The Boys Season 3 Release Date, Cast, And Trailer - What We Know So Far
"The Boys" are back in town ... almost.
The Amazon Prime series — set in a world where superhero identities are anything but secret, depicting them as larger-than-life celebrities who have questionable morals — is returning for Season 3. Based on the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the series is a subversive take on the superhero genre and features tons of sex, violence, and super-sized genitalia. The comic was adapted for TV by Erik Kripke, and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg serve as executive producers. "The Boys" has proven to be a big hit for Amazon, and in July 2021, Variety reported the series had been renewed for Season 3 before the Season 2 premiere on September 4. Season 2 spawned an after-show titled "Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys," hosted and produced by Aisha Tyler, featuring interviews with the show's cast and deep dives into every episode.
Season 2 left off with William "Billy" Butcher (Karl Urban) mourning the death of his wife and heading for parts unknown, with the remainder of his renegade gang poised to go legit. Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) is working for the nefarious Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), and The Seven are more fractured than ever, with Homelander going completely off the rails following Stormfront (Aya Cash) being reduced to "Stumpfront."
Read on to see what Season 3 has in store for fans.
What is the release date for Season 3 of The Boys?
On January 7, Deadline reported Season 3 of "The Boys" will return with a three-episode-premiere on Friday, June 3. New episodes will air every subsequent Friday and wrap up on July 8.
Prime Video announced the date during the Vought News Network's "Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman." Vought International is the shady multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that oversees The Seven. Coleman announced Vought's upcoming Annual Hero Draft when up-and-coming Supes from Godolkin University sign "lucrative contracts" to protect America's cities. The online short includes a contentious and brief interview between Coleman and Hughie, now a senior analyst for the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. The search is also on for two new members to join The Seven via a reality series hosted by Starlight (Erin Moriarty).
The faux newscast concludes with a close-up of Homelander (Antony Starr), who appears to be holding his public persona together with a very thin thread ... before fading to black, with the June 3 debut date. With that in mind, it looks like it's going to be an exciting summer.
Who is in the cast of The Boys Season 3?
According to Deadline, Antony Starr (Homelander), Karl Urban (Billy Butcher), Jack Quaid (Hughie Campbell), Erin Moriarty (Starlight), Claudia Doumit (Victoria Neuman), Dominique McElligott (Queen Maeve), Jessie T. Usher (A-Train), Laz Alonso (Mother's Milk), Chace Crawford (The Deep), Tomer Capon (Frenchie), Karen Fukuhara (The Female), Colby Minifie (Ashley Barrett), and Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir) will all return for Season 3. Yes, it looks like Black Noir wakes up from his Almond Joy-induced coma. It's also fair to assume that Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) will be back.
The most exciting new addition is "Supernatural" star Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, the original Homelander. The new players don't end there, however. In June 2021, Deadline reported that "The Boys" had added three new cast members in recurring roles. Sean Patrick Flanery ("Boondocks Saints") portrays Gunpowder, Miles Gaston Villanueva ("The Resident") is Supersonic, and Nick Wechsler ("Roswell") will play yet another new Supe named Blue Hawk.
Deadline has also confirmed that Frances Turner ("The Man in the High Castle"), Kristin Booth ("Workin' Moms"), and Jack Doolan ("Marcella") are joining the series. Turner will play the wife of Mother's Milk, while Doolan and Booth will play a pair of siblings named Tommy and Tessa, better known as the TNT Twins. Yet another Supe addition is Laurie Holden as Crimson Countess (per Variety), a parody of Marvel's Scarlet Witch. There will be plenty of new faces in Season 3, and it'll be intriguing to see this many Supes on one screen.
The trailer for The Boys Season 3 keeps fans guessing
The teaser trailer for "The Boys" Season 3 doesn't offer up much in the way of spoilers. Although our favorite group of renegades managed to stop a race war in its tracks in Season 2, their work is far from over. As long as Homelander is on the loose and Vought manages to put a positive spin on its worst PR nightmares, the work of the Boys will never be done.
The trailer opens with Starlight and Homelander in the midst of a promo shoot, and it's obvious that Homelander has yet to recover from the events of Season 2, judging from the crazed look in his eyes and his gritted teeth. The rest of the trailer is a commercial starring the Deep, who is the spokesman for Liquid Death Mountain Water. A portion of the proceeds from sales goes towards cleaning up plastic, which apparently includes removing used birth control from our oceans. There's no sign of Soldier Boy, who promises to offer some insight into Vought's past and prove to be a thorn in the sides of both Homelander and the Boys.
In Season 3, it seems "The Boys" will be diving deeper into the history of the strange (but also strangely familiar) world the series is set in. The arrival of Soldier Boy hearkens back to that character's own superhero team, Payback, which showrunner Erik Krikpke described to Entertainment Weekly as "the Seven before the Seven [...] We will be exploring the history of that team and all the members in it."
Where do the Boys go from here?
The Boys were cleared of all charges and came out of hiding at the end of Season 2, with Hughie taking a job under Victoria Neuman, a congresswoman who's against Vought yet is also a head-exploding Supe herself. This likely means that Hughie will distance himself from the Boys — it's clear he's joining the wrong team as Neuman isn't the picture-perfect person he believes her to be. It appears as though Hughie is in grave danger, and it's not out of the question that his former associates will try to save him at some point. Showrunner Eric Kripke has hinted that things will go south for Hughie during the upcoming third season.
"The thing about Hughie is he's not particularly good at the ultra-violence, but he's very competent, and I think we wanted to show that off [via Neuman]," Kripke told TV Guide. "He's very smart, he's a good investigator, he's amazing with technology, he has great ideas. We wanted a chance to showcase him doing what he does best and see that he's really strong, and an able character in the fight against supes. But of course, it's all going to go to s*** on him." The Boys might be separated at first, but it's presumably only a matter of time before the titular group teams up once again.
The title of the first episode explained
If you've been wondering how the upcoming third season of "The Boys" will kick off, Eric Kripke has dropped a major hint, revealing the title of the first episode: "Payback." While this could be a reference to the events of the previous season, Payback is actually the name of a Supe team, one that was around before The Seven. In an interview with The Illuminerdi, Kripke was asked which new characters fans should look forward to seeing.
"All of them! I mean, I think they all get amazing things to do," Kripke said. "Season 3's fun because it's not just about Soldier Boy, but it's about the team he was a part of, which is called Payback. And Laurie Holden plays Crimson Countess, and there's a bunch of other heroes who are amazing. So, sort of seeing who was The Seven before The Seven. [...] To dig into the history of the world, not just the present, has been a lot of fun."
We'll have to wait and see what goes down in the Season 3 opener, but the fact that the title of the episode and the name of Soldier Boy's team are both "Payback" is telling. It wouldn't be surprising if the first episode is all about introducing Soldier Boy and his group of Supes.
Herogasm will be featured in Episode 6
Fans of "The Boys" have been wondering if the TV show would dare touch the infamous "Herogasm" miniseries ever since Amazon announced that the comic was getting an adaptation. We now know that it will — and it will go down during the sixth episode of Season 3. Eric Kripke teased how crazy the "Herogasm" episode will be in a Twitter post, getting fans hyped. According to the showrunner, it's just one of several crazy moments in the upcoming third season.
"Beyond even 'Herogasm,' I still think the craziest thing we've ever done is in Episode 1," Kripke told Entertainment Weekly. "That said, 'Herogasm,' the dailies are bananas. I've been around the block a few times. I'm a seasoned producer. Every single day on those dailies, my jaw was on the floor. I just could not believe how insane those dailies were. It's just crazy. I can tell you that for anybody who is a fan of the comic and is expecting to see Herogasm, we are delivering it. That is happening."
For those not in the know, the "Herogasm" miniseries is about an annual party held by Supes. Under the guise of combatting an alien threat, they get together on a remote island for a weekend of debauchery. The fact that the "Herogasm" episode doesn't even feature some of the season's craziest moments says a lot about what audiences can expect this time around.
Stormfront is now Stumpfront
Although Stormfront often appeared invincible in Season 2, the fascist Supe met her match when she came face to face with Homelander's son Ryan, who displayed his powerful eye lasers for the first time. The result was the accidental death of Becca and Stormfront losing her limbs. If Stormfront hadn't been juiced up on Compound V she probably wouldn't have survived the encounter, but, according to showrunner Eric Kripke, she's still clinging to life somewhere.
"She's not dead," Kripke told The Wrap. "She's 'Stumpfront' now. You know, no comment about whether she comes back, but she is forever going to be this kind of mutilated, stubby little Nazi, which we thought was the right punishment for somebody who so believed in Aryan purity." According to Aya Cash, the actor who brought the vile Supe to life, Stormfront won't be involved in Season 3. "I'll be watching with the rest of you guys, unfortunately," she told Metacritic.
Will The Seven reunite?
Given everything The Seven has been through, not to mention the corruption that tends to surround them, it would be a minor miracle for them to get back on the same page, let alone the same team. They'll no doubt continue to act like buddies while the cameras are rolling, but it's just a charade. As we know, The Seven is held together by marketing alone at this point. And, of course, The Deep was still to be reunited with his fellow Supes at the end of Season 2.
However, with the Payback team set to take center stage, perhaps The Seven will at least come together to achieve a common goal. Homelander promised to leave Starlight, Butcher, and Ryan alone at the end of Season 2, or else Queen Maeve would reveal a damaging video of him. Yet, The Seven and Vought pin everything on Stormfront, and most of The Seven go back to being "superheroes" at the end of Season 2. It seems as though it will be business as usual, at least for a little while.
Will Homelander and Soldier Boy collide?
It's already been established that Homelander has little regard for human life. He does, however, thrive on the love of the public. If someone comes in and takes his top spot, that someone could meet their demise — Soldier Boy may be better at charming the people, but he's not as powerful as Homelander. Think of it as Superman fighting Captain America. People love Cap, sure, but he's not Kryptonian.
And then there's Congresswoman Neuman. Her supercharged Supe powers and tendency to explode important people's heads are still unknown to the characters, despite being revealed to the audience. Needless to say, there are plenty of threats entering Season 3, and it remains to be seen who will clash, let alone who will live or die. Though we don't exactly know how events will unfold, it's already been announced that Soldier Boy isn't going to be a nice guy.
"I think anyone expecting Jensen to show up and be a good guy, they will be disappointed," Eric Kripke told Variety. "He's one of these guys that's been around for decades of Vought history. And he was Homelander before Homelander, so he's from a different era, but he's got the ego and the ambition — it just comes across in a different way because he's from a different time."
Expect Season 3 to be very violent
From heads exploding to limbs being blown off, Season 2 of "The Boys" wasn't for the faint-hearted. Did anyone expect the third chapter to be any different? In a chat with Collider, actor Laz Alonso made it clear that Season 3 is going to be a total bloodbath.
"I was talking to the head makeup artist and she's in charge of ordering the blood — that's one of her many jobs," Alonso said. "She told me that all of Season 2... When you talk about bulk, I don't think they used over a gallon of blood in Season 2, believe it or not. Season 3, we're already at three and a half gallons of blood. So that should give you a little indication of where it's going."
Given how Season 2 ended, Season 3 should be pretty wild, especially since there's going to be more Supes than ever. If there's one thing we know about Supes, it's that they can be unpredictable, cruel, and lethal. They can blow things up, including people, at any given moment. The more Supes there are, the more messy — and blood-filled — events will be.
Billy Butcher evens the odds with Compound V
In the comics, Hughie takes Compound V in order to level the playing field, giving him super strength. The TV show appears to be giving that storyline to Butcher, as teaser trailers have shown him shooting lasers from his eyes. Butcher lost the love of his life not long after discovering that she was still alive and had given birth to Homelander's child. He's going to be gunning for Homelander like never before in Season 3, and the fact that he now has some of the same (or, at least, very similar) powers makes their inevitable showdown all the more exciting.
Speaking of Homelander, teaser trailers have also shown that he's still got a thing about milk, and is apparently now going straight to the source — he's shown milking a cow. We know that things are going to get tense as Soldier Boy and the Payback team enter the picture, but little snippets like this have shown that Season 3 will still include the dark humor the show is known for. Another example is A-Train's energy drink music video, which appears to be a direct parody of Kendall Jenner's much-maligned Pepsi ad. "The Boys" knows how to shock us, but it never fails to make us laugh, either.