We never want to make the experience for the audience feel cheap, or like it’s not earned for him to come back.
With The Thinker and DeVoe’s plan, it hit a lot of story points with us.
The reason why he was jumping through all these other metahumans was to take their powers, and we knew that when he finally got to Ralph, [the question was] how do we keep Ralph alive and bring him back and with his powers?
They all have to work as a team and then it just felt like the best time to bring him back, in the finale, when he goes into the mindscape and he finds Ralph Dibny still alive.