The official The Boys season 3 trailer has finally been released, and it reveals more details about the hotly anticipated new character, Soldier Boy.
Played by Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles, Soldier Boy comes directly from The Boys comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The writers of the Amazon Prime Video series, however, made some pretty big changes to the character in order to translate him to TV. Known as the first celebrity supe, Soldier Boy is a riff on Captain America the way Homelander (Antony Starr) is a riff on Superman. The trailer, however, confirms that Soldier Boy is as morally ambiguous as the rest of the supes.
The Boys season 3 trailer
In The Boys season 3 trailer, an armored-up Soldier Boy is seen brutally killing someone using his shield. But right before that violent murder scene, there’s a shot of a certain Vought paperwork, with a memo about Raymond L. S. Patriarca and anti-racketeering, along with a pic of what looks like Soldier Boy in his old costume.
Patriarca is a real-life American mobster from Providence, Rhode Island, who became the longtime boss of the Patriarca crime family, whose control extended throughout New England for more than three decades. Since some of the notes in the document are redacted, it’s unclear how Soldier Boy is connected with Patriarca.
At the end of the trailer, a long-haired Soldier Boy with a beard is seen coming out from a chamber. He then slowly walks toward Frenchie (Tomer Capon), who is pointing a gun at the supe. When Soldier Boy literally starts to get fiery, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) tackled Frenchie away, becoming the sole target of the supe’s explosive energy blast.
The scene confirms Ackles’ previous statement about how his character will be introduced. “What happens is they kind of find me, and I’ve been essentially in captivity for a while,’ Ackles said of Soldier Boy during his recent appearance on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast. “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.”
Ackles continued: “He’s a grandpa. He’s from the ‘40s. He fought in World War II, and he’s just this curmudgeon, bigoted a–hole. 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.”
Elsewhere in The Boys season 3 trailer, Starlight (Erin Moriarty) declares that “there’s something wrong with Homelander,” noting that there’s “something broken” in him and that he has “lost his f–king mind” after losing the love of his life Stormfront (Aya Cash).
Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban) is living an honest and moral life. He is not killing supes or drinking, and even following orders from Hughie (Jack Quaid), who now appears to be working for the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. But it’s not long before Hughie finds out that the system is rigged and the only way to bring Vought down is Butcher’s way.
Fortunately for the team, they have another ally on the inside apart from Starlight. And that’s Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott). In the trailer, she gives Butcher a vial of what seems to be Compound V, which makes the latter a supe for 24 hours.
While Butcher seems like he’s having fun being a supe because he has finally “leveled the playing field,” Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) rightly points out that using Compound V goes against their ethos, which is “no one should have that kind of power.”
Aside from Soldier Boy, the trailer also gives fans a glimpse of other new characters, including Laurie Holden’s Crimson Countess and a costumed supe with bug wings.
Watch The Boys season 3 trailer below:
The Boys season 3 release date
The eight-episode season 3 of The Boys is set to premiere on June 3rd on Amazon Prime Video.