After a long, two-year wait, Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys is finally returning for its third season. Just like the comic it’s based on, this show follows a group of disgruntled vigilantes who attempt to take down a team of corrupt superheroes working for a multibillion-dollar corporation.
Even with all its blood splattering, vulgarities, and pop culture commentary, The Boys always manages to keep audiences entertained — whether they’re fans of the source material or not. With this new season not too far away, here are some tidbits that you should know before going into this next entry of the diabolical hit series, from new characters to shocking twists.
Herogasm
Herogasm is by far one of the craziest events in The Boys comics, and fans will be able to see a live-action adaptation in season 3. For those who are unaware, Herogasm is a parody of superhero crossovers, but instead of teaming up to fight crime together, the heroes live out their greatest desires. This story is so absurd that showrunner Eric Kripke felt the Amazon executives wouldn’t let him adopt it right away. “If you were to ask the Amazon executives, they would deny it,” Kripke told Entertainment Weekly in May 2022. “But I feel like it was in a strange way a reward for two seasons of a successful show.”
Speaking about how the team was able to pull this off, Hughie Campbell actor Jack Quaid said, “I read all of the comic books when I was cast as Hughie, and ‘Herogasm’ was one of those issues where I was like, ‘OK, we need to do this or some version of this because this is the craziest thing I’ve ever read.’ I think we definitely stayed true to the comic. I can’t really say much about ‘Herogasm.’ I think the joy of ‘Herogasm’ is figuring out what exactly that means, watching it for yourself, seeing how it unfolds. That goes into places where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to go.” Hopefully, Herogasm in the show will be as crazy as it is in the comics.
Musical number
Even with all the exploding heads and extra-long private parts, this new season of The Boys will feature a sequence unlike anything the show has ever done before: A musical number. An EW first look revealed Karen Fukuhara’s silent but deadly non-Vought supe Kimiko dancing with Tomer Capone’s kindhearted gunrunner Frenchie in what looks like a hospital. “I was standing in the middle of the set as, essentially, the lead character,” Fukuhara said to EW about filming the sequence. “I never thought my dream would come to life.”
Some people may wonder how a musical number could fit into all this insanity? According to EW, season 3 starts one year after the ending of season 2 and depicts more of Frenchie and Kimiko’s romantic escapades. “She is finally able to go out and discover what her likes, dislikes, hobbies are,” Fukuhara told EW. “Who is she at the core as a normal girl?” And that’s where a musical number comes in. Only time will tell if this sequence turns out to be crazier than the show’s version of “Herogasm.”
Butcher has powers
The trailers and marketing for The Boys season 3 reveal that Billy Butcher, the most vehemently anti-supe member of the eponymous team, has officially acquired superpowers. In the most recent trailer, Queen Maeve, a member of The Seven (Vought International’s flagship superhero team) who has become disillusioned with her corporate-friendly image, gives the Boys a modified version of the Compound V serum that allows its users to become a supe for 24 hours. Ironically, the power Butcher receives is laser vision, the same power of the sadistic, narcissist Superman parody Homelander, whom Butcher hates more than any other supe.
Speaking with EW in a video interview from April 2022, Billy Butcher actor Karl Urban explained: “That’s the dilemma: Does Butcher become a superhero or supervillain, I mean? In order to defeat the monster, do you become a monster? And I think that, you know, one of the cool things about this season is that it challenges every character … How far are they willing to go? What line are they willing to cross in order to achieve what they want to achieve? So within all of, for all the characters in the show … it creates a conflict and, uh, it’s fun to see who actually ends up on whose side.” Now that Butcher has these powers, who knows what he’ll do this season? It’s probably nothing good though.
Soldier Boy
The Boys season 3 introduces several new characters to the show, but the most exciting by far is Supernatural star Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy. In the comics, Soldier Boy is very much a tongue-in-cheek parody of Captain America in that they both use a shield and love the USA. Unlike Captain America, however, Soldier Boy in the comics is incredibly stupid and shows extreme cowardice.
So how does Soldier Boy in the show differ from Soldier Boy in the comics? Whereas the latter is the predecessor of two characters with the title, one of which fought in World War II, the former is the only character with the Soldier Boy title, having fought in World War II before being kept in stasis and later reawakened in the modern day. Kripke also confirmed that the scene from the “Herogasm” comic where Soldier Boy has sex with Homelander to get into the Seven is not in the show, implying that this Soldier Boy is not as buffoonish as his comic book counterpart. “He was Homelander before Homelander,” said Kripke. “He was the biggest superhero in the world, but eventually faded off into obscurity.” This comment hints that there will be tension between Homelander and Soldier Boy in the show.
In an interview on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast from January 2022, Ackles had this to say about playing Soldier Boy: “What happens is they kind of find me, and I’ve been essentially in captivity for a while And so, when they do, I’m bearded and I look like Cast Away, but then they clean me up and I get my superhero outfit back on and I go to town … He’s a grandpa. He’s from the ’40s. He fought in World War II, and he’s just this curmudgeon, bigoted asshole. He doesn’t age, so he’s this young, 40-year-old superhero who’s really 80 years old or 90 years old. There’s just so much material there, you’ll see what I mean when you see the show, but he has a taste for people who were of his era.” Considering that the most recent trailer sees Soldier Boy using his shield to violently bash someone’s head in, who knows what else he’s capable of?
The Boys season 3 will premiere on Prime Video on June 3.
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