Russell Tovey to Play The Ray in Arrowverse Crossover

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Arrowverse Crossover Calls in DC's The Ray, Played By Russell Tovey

By Kevin Melrose

Published Sep 22, 2017

Being Human actor Russell Tovey will play the DC Comics hero The Ray on the Arrowverse 2017 crossover and on the animated Freedom Fighters: The Ray.

The announcement this afternoon of "Crisis on Earth-X" brings not only significant details about The CW's 2017 Arrowverse crossover but also news that the DC Comics superhero The Ray will make the leap to live-action this fall.

According to TVLine, he'll be played in the crossover by Russell Tovey (Being Human, Quantico), who will also voice the character on the animated series Freedom Fighters: The Ray, set to stream on the CW Seed digital platform.

Although the character dates back to 1940, the version depicted in the upcoming Freedom Fighters: The Ray is based on the hero introduced in Grant Morrison's 2014-2015 DC Comics miniseries The Multiversity. This incarnation is Raymond "Ray" Terrill, a gay reporter who discovered that government scientists were working on a secret project to transform light into a weapon of mass destruction. However, before he could report his findings, Ray was exposed to a "genetic light bomb" that didn't kill him, but instead imbued him with light-based superpowers. Dubbing himself The Ray, he's recruited by Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters to fight injustice.

As confirmed by the teaser trailer, Freedom Fighters: The Ray is set on Earth-X, a dystopian parallel world where the Nazis won World War II (before Crisis on Infinite Earths merged DC's multiple realities, the Freedom Fighters called Earth-X home). So, it's perhaps easy to imagine how The Ray fits into the story of "Crisis on Earth-X," in which the supervillains of that world somehow crash the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West.

DC's Vixen, Mari McCabe, was similarly introduced in her own animated series on CW Seed, set within the continuity of the Arrowverse, before she made her live-action debut on Arrow.

This year’s four-part Arrowverse crossover will air across two nights, beginning Monday, Nov. 27, with Supergirl and Arrow (on a special night for one week only), and concluding Tuesday, Nov. 28, with The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.

Freedom Fighters: The Ray is scheduled to debut sometime this fall on CW Seed.