The Boys

The Boys is a superhero series with a twist. The series tackles the age old question of; what if superheroes were real but not noble and heroic; ...

The Boys Season 3 Here is how you can watch the show on Amazon Prime Video. The Boys Season 3 Prime video

Episode 3 includes important revelations regarding the season's biggest mystery, while also pushing the characters to their limits.

She implores Frenchie to run away with her, but that plan quickly goes out the window when Frenchie tells Butcher about his chat with Little Nina. Now that they know Soldier Boy was taken by Russian forces, Butcher thinks this is a perfect opportunity to call in a favor. Her old flame Supersonic (Miles Gaston Villanueva) is chosen as one of the winners, while Homelander strong-arms Starlight into letting The Deep (Chase Crawford) back into the Seven. Just when you think it can't get any worse, Homelander announces to everyone that he and Starlight are in love. He meets his old friend Cherie (Jordana Lajoie) in the park, where she tells him that she's run afoul of Little Nina (Katia Winter), a Russian crime boss and Frenchie's former employer. As the unlikely pair share a kiss, Starlight resorts to the same coping mechanisms that helped her power through as a child. At the end of the day, Butcher just wants to protect Ryan, but the boy is left more isolated than ever before. A distraught Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden) informs Mallory that the Russian forces used a special weapon to kill Soldier Boy. They watch in horror as his body is taken away in a helicopter and in the present, Butcher berates Mallory for hiding information that could have stopped Homelander years ago. However, Butcher can't help himself when Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) offers him the chance to level the playing field with a version of Compound V that gives the user powers for 24 hours. In the 1980s, she was stationed in Nicaragua, where the American government hoped to destabilize the Russian-supported Sandinista authority by funneling money and weapons to the rebel Contras (via History). The operation is put in jeopardy when a young Stan Edgar (Justiin Davis) arrives with Soldier Boy and the rest of the Payback team. Overwhelmed by grief and his desperation to kill Homelander, Butcher lashes out and Ryan suffers the consequences. He leaves unscathed, and although the interaction makes him rethink his priorities, it's clear we haven't seen the last of Little Nina. After the death of Becca (Shantel VanSanten), Butcher has been keeping an eye on her son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), who is living in a safe house with Mallory in order to protect him from Homelander. Since the end of Season 2, Ryan and Butcher have developed a sweet, family-like bond ... or as close to one as Butcher is capable of. After being cleared of all charges at the end of last season, Butcher (Karl Urban), Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Kapon), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) have been working covertly with Congresswoman Victoria Neuman's (Claudia Doumit) hero monitoring task force.

The show is based on the comic book by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, which ran for 72 issues from 2006 to 2012. Here is everything you need to ...

She also has heat vision and is immune to fire. Soldier Boy, played by Jensen Ackles, is the original superhero. The show is based on the comic book by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, which ran for 72 issues from 2006 to 2012. The duo have a shared power that they activate by holding hands. Gunpowder is also a member of Payback and is played by Sean Patrick Flanery. Mindstorm is another member of Soldier Boy's team who appears in the third season of The Boys. He is played by Ryan Blakely.

'The Boys' season 3 Age Rating: A Score: 3.5 stars Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Jensen Ackles Note: This is only six episodes, ...

But this time, the bad is balanced, and that may not be for the best. For the other three, the season puts into question their previous loyalty to Butcher as he puts the heat on the superheroes far more directly and with reckless abandon -- to the point of treating his own team like expendable pawns. For the sake of posterity, we leave it for the readers to watch it, but those who know -- know. Speaking of Homelander, he goes from being a "scary but cartoony" sort of villain to an actual "oh my god, please stop" sort of creature in the scariest way possible. Learning that leads the two to join hands again in search of an old legend -- Soldier Boy -- in the hopes of balancing the scales, and maybe killing Homelander for good. But surprisingly, Soldier Boy, who is basically just a take on Captain America, is surprisingly close to Captain America in terms of ideology.

The Boys premiere recap: Damn, we've missed this show! To say the first three episodes of season 3 are "shocking" is an understatement.

In the climax of the prior episode, he injected himself with V-24 in order to take on Gunpowder. But now… - As much as I love Hughie and Starlight together, the writers have done a great job of making me invested in the Supersonic/Starlight relationship. In classic Butcher fashion, he makes a bold move to push Ryan away for good — not by opening up about his feelings — by telling Ryan that he can't stand to look at the monster who killed his wife. But there's one person who might know: Payback's CIA handler — and Butcher's mentor — Grace Mallory. With that intel in hand, Butcher has a chance to let Gunpowder walk free, but with the combination of V-24 and blind rage flowing through his veins, he can't help himself — and he beats Gunpowder to death. Hughie, however, is unaware of this encroaching romantic threat, as he's busy with Butcher and the Boys — including Mother's Milk ( Laz Alonso) who's back in the ring after a few episodes of daddy-daughter time — pressing CIA agent Grace Mallory for insight into the cause of Soldier Boy's death. In the last episode, Queen Maeve gave him a valuable piece of intel that could help him eliminate Homelander once and for all — but that's not all she gave him. Back in the world of Vaught, there's a bunch of super-powered shenanigans going on. Instead, Gunpowder tries to murder Butcher in the parking lot after the convention, and nearly succeeds. After failing to arrest a superhero named Termite (in what's perhaps the most hilariously outlandish sequence thus far in all of The Boys, and that's saying something), Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) steps in with a potentially game-changing piece of intel: Regardless, Homelander's thrilled to celebrate his greatness and to do, as he puts it: "Whatever the hell I want." But in the world of The Boys, good things don't last. It's been a year and a half since the explosive finale of The Boys season 2, and they haven't missed a beat, kicking off season 3 with a premiere that's as shocking as it is…

Spoiler Alert. Amazon Studios. [Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Boys Season 3 premiere, “Payback.”] Of course, of ...

A man shows up at Neuman’s office demanding to talk to “Nadia,” and while Hughie doesn’t think much of it at first, it’s a massive clue as to Neuman’s true identity. “I look forward to it,” Homelander says, and then he vanishes. If Butcher can find out what it was, he can use it to, as Maeve puts it, “blow his brains out.” She also hands him three vials of V-24, and leaves after telling him not to “f**k up” their one chance to kill Homelander. Stan pitches it to a presidential candidate as “V-24,” a temporary Compound V: It gives soldiers powers to complete a mission, and then it wears off after a day. When the premiere kicks off, shockingly, things are actually pretty OK for Hughie ( Jack Quaid). He has no clue his boss at the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs is a head-exploding supe, he and Annie, a.k.a. Starlight ( Erin Moriarty), have gone public, and he’s committed to taking down bad guys the right way. (If you require context, this involves a supe with shrinking powers who’s high as a kite, a sex thing, and an unfortunately timed sneeze.)

Amazon has premiered the first three episodes of The Boys season 3 today, and it plans to launch the rest of them weekly to extend the conversation about ...

You’ll see. You’ll see. Amazon Prime Video has had fewer hits than its high profile competitors, but they’ve landed a few knockout punches.

What does peacetime look like for The Boys? A recap of 'Payback,' episode 1 of the third season of 'The Boys' on Amazon Prime Video.

But perhaps the peacetime that both Vought and Neuman are so keen to maintain isn’t peacetime at all; it’s just stasis. For all his high-and-mightiness about the work he and Neuman have been doing — and, to be fair, they have contributed to a steep drop in “suit collateral” — the rich and famous still rarely face any repercussions. Of course, Butcher refuses to pass along Becca’s son Ryan’s location to Homelander; he’s bonded a lot with the kid over the year of Ryan’s isolated stay with Boys founder Grace Mallory. For all Butcher’s fears of becoming his father, he’s becoming a surprisingly good one himself. The two men agree to commit to their own favored brand of warfare: scorched earth, with only one left standing at the end. Neuman is complicit in sweeping the first death of the episode under the rug. “Think about what that would mean to millions of girls,” she tells Hughie, momentarily forgetting the real end goal here. It’s nice to see the big secret about Hughie’s new boss come out so early on, instead of after a few episodes of wheel-spinning. Creative violence is this show’s bread and butter, especially as it intersects with sex, so you can imagine the writer’s room laughing their asses off coming up with each beat of this scene. There’s no point in putting it off, so let’s dive in (no pun intended): at his boyfriend’s request, Termite shrinks down and squeezes through his urethra, stroking the inner walls of his dick as he meanders toward the prostate. Only two people die in the episode (a low body count in this show), and neither character was featured before this episode, anyway. It’s clear from the beginning of the episode that this ceasefire is temporary (if it even exists at all). In fact, much of “Payback” feels like the calm before the storm. What has happened in the last twelve months, and can an uneasy truce be sustained based on the threat of mutually assured destruction alone?

The Boys introduces this highly anticipated character (played by Jensen Ackles) through a few interesting flashbacks and videos. We don't get to meet Soldier ...

And maybe we can meet more of the Payback in the future. But, while Stormfront ultimately runs the comic Payback show, Soldier Boy is in charge in the TV lineup. We don’t get confirmation if Soldier Boy is still alive in present time. Grace says she doesn’t know where the supe gun is nor does she know where the others are. We uncover our first bits of information about the TV version of Soldier Boy in The Boys first episode of season three. Well, we know where Noir is because he’s in the Seven. And Swatto died during that battle where 160 men died and Vought wasn’t held responsible. Soldier Boy was born poor in South Philly and allegedly became a war hero (thanks to Compound V) against the Red Menace. He is Vought’s very first superhero (using that word loosely here). Soldier Boy is super strong, fast, can fight hand to hand, and has a shield in addition to his powers. The chosen supes were Payback, including Crimson Countess, Gunpowder, Soldier Boy, Noir, Mindstorm, the TNT Twins, and Swatto. So Payback and Soldier Boy are essentially the older version of Seven and Homelander. As with all these heroes, Crimson Countess does borrow from Marvel/DC with some Scarlet Witch-esque powers. (Butcher blackmails her into honesty.) She was into some shady drug trafficking business in Nicaragua during Operation Charlie. The “higher ups” decided to bring a crew of supes into an active war zone. Gunpowder, another Payback member, is a “rights to bear arms” dude who ends up tussling with Butcher after the latter says he would tell people that Soldier Boy allegedly abused him. Soldier Boy is here and he’s definitely no Captain America. The Boys introduces this highly anticipated character (played by Jensen Ackles) through a few interesting flashbacks and videos.

The Boys is back for eight more blood-soaked episodes in Season 3. Billy Butcher, Homelander, Hughie, and more are back for more fun.

The Boys Season 3, like Seasons 1 and 2, will be eight episodes in total. The cursing. It's the violence. Season 3 picks up right where Season 2 left off; Billy Butcher ( Karl Urban) and Hughie Campbell ( Jack Quaid) have both gone legit in their fight against the Supes, with Butcher's crew working under the CIA umbrella and Hughie working as the right hand to Victoria Neumann (Claudia Doumit)—who may or may not be the mysterious figure who can make people's heads explode whenever the hell she feels like it. It's been a while since the last blood-soaked, gut-filled season of Amazon Prime Video's superhero send-up The Boys, but man are we glad to have it back. Not good at all!

"The Boys," Amazon Prime Video's ultra-cynical superhero hit, sets its sights on American imperialism and toxic masculinity.

Season 2 gave us airborne sex and a Scientology-like org in the publicity-hungry Church of the Collective. In Season 3, with plain old humans getting in on the Supe action, the show takes a greater interest in the sad, sordid lives of the in-betweeners: superpowered D-listers who’d never be considered The Seven material. It’s theoretically interesting to give The Boys a taste of the Supe life, so they can experience for themselves how easy it is to give into one’s worst impulses when immune from consequences; under V24, the vengeance-obsessed Butcher splits an uncooperative witness’s head in two as smoothly as he would a melon. When The Boys’ leader, Butcher (Karl Urban), is offered smuggled vials of the stuff, his distrust of the Supes is no match for the enticement of finally being as powerful as his enemies. “You need 5 million people” who are extremely angry (but in the vulgar language the show is known for). Unsurprisingly, Season 2’s explorations of hate as a politically animating force made for blistering parody during the Trump years. A best-drama Emmy nominee for its outstanding second season, “The Boys” is something of a mutant itself. Instead, the Superman-like Homelander (Antony Starr) and the Wonder Woman-esque Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) appear in movies based on their exploits and smile toothily from the sides of buses and soda cups, offering scripted romances to increase their Q ratings and anodyne political messaging that works around, rather than addresses, the prejudices of the day.

Fun! Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) work to get info about Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) from his old ...

“I’m the real hero.” And with that, the episode ends. With that, Butcher heads back to the convention to confront Gunpowder. The guy shoots him several times, and Butcher falls… The prolonged, heartfelt goodbye he says to his ex-wife does not inspire confidence that he’ll survive Season 3. “No God. The only man in the sky is me.” Caught between his laser eyes and the fall, she jumps. He’s left with a bullet in his leg and a cut on his cheek, but he gets away. He tries to threaten her, and then Stan Edgar, who’s been watching the dress rehearsal, cuts in and tells Homelander that since Starlight’s numbers are better, she “can call her own shots.” With that, Homelander storms away. He shares the info about Red River with her. “Oh, God,” the girl says. Ringing in his ears, Homelander rants at the girl and says she should, in fact, jump. With his annual televised birthday celebration approaching, “The Only Man in the Sky” turns the insane supe into a ticking time bomb of contempt, arrogance, and pent-up rage. (He wasn’t supposed to go there without Annie [ Erin Moriarty], but, oh well.) He lies to the nurse and says he and Starlight are thinking of adopting, and he’s able to copy information from one of their computers onto a flash drive. Fun! Meanwhile, Butcher ( Karl Urban), Kimiko ( Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie ( Tomer Capon) work to get info about Soldier Boy ( Jensen Ackles) from his old Payback teammates.

In Episode 3 of the new season of The Boys, a suped-up Billy Butcher gets the gang back together to desperately find a way to kill Homelander, leader of the ...

Now that Season 3 is out, we get to go a bit deeper into one of the first superhero groups in the history of The Boys. The loudmouth parody of Marvel's Captain America is the leader of Payback. And he has the strength to help America win World War II—and presumably has strength comparable to Homelander. His anti-aging ability preserves not only his skin, but also the sexist norms of the 1940s, when telling a female case officer for the CIA she needs to smile was acceptable to him. Until we see Orphan Black's Ryan Blakely do more than protrude his large forehead for a pose, we'll reserve judgment on how useful Mind-Storm is in The Boys universe. So far on this season of The Boys, she's only shot a few fireballs, but in the comics, she has Homelander-style heat vision lasers and can manipulate fire on a greater level than Season 2 standout Lamplighter. We may not have seen the last of what Crimson can do. In Episode 3 of the new season of The Boys, a suped-up Billy Butcher gets the gang back together to desperately find a way to kill Homelander, leader of the more popular Avengers spin-off The Seven, once and for all. Through her recollection of that catastrophic event, we find out about one of the first groups of superheroes Vought tried to shove into military action—Payback.

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke discusses how Jensen Ackles was cast as Soldier Boy for Season 3 — and how the Supernatural actor fought for the role.

He can be scary, he can be emotional, he can be a credible action star. So it hadn't occurred to me to think of Jensen because he plays as younger, but it wasn't until I was on the phone with him that I was like, 'Wait a minute, are you interested in this part? The hopelessly smarmy supe is played by Jensen Ackles, and the role reunites him with show creator Eric Kripke — the two worked together for a time on Supernatural when the series was first taking off on the now-CW — and let's just say that Soldier Boy is a pretty far cry from anything Dean Winchester ever was, even on his worst day.

The Boys Season 3 premiere sets up the potential for an all-new, all-terrifying version of Homelander. Here's what it means for The Boys, Starlight, ...

What he might do next is a chilling thing to ponder, but, as in the real world, the scariest part is asking ourselves how the “good guys” will redirect a monster that has grown much, much bigger than any one person. Other options may include the many other unstable supes that exist in a secret government bunker, but perhaps most likely is the chance of a partnership with Soldier Boy, “the first superhero.” Referred to as “Homelander before there was Homelander,” it should be clear that his politics are dicey and he’s not exactly a team player, but his well-earned hostility toward Vought could entail him allying with The Boys. At this rate, it looks like they’re going to need all the help they can get. This is disturbingly reminiscent of his interactions with Queen Maeve in the first two seasons, and as with Maeve, he’s keeping Starlight off-balance in order to keep the upper hand. Homelander’s increasingly public revelations of his rotten core have only led to a surge in his ratings, putting the rest of The Seven and The Boys in similar positions attempting to navigate his ever-escalating bad behavior. Having already gone above and beyond to make an enemy of Queen Maeve, he’s moved on to attempting to break Starlight while continuing to bully the others. Nowhere is that more true than Homelander, whose anger at being “subdued” has encouraged bolder acts that go beyond cruelty and into outright fascism.

The Seven are some of the most powerful "supes" on The Boys. But who's the most powerful of them all? We rank them here.

As the wife of Frederick Vought, she became the first known superhero, and she is by far one of the most powerful. Just a few of the powers we see from Noir, but his main ability is his high martial arts prowess. The only other supe we see with this ability is Homelander, and he is clearly impressed by this as he falls for her. The ability to turn completely invisible is his trademark power, but it's arguably his carbon skin that makes him so formidable. One of the few on this list that is a consistent member of The Seven, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) is a great all-rounder. He is able to send a girl in the tunnel flying through the wall, and is also to send Starlight flying through the air, which is very impressive considering she's pretty strong herself. After spending years as a local hero, she is attracted by the glamour of The Seven, but quickly discovers the dark reality of being a member. Noir is definitely one of the most feared in the group and is highly reliable, but he has one unfortunate weakness that lets him down: Tree nuts. Her alliance to The Boys massively helps them in their pursuit of taking down The Seven, providing them with intelligence and working from the inside to bring them down. One of the earlier members of The Seven, Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore) was replaced by Starlight, with not much being known about him in the first season. One of the first heroes we meet, The Deep (Chace Crawford) finds himself sinking toward the bottom of the rankings. Kicking things off, we have Shockwave (Mishka Thébaud). Although he never really made it to The Seven, he was all set to join as the replacement to A-Train after the latter's forced retirement.

New and crazy adventures await William Butcher (Karl Urban) and his team in their attempt to eliminate Vought's Supes. Plus, Billy seems more relentless than ...

Let us know in the comments section below. The task to portray the first live-action adaptation of Soldier Boy has been entrusted to Jensen Ackles. 44-year-old Ackles is coming off a fifteen-year run as Dean Winchester, the demon hunter in The CW’s Supernatural. His credits also include voicing Bruce Wayne in the Batman: The Long Halloween animation movies. In the comics, Soldier Boy was introduced in 2009’s Herogasm miniseries created by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns. Soldier Boy’s role and powers mock pretty much the ones of Marvel’s Steve Rogers, including his shield as a melee weapon.

Amazon's adaptation of The Boys remains just as violent and over-the-top in season 3. New this season is Soldier Boy (played by Supernatural's Jensen ...

This straightforward throughline makes the season’s highs hit harder and its lows easier to ride out — particularly when The Boys is riffing on current events that, in our incredibly rapid news cycle, will feel stale by the time it airs. But in 2022, our disasters are more diffuse, and our leaders less prone to forcing the same arguments ad infinitum. After all, the series, which kicks off its third season with three episodes this Friday, isn’t best read as a takedown of superheroes — or as a violent satire on current events, even as the show lambasts celebrity culture, right-wing media, and yes, the Trump presidency.

Prime Video's action-packed satire asks, "What do the good guys do when the bad guys just keep winning?"

What makes The Boys’ approach to this familiar territory stick—like a speedboat plunging straight into the innards of Lucy the Whale stick—is its unrelenting winks to the world in which we actually live. But generally speaking, The Boys remains one of the more in-touch satires in streaming, putting a fine point on a metaphoric dagger too many other shows wield like a blunt butter knife. So to get what they want, The Boys have to decide what parts of themselves they’re willing to lose. (If there’s an argument to be made for a The Boys movie, then it’s seeing those cruel, icy orbs on the big screen.) So, in a painful action-packed dramedy of errors that never lets up, The Boys season three takes aim at a daunting question: What do the good guys do when the bad guys just keep winning? Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), Frenchie (Tomer Kapon), and even Butcher (Karl Urban) try to do the same.

Showrunner Eric Kripke explains how that explosive scene from the Season 3 premiere has a surprising practical effect.

That tunnel inside is really the urethra inside that giant penis. What was supposed to be an act of pleasure turns into a bloody mess. The Boys has never been shy about its gratuitous violence or sexual exploits ever since it first premiered on Prime Video back in 2019.

The first three episodes of The Boys: Season 3 introduce a new super-drug called V24. Let's explore what makes this drug so different from Compound V, ...

Fans of the comic will know that Billy is anything but the hero of this story, and is instead a prime example of how a person can become every bit as twisted and evil as the monsters they hunt. All of this suggests Billy is careening down a self-destructive path that puts him more in line with the comic book incarnation of the character. The introduction of V24 could very easily lead to a scenario where the number of superhumans in this world balloons almost overnight. We still don't know what exactly V24 is doing to Billy's body chemistry, but it's enough to wonder if this disgusting moment of bonding will lead to Hughie gaining powers of his own. In the TV series, only Kimiko has thus far been given a permanent power boost courtesy of Compound V. One injection granted him super-strength and heat vision, more than enough to make quick work of Gunpowder. We don't know if V24 bestows the same powers to every person or if the effects are completely random (as is the case with Compound V). However, Billy's heat vision could be a clue V24 is derived from Homelander's DNA. In more ways than one, the series seems to be putting Billy and his team on a path that more closely mirrors the original comic book series. By the time those children have endured a decade or more of being prodded in a lab and molded into walking, talking brands by the most powerful corporation on the planet, they've almost surely grown up to become self-absorbed sociopaths. And whereas the comics revealed Vought has a secret failsafe against Homelander in the form of Black Noir, Season 3's Iran-Contra flashback has finally confirmed this isn't the case in the TV series. Compound V has transformed him into a godlike being who can decimate entire cities in the blink of an eye. The first three episodes reveal that Vought America has developed a new experimental drug called V24 that can give anyone superpowers for 24 hours. If you haven't already, be sure to check out IGN's review of the three-episode season premiere.

Roxana Hadadi is a TV critic who also writes about film and pop culture, with the closed captions on and motion smoothing off. Photo: Amazon Prime. Dicks ...

The fight scenes continue to be well-blocked and well-staged, in particular a few in the season’s back half that are less about splashy choreography and more about brawny brutalism between their participants. Whatever can happen will happen, and whatever can go wrong will go wrong — but not wrong enough to leave a lasting impact in the world of The Boys. Sadism is still there: brain matter splooging out of a skull, the sticky smear of a body dragged along pavement, a supe punching through another person’s abdomen (a scene that happens twice with two different sets of characters). Fatherhood as a burden is still there: more memories of Butcher’s abusive father, and two more story lines with the same dynamics. But whatever wounds these men inflict upon each other are wiped away by The Boys’ unwillingness to genuinely change the structures in which its characters operate: Vought is still untouchable, the American government is still duplicitous, the criminal underworld is still full of Russians. There’s a rinse-and-repeat quality to both the heroes and the villains that means nothing much changes by the end of this season, as The Boys settles into the same cyclical narrative patterns as the cinematic universes it claims to be mocking. That American freedom is a myth and that the country’s gung ho ideology is built on propaganda and lies? Combine those decades of political awfulness with the concurrent superhero monoculture takeover of movies and TV, and certain patterns of stasis begin to emerge.

The Boys had maybe its most disgusting scene ever, featuring an Ant-Man-esque hero named Termite and an exploding penis.

This is Termite's first major inclusion in the show by Kripke and company, though he was previously seen in the secret Supe sex club that Butcher and Hughie walked through in the very first episode. "Then silicon viscera was created, from blood to intestines, to assorted organs, and packed into the dummy's hollow rib cage, so that when it flopped onto the bed, the blood and guts would spill out of it." He tells Termite he didn't see anything, but then Termite doesn't have any interest in word of this getting out—he shrinks down to bug size, and, in a lovely reference to the famous Ant-Man Endgame theory, tries to fly into Frenchie's behind to explode him. And then the romantic suitor tells Termite that he wants to take things to the next level. Luckily, Billy Butcher ( Karl Urban) is monitoring from afar, and comes in to save the day: throwing Termite into a bag of cocaine and shaking him up like a powdered sugar dispenser for a delicious Sunday waffle. So, after the premiere for a movie called Pocket Romance, we find Frenchie (Tomer Capone) monitoring the afterparty for its hard-partying, showboating star, Termite (Brett Geddes). Termite has the power to grow very small and (presumably) very large, and shows this off in front of his adoring party guests.

The Boys season 3 begins with the long-awaited blockbuster hit of the summer. Release the Bourke Cut!

“Dawn of the 7 is a very sneaky way to reset all of the story actually,” Kripke says. It kind of gives you the opportunity to kind of do bad acting. In the real world events of The Boys season 2, Homelander was unbothered by Stormfront’s ideology and had every intention of living out his days with the powerful woman who properly appreciated his god-like status. The fictional film was apparently part of a Snyder Cut-like movement to “release the Bourke Cut,” a gag that Zack Snyder himself appears to have appreciated. Dawn of the 7 is an Avengers or Justice League-style superhero teamup film starring the superpowered members of Vought’s premier team. The Boys season 3 opens in a place where the show hasn’t dared tread before: the cinema.

“The very first 15 minutes of episode 1 is by far the craziest thing we've ever done…like, by a mile.” Naturally, when we had a chance to speak with Kripke ...

Of course, The Boys had already pulled off one instance of sudden rectal violence when they dispatched Translucent with an ass grenade in season 1. Ah, the magic of artistic creation! The case presented in the opening moments of season 3 episode 1 “Payback” is by far the most extreme and gruesome example yet. “It starts with ‘well we haven’t done Ant-Man yet’ and then someone says “you know that meme of Ant-Man climbing up Thanos’s butt? It’s a bold, grotesque opener to a season that no one could possibly have predicted. Unfortunately for that human penis, Termite sneezes, accidentally enlarging himself and exploding the penis owner’s body to smithereens.

It's Homelander's party, and he can go Nazis if he wants to. A recap of “The Only Man in the Sky,” episode two of the third season of 'The Boys' on Amazon ...

Could he actually develop some empathy for the supes he’s always thought of as inherently wrong? But it’s hard to know how Kimiko could’ve avoided the public violence, especially since it’s a Countess fireball that makes the biggest mess. Poking and prodding him with the suggestion that Soldier Boy routinely molested him, Butcher winds up provoking a gunfight that he barely escapes. He gets the information he wants — whatever happened to Soldier Boy happened during a mission in Nicaragua, working under none other than Grace Mallory! (Oh, and Soldier Boy did slap him around a little, but it never went further than that.) He tries to resist Butcher’s invitation back — he can’t abandon his family again — but we know it’s only a matter of time. She knows that he does want to be with his family, but he can’t be at peace when he still has unfinished business. After getting shot by Gunpowder (more on that later) and watching Ryan’s emotional stop-motion animation of Becca’s voice-mail, he realizes Grace Mallory might be right, it might be time to get out of the game like Mother’s Milk did. Thankfully, the fight ends with an honest admission: Hughie thought things were finally going his way, but the Neuman revelation has shown him how blind he was to the truth. But the couple’s fake fight is organic enough to morph into a real one, tied to Hughie’s awareness of his relative physical weakness. While Annie is preoccupied with the birthday boy, Hughie is too impatient — and too insecure about his reliance on his superhero girlfriend — to wait for her to investigate Neuman further. But as soon as he hears the news, he pivots from bored obligation to actively encouraging the woman to go through with the suicide. He pays a visit to the Red River Institute, a group home for the super-abled owned by Vought, where it turns out Neuman (and her latest victim, Tony) grew up.

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 3, Episodes 1-3 of The Boys. After all the chaos that came with Season 2 of The Boys, ...

After revealing Supersonic and the Deep ( Chace Crawford) as the new members, Homelander announces on-air on American Hero that he and Starlight are in love. Starlight assures him nothing is going on between them and never will, but Hughie seems to have a tough time getting over the fact that she and Supersonic have a lot of history. No, he joins because he still cares about Starlight, and if she's ever in danger, he will have her back. Though shaken by this revelation, Starlight soon goes along with it by kissing him. After all the chaos that came with Season 2 of The Boys, things seem to finally be peaceful. Although their individual storylines start out on a high note, things progressively decline for the pair.

Showrunner Eric Kripke talked to us about how The Boys pulled off the Termite gag, and the Avengers Ant-Man/Thanos meme inspiration for the moment.

Just kind of the smell in the air.” And then you had like this British Invasion of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and Garth Ennis, who made The Boys, and then they deconstruct and tear it apart, but rebuild it and pay homage to it and just start playing with the form? The scene includes an image of Termite jumping into the giant (from his point of view, at least) penis, and also a sequence where he is inside it. “There’s certainly a trend to deconstruct the superhero genre,” Kripke said. Unfortunately, Termite (who, it must be repeated, has been doing a ton of cocaine) sneezes while inside the penis, accidentally reverting to human size and exploding his partner’s bottom half in the process. And then hilariously, one of the writers [...] raises their hand and says, Did we do a butt explosion in season 1?

'The Boys' star Erin Moriarty talks about Starlight's new role within The Seven and that unexpected Starlight/Homelander moment in Episode 3.

Hughie is so well intentioned and loves her so much, but I don’t think anyone could possibly understand how uncomfortable and scary it is to be put in that position every single day, to be by Homelander’s side. How is that going to start to affect Hughie and Annie’s relationship? Exactly! He’d sooner kill the person threatening his power or die himself than give that up. She works in an environment where she’s viewed power as something that people take advantage of, and its power has existed in a really toxic way at Vought. But she looks at it as potentially being her chance to finally impart that change and do good within Vought that she’s been wanting to do and make certain decisions that could steer Vought in a better way. TVLINE As Homelander put it, if it’s released and he loses everything, then he has nothing to lose.

"The Boys" showrunner explains how they pulled off the Season 3 premiere's fatal penis accident scene and that big Charlize Theron cameo.

For Kripke, “Herogasm” isn’t just about the giant suphero orgy, anyways: “As much as we talk about all the shock and the crazy, I think ‘Herogasm’ works not because it’s a major superhero orgy, because that’s all really funny. But I think that episode really lands because, not only are there crazy moments, but there are many, many emotional moments.” “That is an 11-foot high, 20-foot long penis head that has a urethra, a tunnel in it, and built at great expense. The heart and soul with which she delivers it is so funny and stunning. “Even though it was very much sweetened by the effects, that is a practical penis,” Kripke said. As “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke previously promised Variety, within the first 15 minutes of the Season 3 premiere, a moment occurs that is “a thousand times crazier” than the whale scene: A superhero named Termite shrinks down and climbs into the urethra of his significant other in order to pleasure him from inside his penis. Even though that’s an insane moment, I think we continue to delve into the characters, dramatize what they’re going through in these shit-bird-insane-bananas moments, and, to me, luckily the shock of it just never quite wore off.” “Craig Rosenberg wrote the script and deserves most of the blame for it,” Kripke said. That’s the world of ‘The Boys.'” Within the first three episodes of Season 2, “The Boys” blew up a whale by having Butcher (Karl Urban) crash into it with a speedboat. And it was Craig who mounted that argument. And it was so funny.”

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke reveals how he reacted to the Prime Video show and Doctor Strange 2 having a near-identical cameo.

Alternatively, find out which iconic DC superhero Kripke wants to parody next in the show, or learn about which other season 3 scene he's most excited for fans to see. How did the show's cast and crew, then, keep her appearance in The Boys under wraps? To find out more about how Theron's Clea will impact the MCU moving forward, be sure to check out our ending explainer on the Marvel Phase 4 project.

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke discusses how the most despicable character of the show was always destined to return in Season 3.

Even as Kripke said this was always the plan, it remains one of the more interesting surprises of a season that is pumped full of them. It shows how her bravado and snark were all a front for the ugliness that she always represented in her hateful ideology. It certainly provides narrative closure to her character while also adding another wrinkle to Homelander’s descent into even more depravity, as it is clear that he still is drawn to her even though he can’t admit it publicly. While it seemed like she may be dead after the events of the last season left her horribly injured, we now see that she is still very much alive. it was weird how sometimes people interpret things that you didn't intend because people would ask me all the time, 'Stormfront's dead, right?' Or, 'Could you bring back Stormfront? Isn't she dead?' And I'm like, 'She's not dead. Most central to this is the return of a significant character: Stormfront (Aya Cash).

Marvin A.K.A. Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso) attempts to return to a “normal life,” while Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and Kimiko (Karen ...

A sequence in the final moments of the episode reveals that he just can’t give up the fight his father started—his closet is revealed to be covered in a collage of supe-related newspaper clippings. The recurring motif of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” makes its third and final appearance, a hauntingly beautiful version performed by YouTuber Anne Reburn. He’s left in a limbo of sorts, with an apparent desire to hang up the supe-hunting towel combined with an inability to return to his former life. The documents speak of something called B.C.L. Red, which apparently killed Soldier Boy. Maeve postulates that if they can find B.C.L. Red, then they can use it to take down Homelander once and for all. Butcher returns home and intensely watches the tragic Homelander and Maeve airplane footage while the sound of the tea kettle rises. Peter tells Termite, “I want you inside me”—literally. Termite shrinks down on the table—leaping over a few lines of cocaine—and jumps into the tip of Peter’s penis. There is a particularly affectionate scene in which Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) stumbles upon a girl playing the piano (Kelsey Falconer) and seemingly joins her in a warm rendition of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s take on the jazz standard “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” However, this spontaneous jam session is abruptly upended by the tragic realization that it is all in Kimiko’s head. The resident Ant-Man of the Vought Universe, Termite follows the predictable supe trend of using his powers to fulfill niche fetishes. He is confronted by Billy Butcher, who is carrying out some supe-busting contract work with the Hughie-less Boys for Hughie and Congresswoman Victoria Neuman. Billy approaches Hughie about a lead on a supe they’ve been tracking, letting him know that the Boys are ready to attack and that they are just waiting for the go-ahead. So I spent the last year really slowing down and reconnecting with myself, and I am very excited for everyone to meet the real me.” Like you.” The rest of the Seven are revealed, and they and Stormfront duke it out. The reveal of the glitzy Vought Studios red carpet premiere for Dawn of the Seven establishes Hughie and Starlight (Erin Moriarty)’s newfound public face, along with some expected, subtly menacing intimidation from Homelander. A montage of Homelander’s handling of the Stormfront (Aya Cash) fiasco reveals a flurry of repetitive talking points recycled to different networks: “I am just a man who fell for the wrong woman.

Yes, 'The Boys' crew built an actual 11-foot-high, 30-foot-long prosthetic penis for that Termite scene in the season 3 premiere.

"They did such a wonderful job of making it hilarious, and also kind of tragic at the same time," she says. As he makes his way towards the prostate, their hot-and-heavy moment turns into a bloody mess when Termite sneezes, causing him to shoot back up to normal size, exploding his partner from the inside. "So we had to be very careful with the design of the penis — 'cause we built it practically. Termite shrinks down so small that he's able to crawl inside his lover's penis to titillate him from the inside. perfectly The Boys that they ended up topping all of their previous stunts in terms of the WTF factor. That isn't good when he goes to a back room with his lover (Bruce Langley).

Is there any trouble in paradise for Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) when Starlight's ex boyfriend Alex (Miles Gaston Villanueva) reappears in ...

He admits to Starlight that it makes him feel insecure knowing Super Sonic was the first man Starlight was ever intimate with. Will Super Sonic be able to help Starlight moving forward? It's apparent that Starlight isn't into Super Sonic romantically. Naturally, the producers really exaggerate the potential of Super Sonic and Starlight rekindling their old relationship. Starlight tells him he has nothing to worry about. Starlight repeatedly reassures Hughie that he has nothing to worry about.

'The Boys' showrunner Eric Kripke confirms the Red River Institute will become a "bigger and bigger part of 'The Boys' universe."

Among the files he searches is a profile for Marie M., a 17-year-old supe teen who is played by Chilling Adventures of Sabrina actress Jaz Sinclair and who will be a main character in a new spin-off of The Boys. "Red River becomes an interestingly bigger and bigger part of The Boys universe." Sinclair stars in the college-set drama (which is currently filming and still untitled) as one of various teens attending Vought's premiere university for supes. Red River was first made a part of The Boys Presents: Diabolical, specifically in "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents," the second episode of the animated anthology series. The Boys writers called this home Red River, a phrase used in the comic books. Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland was thinking of a similar concept for his episode of Diabolical. "He said, 'I wanna do this group home where all these freaks live,'" Kripke recalls.