As many may know, The Flash parted ways with actor Hartley Sawyer this summer after some very crude and insensitive Tweets were discovered from the actor’s past. Many have wondered about Ralph’s future on the show — after all, he’s a shape-shifter — and EW managed to get some answers from showrunner Eric Wallace about the future of the Elongated Man in Season 7.

“The beauty of comic book stories and superhero stories are the conventions that heroes come and go, but they never fade away and they never disappear entirely. So we’re going to treat it like we would if we were writing a comic book graphic novel. We’re giving the Elongated Man a bit of a rest for while. But we will leave the door open,” Wallace told EW. “Who knows what the future could bring. It is unknown. But I’m not saying by any means that it’s the end of the character, in fact, quite the opposite. We just don’t know when he will return, or in what form he will return. And that’s the beauty of comic book stories. It keeps it fresh.”

Ralph will be a part of the wrap-up of the Sue Dearbon story from Season 6. “Now thank goodness, Ralph is a guy who can change faces and his appearance in many ways. Without giving any spoilers away, there are a couple of ways that we can have Elongated Man still appear in at least one episode this season to wrap that storyline up, that gets us what we need and still allows fans to say goodbye to the character, at least for the indefinite future,” Wallace said. “I guess technically it would be a recasting, but the character won’t be a big part of season 7. He’ll only be a part of just wrapping up the Sue storyline. One could say it is a recasting, but we’re going to do it in a way that I think honors the spirit of the character and provides not only a satisfying conclusion to Sue’s murder mystery, but also it’s done with some humor,” he added.

Having to move forward without Hartley Sawyer’s Ralph did cause a change in the Season 7 plans.

“There was a whole storyline that involved Ralph with another character in particular going off on a two hander journey — a season-long [arc] that would have involved a whole bunch of twists and turns that would have played into the season’s big bad, which I don’t want to spoil. And yeah, we can’t do that anymore,” he said. “However, as is always the case, and this is why I like planning ahead, it turns out to be a situation of some lemons and we made lemonade out of it. We pulled the Elongated Man out of this particular storyline, and the storyline became so much stronger because now it’s focused on the other character, [who] I don’t want to reveal because it’s a surprise.”

“For that other character, it became a much more of an emotional journey,” he continued. “And this other character I’m referring to is one of our series regulars, so it’s going to be very exciting. That particular character now gets to go somewhere that we never imagined they would until many seasons down the line, but we just pulled that up. So I think it’s going to be really fun. And it was a good way to, like I said, make an awkward situation into a great opportunity that ends up making Team Flash as a whole, stronger.”

And yes, Sue (Natalie Dreyfuss) will still be around regardless of Ralph’s fate. You can read all about that in the full EW interview which can be found here.