the casting of the correct actor, which lead to Tovey. Guggenheim explained: At that point, "we could either just continue to go forward as we already were with the animated series with a different voice and a slightly different look to the character of the Ray, or we could take the extra time to have Russell voice the character, do some design alterations, make the Ray's appearance in the animated series line up more with the way Russell actually looks. There was just no way to turn those kind of changes around and release it before the crossover. It was just more important to have Russell's voice in the series than it was to get it out early". Release Freedom Fighters: The Ray premiered on CW Seed on December 8, 2017, releasing the first six episodes of the series. The next six episodes, marketed as the second season, was released on July 18, 2018, after debuting at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con. Home media In June 2018, it was announced that the first two seasons would be made available as one feature-length presentation on Blu-ray and DVD, which was released on August 28, 2018. Reception Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club gave the first three episodes a "B" rating. He felt "the story has an interesting structure, beginning with two episodes showing the dire situation on Earth-X before making a sudden jump across dimensions for the third episode," but noted that it makes "The Ray feel like a supporting character in his own show". Sava praised the conflicts in Ray's personal life "that are largely unexplored in the superhero genre, especially in film and television," with the show showing "how they can quickly add tension and depth to fantastic narratives". Regarding Tovey's performance, Sava said, "Tovey does strong work capturing Ray's anxiety and fear about coming out, and you can hear his disappointment in himself as he tries and fails to embrace his sexuality." Luke Y. Thompson of Forbes gave a favorable review of the Blu-Ray release. He stated that it was "the most emotionally stirring of all the DC animated movies [he'd] seen and reviewed." Thompson praised the animation saying it was "better than usual too, with more cel-shading on CG to give vistas real depth." Arrowverse Tovey appeared as The Ray in "Crisis on Earth-X", the 2017 Arrowverse crossover event between Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash and Legends of