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May 30 | 2 min readThe highly anticipated season 3 of The Boys did not disapoint, as it gave us celebrity cameos, fights with sex toys, musical numbers, cartoon critters and a huge superhero super-orgy.
The season started with a bang when supe Termite made himself microscopic and entered a human body in an unorthodox way. If that wasn’t enough, he sneezed, making for perhaps the most shocking and memorable scene of the season.
We saw the arrival of Soldier Boy and the departure of Stormfront, the rise of Victoria Neuman and the collapse of The Seven. Superpowers were gained and lost and there was a ton of daddy issues.
With season 4 due to start filming in August, find out everything we know so far about the show's return, including likely storylines and news on The Boys spin-off, Gen V.
The Boys season 3: That dramatic ending explained and questions for season 4
When is The Boys season 4 coming to Prime Video?
While fans had to wait two long years between seasons 2 and 3, news that The Boys had been comissioned for a fourth season was revealed in June, before season 3 had even come out.
With filming starting this August it’s highly unlikely series 4 will come out this year, but it is possibly that it will be released some time in 2023.
Is there a trailer?
Not yet, but in case you missed it, here, in all its glory, is the fantastic movie trailer parody seen at the start of season 3:
What is the plot for The Boys season 4?
Not much is known about the plot for season 4 yet, but in an interview with Collider.com, showrunner Eric Kripke gave a hint of what's to come.
"Ryan is a really important part of it. If Ryan goes Homelander's way and then there's two Homelanders in the world, then that's a nightmare for the planet," Kripke explained.
"If Butcher can get Ryan into the light, then that's probably actually the best weapon they have against Homelander. It's always been a show about family, and so much of season 3 was about fathers, so I think it makes sense that season 4 is about sons."
Given this news, it's likely The Boys will resume their quest to destroy Homelander with Butcher given the added incentive of saving Ryan's soul.
At the end of season 3 Congresswoman and secret supe Victoria Neuman is now the running mate of Presidential candidate Bob Singer. This cues up another mission for The Boys, with Butcher's final words being: "Well, that b**** has got to go".
And what of The Seven? At the end of season 3, Starlight and Queen Maeve had quit The Seven, Black Noir had his guts ripped out, A-Train's comittment was doubted and only The Deep was seen in Vought Tower, alone in his room with a picture of him and Homelander on the wall. Will there be replacements or is this the end of The Seven?
Who are the The Boys cast?
The following main cast members are expected to return for season 4 of The Boys.
Antony Starr - Homelander
Season 3 saw a very emotional Homelander. At the beginnning of the series he had to deal with the death of Stormfront, his biggest ally and constant booster of his monstrous ego. Then he was made to co-captain The Seven with Starlight and things really got worse with the return of Soldier Boy, a supe as powerful as Homelander.
But before we could feel too sorry for the monster, things slowly picked up. In a TV rant that should really have got him fired from The Seven or worse, he gained more popularity, especially from the far right.
By blackmailing Victoria Neuman he managed to get Stan Edgar out of the way and claim the spot of CEO of Vought. He found his son Ryan but also found he had an awful father, in the shape of Soldier Boy.
At the very end of season 3, what was once a fantasy sequence in an earlier season became horribly real. When a Starlight supporter threw a cup at Homelander which accidentally hit Ryan, Homelander obliterated the man's head in front of a crowd. To everyone's surpise, especially Homelander's, the crowd cheered, led by MM's daughter's step-father Todd, and ended with Ryan's approving smile.
Will Homelander get away with such a brazen act? Who can stop him?
Karl Urban - Billy Butcher
At the start of season 3 Butcher was feeling hemmed in by his new role in the CIA under Hughie's watchful eye. But learning of Victoria Neuman's superpowers and with Maeve's encouragement and a little Temp-V he was let loose and didn't care who got in his way to bring Homelander down.
Butcher dealt with a lot of family issues this season, having been trapped in a waking nightmare by Mind-Droid, Butcher was forced to confront his father issues and the death of his little brother Lenny, will this soften him?
At the end of season 3 Butcher was given 12-18 months to live: with such a sentence Butcher will have to quicken the pace if he's ever going to see Homelander brought to justice, could this lead to him making more risky descisions?
Erin Moriarty - Starlight / Annie January
Starlight finally managed to expose Homelander's evil behaviour which met with a mixed response. Thinking everyone would turn against him, Vought's media machine went into overdrive, making out that Starlight was the corrupt one.
Annie is always on the side of truth and justice and now, having left The Seven, will hopefully bring some stability to The Boys or maybe just bigger arguments with Butcher.
Jack Quaid - Hughie Campbell
Hughie began season 3 thinking he was doing good by working for a government agency keeping tabs on the supes' bad behaviour. Unfortunately when he witnessed his boss and friend Victoria Neuman detroy someone's head, his world came tumbling down and he was sent back into the awaiting arms of Butcher and The Boys.
Feeling unable to protect Starlight, he took Temp-V against her wishes, which gave him powers to teleport, naked.
In the final episode we saw Hughie manage to enhance Starlight's powers to help her fight Soldier Boy. Will his strength lie in enabling others in the team or will the seductiveness of V be too much for him in season 4?
Laz Alonso - MM aka Mother's Milk
Mother’s milk had to struggle with a huge male appendage in season 2 and in season 3 got engulfed with male fluid at Herogasm - who knows what they’ll throw at him in season 4?
Season 3 also saw MM struggling to be a good father whilst seeking bloody revenge on Soldier Boy, the supe responsible for the death of his family. The season's final scene saw MM's ex's boyfriend Todd fanatically appaulding Homehander killing a man in broad daylight, so how will he protect his daughter from this insane man?
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Karen Fukuhara - Kimiko
One minute she’s stabbing people with sex toys, the next she’s singing and dancing through corridors as if she was in a 1950s musical - Kimiko has definitely got range!
Having lost her powers due to Soldier Boy she chose to have them back after she and Frenchie were badly beaten by Nina’s henchman. As she has embraced her ultra-violent side - as seen in the final episode where she gleefully broke bones and kicked ass - could this new acceptance make her even more powerful in the next season?
Tomer Capone - Frenchie
We found out that Frenchie - like Homelander, Butcher and Soldier Boy - also had an awful father. This was revealed by shadowy Russian mobster Little Nina, someone from Frenchie's shady past who still had some hold over him.
Thanks to Kimiko's awesome fighting skills he was able to escape, but is Little Nina gone for good?
This season we also saw Frenchie get closer to Kimiko but their first kiss was not as expected, was this due to Kimiko's lack of powers or have they been friend-zoned?
Claudia Doumit - Victoria Neuman
The big reveal at the end of season 2 was that Victoria Neuman was a supe and the one responsible for blowing up numerous heads in the series, and this became the shadowy background story arc of season 3.
After Hughie discovered her powers she became much more sinister, threatening Starlight and betraying Stan Edgar, her surrogate father. We did see a glimpse of her humanity when she gave her daughter compound V in the hope of protecting her.
But when it's revealed that the favour that she asks of Homelander in episode 7 is to order the assassination of Lamar Bishop - the one person standing in her way to become VP to presidential candidate Bob Singer - it's quite clear she's on the wrong side.
Will she stop at VP or continue her climb to the top in season 4?
Jessie Usher - A-Train
A-Train went through a lot this season, trying to be a better supe but somehow making the wrong descisions. When he tried to get a supe who was terrorising black neighbourhoods to apologise to the community, it back fired and the supe, Blue Hawk, went on a violent rampage which ended with his brother becoming injured and unable to walk.
But when A-Train then gets revenge by killing Blue Hawk in a rather bloody scene, his brother rejects him and so does Homelander.
As a result he missed his chance to team up with The Boys and chose to betray Supersonic rather than go against Homelander. Where does his loyalty lie at the end of season 3, and where will we see him go in season 4?
Chase Crawford - The Deep
The Deep certainly ploughed some depths this season. After eating poor Timothy the octopus, he then asassinated Lamar Bishop to prove his alligence to Homelander. But his wife, who was integral to keeping him in The Seven, left him at the end of the season after his sexual proclivities pushed her too far.
Will The Deep be able to keep his head above water without her?
Who will not be returning in season 4?
Aya Cash - Stormfront
Super Nazi Stormfront, played by Aya Cash, bowed out in episode 2 of season 3. After being burnt up at the end of season 2, Stormfront was left disfigured and barely able to give Homelander any real encouragement or affection apart from the odd bit of relief!
She commited suicide by biting her tongue off and bleeding to death. Despite Homelander rejecting her Nazi ideology - he doesn’t believe in a ‘master race’ just him being the ‘Master’ of all - Stormfront leaves Homelander the legacy of her far right following, making him more powerful and dangerous than ever.
Miles Gaston Villanueva - Supersonic
Ex-boyband member and Starlight's ex, Supersonic had a short life as a member of The Seven. Having won a place in a rigged TV contest, Starlight confessed that the The Boys were planning on bringing down Homelander.
In a moment of empathy Supersonic tells A-Train of the plan after A-Train is humilated by Homelander, but betrays Supersonic and tells Homelander all, hoping this will prove his loyalty to The Seven. It does for a short time but also results in Supersonic's death.
Who might return in season 4?
Dominique McElligott - Queen Maeve
Having faked her death, got back together with her ex-girlfriend and gone to live the quiet life, it's unlikely that Maeve will return. But this is The Boys, and if Homelander finds out she's still alive, will he go after her?
Nathan Mitchell - Black Noir
He survived a severe allergic reaction to nuts in season 2 and made it back into the Seven for season 3, but Black Noir was definitely a goner when Homelander ripped out his guts at the end of this season, wasn't he?
Well, in a cryptic comment to Collider.com, Kripke told fans to expect the unexpected.
"There's a lot of hilarious conversations in Season 4 about like, 'Well, if you kill Noir, you can recast him', so there is certainly discussion. I don't think it's the last you'll see of Black Noir or Nathan Mitchell, the actor who plays him, but what's really fun is he'll have to come back in a very different form," he said.
Black Noir doesn't talk and wears a mask with full body armour so Vought could conceal his death by getting someone else to wear the suit. It certainly wouldn't be the first cover-up they've done.
But are weirder things planned as suggested by Kripke's 'different form'? Black Noir was kept company this season by a host of cartoon characters this season. Is it possible they could come back? And him as one of them?
Paul Reiser - The Legend
One of the stand out characters of the season was The Legend, played by Paul Reiser (Stranger Things, Aliens). Sleazy ex-Vice President of Hero Management at Vought, The Legend knew where Soldier Boy was hiding as well as a ton of other Vought secrets.
Never able to open his mouth without saying something scandalous or disgusting, the character was actually toned down because Reiser thought he was too obscene, makes us wonder what he would have been like originally! We didn’t see him come to any harm at the end of the season, so could he be back?
Giancarlo Esposito - Stan Edgar
Stan Edgar, played by Giancarlo Esposito, (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) former CEO of Vought, went away very quietly - maybe even too quietly?
Having been blackmailed by Homelander, Neuman accused Edgar of fraud and is taken away by the authorities. For a man who has had his fingers in the Vought pie for years, it seems strange he would go without a fight, but maybe it's all part of a larger plan...
Jensen Ackles - Soldier Boy
Soldier Boy, played by Jensen Ackles, wreaked a lot of havoc this season. Promising to kill Homelander if The Boys helped him get payback on his old team Pay Back, he then had a change of heart when he learnt that Homelander was his son - for a moment anyway.
Finding him a "f****** disappointment", all hell broke loose when Soldier Boy struck Ryan. Butcher and Homelander then found themselves on the same side fighting Soldier Boy.
After somehow surviving falling from a great height and exploding, Soldier Boy is back in the deep freeze. Is he still the only one who can take on Homelander? And will he be resurrected in the next season?
What is The Boys spin-off: Gen V?
While we wait for the next season of The Boys, filming is already under way on Gen V, a supe college drama set in The Boys universe.
Originally produced under the working title 'Varsity', showrunner Eric Kripke told Deadline.com how the programme will link up with The Boys.
"We’re doing our best to design a universe that sees some of the issues and storylines in Season 3 hand off to the first season in Varsity (Now Gen V)," he said.
"Like there’s a presidential campaign happening in the background of that season, and there’s certain things that are happening at that school that are both in reaction to season 3 of The Boys. There’s Soldier Boy, etcetera, but also some new storylines that are happening in that season of the spinoff that we have to pick up and take into season 4 of the show."
Heading up the cast is Patrick Schwarzenegger, and while he couldn't cofirm much, he did give Variety an insight into the nature of the show.
“This set is really fun, and there’s just a loosey-goosey comedy. It’s kind of like ‘Euphoria’ meets superheroes," he said.
The cast also includes Lizzie Broadway, Shelley Conn, Asa Germann, Derek Luh, Chance Perdomo, Maddie Phillips, Jaz Sinclair, Sean Patrick Thomas and London Thor.
Gen V will premier on Prime Video sometime in 2023.
If you can't wait that long, The Boys present Diabolical, an animated anthology series set in The Boys universe, is available to stream now on Prime Video.
Season 1-3 of The Boys is available to watch on Prime Video now
