The Flash's team will stretch to make room for another full-time member next season

Another year, another season of The Flash that we wanted to be just a little bit better than it was. Season four did provide slightly more levity than the past couple years, and if you liked the character most responsible for that, then we’ve got some great news for you. (If you didn’t, maybe it’s best to roll with the super-fast punches.)

Deadline reports Hartley Sawyer, who plays Ralph Dibney, a.k.a. Elongated Man, is joining the series as a full-time cast member for season five, the implication being that Ralph will become a full-fledged part of Team Flash. In some ways, this is heartening news: Maybe it will help continue to push this show back in the direction of “more fun, less dreary moping” that it often had trouble doing while mucking about with Clifford DeVoe over the past 23 episodes. Certainly, with the likelihood of more time travel next season—thanks to the cliffhanger appearance of a character we won’t name to avoid spoilers—it would be nice to keep a light touch instead of getting bogged down in the time-travel mechanics that caused such dour problems in season two (and three, to a lesser degree). Then again, if it means more fart jokes, maybe the writing team needs to take a step back, exhale slowly, and think about how best to find the funny. Surely the show can stretch its creative muscles enough that—actually, no, let’s not go there; if it can avoid fart jokes, we’ll avoid the shitty puns. Deal, The Flash?