A common problem of the superhero genre is escalation. When you have heroes who are bulletproof, who can break the sound barrier, or are full of technological brilliance, how do you find new ways to challenge them? How do you elevate what’s come before without tipping the scales too much in one direction or another? AsThe Boys—Prime Video’s sterling adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic—continues, going bigger would inevitably be a problem the show would eventually tussle with. Turns out, to go bigger, The Boysgoes smaller, refocusing on its core conflict—with surprisingly effective results.
Season 3—which debuts on Friday, June 3 with three episodes—begins about a year after the events of the Season 2 finale, with all parties as close to “normal” as possible (although, in The Boys universe, normal is a relative term). Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Annie, aka Starlight (Erin Moriarty), are publicly dating, with Hughie continuing to work with Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) and her Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Frenchie (Tomer Capon), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) are legally hunting supes but are on a strict capture-only policy as the trio does contract work for FBSA (and, in a fun turn, Hughie directly). In the wake of his public dalliance with a literal Nazi, Homelander (Antony Starr) finds himself on a tight leash, constantly apologizing for his relationship with Stormfront.
Despite the emotional and dramatic clash between Homelander and Butcher at the end of Season 2, both boys have played nice with one another in the intervening year. But, as the premiere makes abundantly clear, they can only satiate their inherent hate towards one another for so long before wanting to have another go at it, and we’re off to the races. As Homelander consolidates his power, Butcher dives into the history of Soldier Boy—The Boys’ Captain America analog played by Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles and one of Vought’s first supes—who may hold the key to defeating Homelander once and for all.
The legend of Soldier Boy sets up a propulsive arc for the season (Amazon sent over five of eight episodes), as showrunner Eric Kripke (smartly) realizes a series, this late in the game, can only contrive of so many ways to keep these two opposing forces away from another before audiences start to get annoyed. What’s even more compelling is how Starr and Urban mine new depths to their characters; Homelander’s always been a tightly-wound screw, but he unravels in Season 3, resulting in a new series of horrid behaviors—each more terrible than the last. Butcher begins a descent of his own, slowly breaking bad under the pretense it’s what he needs to find the slightest edge against Homelander. Starr remains incredible—the fact he hasn’t received an Emmy nomination for his work yet is a travesty—but Urban taps into something special regarding the pain Butcher is feeling in the wake of Becca’s death.
More than any other season before it, The Boys makes it clear both men are black holes, swallowing up everything and everyone around them; the collateral emotional and physical damage they leave in their wake provides the season with compelling—and gutting—story beats as the two gather resources in their inevitable war to come. The fallout weighs heavy on Annie on the Vought side, while Frenchie and MM (Laz Alonso) take the brunt of it on the Boys’ end. The willingness, or lack thereof in some individual cases, to follow Butcher down the bloody rabbit hole gives the season its most impactful character moments—especially for Alonso, Capon, and Fukuhara.
Stormfront no longer being the focus doesn’t mean that The Boys loses any of its pointed satire. The cynicism that transformed the show in Season 2 remains; a particular standout is A-Train’s (Jesse Usher) foray into social issues, with the show addressing head-on how ill-suited A-Train of all people is for the task—“I’m Michael Jordan, not Malcolm X,” he quips—not long after learning of a supe who is over-policing a local neighborhood. Assuming the arc lands its conclusion, it has the potential to be one of the series’ most affecting plots—and a more than worthy successor to last year’s overarching exploration of racism in America.
Soldier Boy’s involvement serves as a warning that those who fail to understand the past are doomed to repeat it. After 15 years of hero duty on Supernatural, Ackles seems to relish in playing an absolute bastard, as the history behind Soldier Boy posits the Cap-wannabe as somehow even worse than Homelander. Equally impressive is how Kripke deftly establishes sizably compelling arcs for pretty much every central character in the show’s now extensive ensemble—a near superheroic task. There are simply too many to fully detail here, but I’ll quickly mention The Deep’s (Chase Crawford) story for how it continues to humble the character at every single step.
While other shows in their third season—especially one like The Boys, which heavily features so much brutality—may lose a step or two this far into the game but that’s certainly not the case here. If anything, The Boys seems to take gleeful pleasure in finding new horrifying ways to dole out pain and punishment. The savagery on display continues to toe a delicate line between over-the-top absurdity and memorably merciless, all without ever feeling too cartoonish.
The secret strength of The Boys isn’t in its blazingly-accurate satire but instead in how it grounded that exploration with a decidedly human approach. As Season 3 escalates its central conflict, it also poses a big question: How much of your humanity must be sacrificed in the pursuit of justice? The answer doesn’t come easy, and the show finds itself hitting a new level of excellence while transforming into something far more fascinating as a result. The Boys is less of a satire and more of a chillingly sober look into the mirror, and the reflection that stares back isn’t a pretty one.
The first three episodes of The Boys Season 3 will hit Prime Video on Friday, June 3. The remaining five episodes will follow weekly every Friday, with the finale arriving in July.
