Freedom Fighters: The Ray Comes to DVD With “First Openly Gay Superhero Movie Headliner”
Freedom Fighters: The Ray was a short cartoon that ran on the CW Seed as a tie-in to last year’s CW superhero TV show crossover, “Crisis on Earth-X”. It was only six episodes, a bit over half an hour of material, exploring his origin and background and setting up the Ray as the CW’s first gay superhero.
Now that material will be expanded into a 72-minute release available on Blu-ray (with DVD and digital included, suggested price of $19.98) or on DVD ($18.94 SRP) on August 28. Warner is billing this as “the first openly gay character to headline a DC superhero movie”.
All his life, Ray Terrill (voiced by Russell Tovey) has fought injustice, dreaming of making a real difference like his older brother, a Marine who was killed in Afghanistan. One day, he stumbles upon a dying superhero from another Earth and is stunned to find that this superhero looks just like him — because it is! The dying Ray Terrill of Earth-X transfers photokinetic energy to this Earth’s Ray, making him a superhero — The Ray. However, Ray quickly learns being a superhero isn’t all hanging muggers from streetlamps and fighting giant robots. As the evil Nazi New Reichsman of Earth-X, led by Overgirl (Melissa Benoist), close in, the Ray must learn to harness his powers by coming to terms with his true self, even if that means also finally coming out of the closet to his parents. The fate of Earth-X depends on it!
As you’ll notice, the Ray we saw on TV was the one from Earth-X, who dies in this movie, so too bad for avoiding the dead gay character stereotype, but that is a traditional DCU way of passing on powers/superhero identity. Other characters in the story include Black Condor/John Trujillo (Jason Mitchell), Phantom Lady/Jenny Knight (Dilshad Vadsaria), Red Tornado (Iddo Goldberg), and Vixen (Megalyn Echikunwoke). Echo Kellum (Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific), Danielle Panabaker (Dr. Caitlin Snow). and Carlos Valdez (Cisco Ramon/Vibe) reprise their live-action series roles in animated form.
6:07 pm
Actually, surprisingly not. The Ray we met in the crossover was living on Earth X, but he mentioned in passing when the Earth 1 heroes got there that he was also originally from Earth 1 (I don’t think he had a way home, but presumably he wasn’t looking hard, because of Citizen Cold). Apparently the continuities of this movie and the crossover don’t quite mesh, but both Rays are the same Earth 1 Ray (and Earth X Ray is always dead).
7:24 am
Wow, I must have missed that. The crossover had a lot to keep up with. Thanks for clarifying that.
5:05 pm
Sure thing! Actually, I had a question about the crossover, or really about the DVD/BR release info you posted about the other day. Did Warner mention if all four parts of the crossover will be in the BR sets only, or will they also be in the DVD sets? I really hope it’s the latter, since that’s what my collection is. Blu-Ray only would be frustrating, to say the least.
6:42 pm
I wondered that myself. The line from the press release is “In addition to featuring all 23 episodes of season six in high-definition as well as a digital copy of the season, the 4-disc Blu-ray will also include all four crossover episodes, a tremendous value and collectors opportunity.” I wouldn’t put it past them to make it a Blu-ray-only extra, but the running time of the extra content is listed as the same for both formats. I think we’re gong to have to wait and see.
8:30 pm
Hm, mysterious. I’ll cross my fingers and hope for the best, then. Thank you!
9:10 pm
Will be checking this out.