towards its sixth season this fall, actor Hartley Sawyer thinks Ralph is ready for the next big evolution: a serious relationship.

In a recent interview with Hollywood Life, Sawyer revealed that his big hope for Ralph in Season 6 would be that the hero had a serious romantic relationship.

“You know, I think he’s getting pretty ready for some kind of serious relationship,” Sawyer said. “I think with Ralph, if he’s around long enough, all roads lead to that eventually and I think we’re going to see him really start to explore that next year. That’s my hope and that’s my feeling.”

For fans of The Flash, as well as for DC Comics, there’s really only one serious relationship that comes to mind for Ralph Dibny and that’s with Sue, the character’s wife in comics. First introduced in comics in the early 1960s as a socialite from upstate New York who worked as an administrator for the Justice League, she and Ralph began their relationship after he crashed her debutante ball with the pair getting married with Barry Allen serving as best man. On The Flash, Sue has yet to make an appearance, but she was name-dropped, sort of, in the Season 5 finale when Ralph opened a case file labelled “Dearbon” — Sue’s maiden name. While it’s not confirmed that Sue will appear in Season 6, Sawyer opened up about why he thinks a Sue/Ralph romance would make a great storyline.

“Well, I think what I really like about the ‘romance’ thing is that the idea of relationships can be a mirror held up to anybody and what does that bring up for him and what does that bring out in him.” Sawyer explained. “There’s some stuff in the comics with Sue and Ralph where they go really, really deep into that and I don’t know when exactly we’re going to see and if we’re going to see Sue, but in terms of him getting out there and dating and falling for somebody, I would love to see how he takes that on. Maybe he gets his heart broken. Maybe he gets disappointed. How would he deal with that is something that’s really exciting and interesting to me. Now that he has more confidence because the family support of Team Flash has given him this confidence to kind of mature and grow into who he was always going to be.”

The idea of Ralph growing and maturing and thus, making his way towards a love of his own is something that Sawyer explained in a previous interview earlier this year as well.

“We’re working our way towards [a love interest],” Sawyer explained. “He has to work on himself a little more before that really comes in, but he’s done a lot of work on himself. If that had come in last year, I mean how would that have turned out for him? He was not ready for anything like that. He’s sort of worked the kinks out of his system, where he’s going to be ready for that very, very soon. I’m excited for that.”

The Flash will return with new episodes Tuesdays at 8/7c this fall on The CW.