Homelander, Soldier Boy And A Super Serum

The Boys Season 3 is almost here and we’ve got a brand new trailer to clue us in on what to expect from the sadistic superhero comedy-drama.

The comic book adaptation follows the titular ‘Boys’ as they set out on a suicide mission to stop the Seven—a corrupt superhero organization that’s basically The Avengers, if the Avengers were both extremely evil and totally obsessed with marketing themselves to the public. It’s a very political, very satirical and very violent show.

Here’s the new Season 3 trailer:

A few things of note in this trailer.

First off, it looks like Homelander—a psychotic Superman, basically—is going full-evil this season, and letting “the real me” out of the bag. It turns out, people love him even more when he let’s down the nice guy façade. Anthony Starr is so damn good in this role it’s not even funny. From the very first moment you meet him in Season 1 you can tell that something’s off, so it’s kind of funny to hear them say “There’s something wrong with Homelander” now. Um, clearly.

I think we can make some real-life corollaries here pretty easily as we watch him descend into crowd of red-hat-wearing, flag-waving fans. This is an unabashedly political show, so if that sort of thing bothers you it’s probably best to sit this one out. (A character in Season 2 was named Stormfront, also the name of a notoriously racist online message board—and guess what kind of person she was?)

I love it, personally. I don’t think every show should tackle politics head-on like this simply because politics can become dated quickly and are often handled poorly, but this show does a pretty good job tackling not just the politics of the day but corporatism, celebrity culture and so forth. And it does so with plenty of vulgarity, blood and gore and humor.

The other really interesting bit in this trailer is the new formula that gives normal people superhero powers for 24 hours. This is vaguely reminiscent of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s superhero serum, though it doesn’t just give you super strength and defense. It looks like Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) gets Homelander’s laser eyes at one point. I guess sometimes you have to become the thing you hate in order to stop it—though at what cost?

You’ll have likely spotted the new face in this trailer as well: A bearded superhero with a kite shield who uses that shield to bash in someone’s face rather gruesomely. This is Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). Clearly this is the Captain America analog of The Boys. Like Cap, he was the first superhero, injected with an unfinished version of Compound V during WWII and sent to kill Nazis (he even palled around with Stormfront, who was Lady Liberty at the time).

The Boys also stars Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Erin Moriarty as Annie January aka Starlight, Chace Crawford as the fish-loving The Deep, Giancarlo Esposito as Stan Edgar and Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett.

It looks . . . bloody diabolical.

The first three episodes of Season 3 drop on June 3rd with weekly episodic releases the next five weeks for a total of eight. I’ll be reviewing here on this blog so be sure to follow!