Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess Revealed in The Boys Red Band Teaser

Prime Video has unveiled a new red band teaser for the third season of its hit series, the boys, during an SXSW panel on Saturday. The show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. There are a few new faces among the cast, plus a scene in the teaser that definitely takes place in THAT infamous storyline from the comic book series.

(Spoilers for the first two seasons below.)

the boys Set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real, but corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, who created the supes with a substance called Compound V. The Seven is led by Homelander (Antony Starr in a career making version), a violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All -American hero. Homelander’s counterpart as the head of the titular “boys” is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-proclaimed vigilante who wants to control the evil behavior of the Seven, especially Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher’s late wife.

The S1 finale ended on a major cliffhanger: Butcher, planning to blow himself up and take Homelander with him, changed his mind when the psychotic superhero told him he’d discovered Butcher’s ex-wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), was still alive. lived — and raising her (super-powered) son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), the result of her Homelander rape. That’s pretty much where S2 picked it up.

When the season started, the boys were on the run, having been charged with an S1 murder actually committed by Homelander. Their efforts to purify themselves were hindered by a mysterious killer who blew up anyone who could give them useful clues. They were also accused of tracking a telekinetic terrorist who turned out to be Kimiko’s (Karen Fukuhara)’s younger brother, Kenji (Abraham Lim). Butcher struggled to accept Becca’s son Ryan, while Homelander tried to be a father figure and teach Ryan how to use his powers.

Homelander’s dominance in Vought was also challenged when CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) brought in a new member – Stormfront (played by Aya Cash, who stole scene after scene). The two became lovers, and Stormfront helped Homelander recover from a PR disaster. Of course, Stormfront turned out to be a Nazi-affiliated superhero formerly known as Liberty, and the first superhero created with Compound V. And Homelander experienced his first moral dilemma, torn between the woman he loved and his general hatred of all things Nazis.

In the S2 finale, Homelander and Stormfront kidnapped Ryan, sparking a showdown between Butcher and Becca. Ryan paralyzed Stormfront with his laser eyes when she threatened his mother, but accidentally killed Becca too. Ryan was taken into custody by the CIA after a distressed Homelander was blackmailed into letting them go. A-Train (Jesse T. Usher) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) rejoined the Seven, but The Deep (Chace Crawford) was again ruled out. Meanwhile, Hughie (Jack Quaid) left the Boys to work for Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), who, unbeknownst to him, is the mysterious hit man.

What will S3 bring? A handy clue is that the first episode of S3 is called ‘Payback’. In the comics, that’s the name of an early Vought group of superheroes, the successor to The Avenging Squad, which was destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge in the 1940s. Payback is loosely based on Marvel’s Avengers. Its members include Eagle the Archer, who appeared in S2 of the TV series (played by Langston Kerman). He is the one who recruited Deep and A-Train to the Church of the Collective before the cult turned against him. a fictitious Seven out of 7 news last summer told us that Eagle had stopped performing superheroes after the church publicly humiliated him, and is now trying to become a rapper.

Two other Payback members join the cast in S3: Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) – mentioned briefly in S2 as a colleague of Stormfront when she passed by Liberty – and Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden), who has heat-related powers. There’s no word yet on whether we’ll see other Payback members like Tek Knight, Swatto, and Mind Droid (who has a romantic relationship with Crimson Countess in the comics), but the odds seem good.

We also know that the third season will feature one of the comic’s most shocking storylines: Herogasm, a standalone comedy miniseries in which the Boys infiltrate Vought’s annual party for his superheroes on a remote island, which turns out to be just one long weekend of kinky sex and drug use. Fans had challenged showrunner Eric Kripke to bring that storyline to the screen, and he confirmed on Twitter last January that the sixth episode of S3 will indeed be called “Herogasm”.

How far will the series take the Herogasm storyline? It’s hard to predict – the comedy panels are pretty explicit – but the concept alone should push the boundaries of what Prime Video has allowed so far. the boys on the screen. I mean, aside from all the gore and guts, S2 had a hilarious throw-away scene where the guys run into Love Sausage (Andrew Jackson), whose exposure to Compound-V gave him a stretchy grippy penis that he can use as a weapon. It went exactly as you would expect. All we see in the teaser is a snippet of Deep staring longingly at a starfish while engaged in sex – which is just as deep. (We’ve already seen him fending off a horny dolphin’s advances in S1.)

As for the rest of the teaser, the biggest reveal is that Butcher decides to even the odds by taking Compound V himself, giving him his own laser eye superpowers. Given that the substance is known to have serious side effects, will Butcher become even more unstable? (Yes, probably.) We get glimpses of Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess, and lots of exploding heads and bodies. In other words, the series shows no sign of curbing the gloriously violent outrage that has become its trademark.

the boys S3 will debut on Prime Vido on June 3, 2022.

List of image by YouTube/Prime Video