In a recent interview, Marc Guggenheim broke the news that Melissa Benoist will be joining the cast of the upcoming CW Seed series, Freedom Fighters: The Ray, but not as the Girl of Steel. Instead, she will voice the Earth-X Nazi superhero Overgirl.
“Melissa is so sweet, and so is her interpretation of Supergirl,” said Guggenheim. “It was fun to hear her voice records and see she’s capable of a darkness. I think she really enjoyed playing the bad guy for a bit!”
Freedom Fighters: The Ray will pull from the recent Multiversity: The Master Men one-shot by Grant Morrison and Jim Lee, in which, on an alternate universe dubbed Earth-X, Nazis won World War II and led to a The Man In High Castle-type scenario with many popular DC superheroes reimagined as Nazis.
“It’s called ‘Freedom Fighters: The Ray‘ for a very specific reason, which is we knew we wanted to establish the Freedom Fighters and Earth-X,” explained Guggenheim. “In Multiversity, Grant Morrison came up with an idea we really responded to: The Freedom Fighters are made up of various minorities targeted by Nazis – women, gay men, Jews. We wanted to honor that idea. At the same time, it’s an origin story about the Earth-1 iteration of the Ray.”
It’s also been reported that Nazi versions of both the Flash and Green Arrow would appear in the show, although it’s not disclosed if Grant Gustin and Stephen Amell would voice those as well.
This will be the third DC/CW animated series following Vixen and the upcoming Constantine.
“What’s been fun about the CW Seed series is, with each one, we’ve learned something new and been able to apply it to the next one,” said Guggenheim. “So Vixen Season 2 is better than Season 1. And The Ray is stronger than Vixen Season 2. I’m thrilled with the way things are shaping up.”
CW Seed is laying the groundwork for what the DC standalone streaming service will become, and if it is anything like how Vixen has tuned out so far, we are in for a real treat.
Freedom Fighters: The Ray is anticipated to debut later this year on CW Seed.
