The Boys reveals season 3 premiere details—What do they mean?

Good news for fans of The Boys: it looks like showrunner Eric Kripke is going into production on season 3 sooner rather than later.

The Boys, Amazon’s gleefully gory superhero satire, came into its own in its second season, gaining lots of new fans who are now officially salivating over a third season. And showrunner Eric Kripke is happy to toss them a bone. The other day, he revealed that the show was set to start shooting again early next year, meaning we could see new episodes in 2021, COVID permitting. He also unveiled the title of the season 3 premiere:

“Payback.” What does that mean? Well, there are any number of characters who could want Payback. Butcher wants payback on Homelander for his role in his wife Becca’s death, as well as for all of the atrocities he and his fellow superheroes have committed in general. Homelander probably wants payback on his son Ryan for crippling his Nazi girlfriend Stormfront (and really, Homelander probably wants payback on anyone for just about any slight, real or imagined). There are a lot of very angry people on this show.

But in terms of the mythology, “Payback” likely refers to a World War II-era superhero team headed up by the hero Soldier Boy. The original Vought superhero, we’ve heard Soldier Boy’s name tossed around, but he’ll actually show up in season 3, playing by Supernatural star Jensen Ackles.

Soldier Boy is The Boys’ spin on Captain America. Unlike the real thing, he is brutal and cowardly, keeping with this show’s tradition of skewering heroic archetypes, as well as American culture and history. “We will be exploring the history of [Payback] and all the members in it,” Kripke told Entertainment Weekly. Those members also include the white supremacist hero Stormfront, which could give Aya Cash an opportunity to come back on the show despite what happened to her in the season 2 finale.

“One of the things I love most about the world in [The Boys] comic books isn’t just how fleshed out it is, but the history of it,” Kripke continued. “It goes back 60, 70 years and it’s just as fleshed out as it is today. One of the reasons that we’re getting into Soldier Boy [in season 3] and that team, Payback, is we’re interested in exploring a little bit of how we got here. Through the history of the supes, we can tell a little bit about the history of America and how we ended up in the current fraught position that we’re in. Soldier Boy gives us an opportunity to do that.

"There’s always been systemic racism and conflict and a lot of ugliness, yet always a fight to make things better. Certain politicians like to pitch this somehow idyllic ‘good old days’ where everything was perfect and calm. That is complete and utter bullshit. It was never that way. So, by exploring the history of Vought in the history of America, we get to make some of those points. There was never an America when they say ‘Make America Great Again.’ It was always a struggle. That’s the point. It’s a struggle to make things better."

As you can see, Kripke isn’t one to mince words. He’s very open about the show’s politics, even musing on how it might be different depending on the results of the upcoming presidential election. “If, God willing, Biden wins, the show might air — might — in a setting of more stability and sanity, and start to live as a historical document of the derangement of the Trump years rather than an up-to-the-minute, current depiction,” the showrunner told Polygon. “I was talking about it with another producer, and I was saying, “Look, the show works because we write about whatever’s happening right now.”

"During season 2, we wrote about the issues that were happening as season 2 was being written a year and a half, two years ago, and they just happen to be also current today. I’m writing season 3 about what’s very current today. And we’ll just have to see how it goes in season 3. If the cost is that I lose a little bit of the show’s relevancy means getting Joe Biden into the White House, that is a cost I’m more than happy to take."

The original Boys comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson was a satire of the post-9/11 Bush years, but the show has clearly struck a chord with people eager for a superhero show that reflects our current moment. How will that moment have changed in season 3, and how will The Boys adjust? Hopefully we find that out sooner rather than later.

You can watch the entirety of The Boys on Amazon Prime Video now!

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