This has been a week of exciting news for “The Boys,” with announcements at Comic Con that there will not only be a Season 5 (with Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy as a regular), but also a prequel coming up starring Ackles and Aya Cash! Vought Rising will be all about the early adventures of Soldier Boy and Liberty aka Stormfront.
The season 4 finale set up Soldier Boy’s return, as Homelander was reunited with his (unconscious) dad.
I was fairly certain that was happening but even so, when I watched the screeners, I squealed at that reveal. And I was definitely not alone!
Now we know we’ll be getting A LOT more of this fascinating character, including a focus on the complicated (understatement) father-son relationship between Soldier Boy and Homelander in Season 5. (Jensen and Antony Starr have a lot less complicated relationship – the two were overjoyed to see each other at Comic Con last weekend).
We’re also getting a 1950s era deep dive into what sculpted Ben into Soldier Boy and Clara into Liberty (and eventually Stormfront). The fact that Vought Rising is described as a “lurid pulp saga prequel” set in 1950s New York makes the prequel sound even more enticing – just imagine the LOOK of it! The costumes alone will have both Jensen Ackles and his entire fandom beyond happy.
And Season 5, which will be the final season of the original series, is sure to be as spot on with its parodies and as entertaining with its action, depth and surprising emotionality as the previous four seasons.
As if that wasn’t enough fantastic news, Creation Entertainment also announced its very first “The Boys” convention, in New Jersey in October!
Clearly the show continues to be a phenomenon, and I’m endlessly fascinated about all the reasons why it has captured so many people’s imagination. When I spoke with Eric Kripke before Season 4 had aired, we had a chance to talk a bit about the show as an eerie mirror of our real world, the power of its nuanced characters, and what “Supernatural” reunions might be on the way.
Here’s some more of our conversation now that we’re not in worried-about-spoilers territory. You can read lots more about “The Boys” and its complex characters – with input from Jensen Ackles, Aya Cash, Eric Kripke and many others – in Supes Ain’t Always Heroes, including more of the psychological questions I can’t resist asking, to which they all have always given such incredible answers.
I asked Eric how it felt that the series keeps veering closer and closer to reality and being more explicit about being a mirror of some disturbing parts of our actual world. Was he worried that it was going to get a little too real for some people?
Eric Kripke: I never know whether something will work or not or what the response will be, I’m just trying to do something that means something to me and entertains me. It’s for sure a more explicit season, but like we’ve never been particularly subtle.
Lynn: That’s true!
Eric: But we do find ourselves leaning more into some of the Trump parallels, and honestly I’ll cop to the show being like a little more urgent and a little less elegant because I think the world is more urgent and less elegant. I look back and ruefully laugh at, when Biden got elected, a lot of people said to me, like so what are you going to write about now?
Lynn: Oh how I wish there was nothing…
Eric: Right? And I was like, you know what? If I have nothing to write about and I have to pivot to just doing something completely fantastic, great – yeah, I would love to have no material! And then January 6th happened and all the continued gun violence happened, there’s just an endless firehose of real life horror that is overwhelming. So for me, it’s like, when you have a show that has the opportunity that we do to comment on the world, you have to. You can’t have these things happen in the world and say well, let’s tell everyone a comforting lie. You walk in and you say wow, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been, let’s dive even deeper into it, let’s make it even more explicit.
Lynn: I so respect that. And it feels validating to me, to see that someone else is seeing the insanity. I love that about this universe. I think also one of the things that increases the impact of the show and is something that you and the writers are really good at – and the actors you cast are really good at portraying this – is that the characters are very nuanced. They’re never black and white, never solely on one side of the good or bad fence. That’s uncomfortable for the viewer, but in a good way, and it’s also realistic. This is always a theme of your shows, but in this one in particular, you’ve made sure we know enough of the characters’ back stories that we know they’ve had serious trauma, so I sometimes feel empathy even for Homelander. And I don’t feel very good about that!
Kripke: (laughing)
Lynn: The good guys aren’t always good and the bad guys aren’t always bad. With Soldier Boy, for example, Jensen Ackles is so good at letting you see every emotion the character is feeling, so you end up feeling like you understand him. (I wrote an entire chapter about his portrayal and the response to the character in Supes Ain’t Always Heroes because of course I did). The fandom loved Soldier Boy and knew they shouldn’t – I told Jensen beforehand that I knew he would be so damn good at this, I wouldn’t be able to out and out hate his character. And I was right!
Kripke: What’s funny is, in regard to Jensen playing Soldier Boy, you know he’s fucking fantastic. He’s just so good at bringing the audience and it’s almost like – what I laugh about is like he was probably a little too good at his job. In part it’s because of the fandom, but like so many people took his side in the Season 3 finale – they’re like oh, we’re on his side, he’s the guy, fuck everyone! And you’re like, but he’s the bad guy and he’s trying to kill a ten year old, and…. oh you’re cool, all good, yeah – it’s Jensen!
Lynn: (laughing)
Kripke: (laughing) Yeah, let him do anything he wants, he’s Jensen Ackles, and if he wants to murder children, I’m in!
Lynn: Okay, accurate depiction of the fandom response.
Kripke: But part of it just comes from my particular process as a writer. I mean, it’s that part that isn’t particularly self conscious to me, it’s just, I don’t know how to write villains in the way that someone is just going to be evil and they’re going to do evil things, like I just don’t. It doesn’t compute. If someone told me how to do it, I honestly wouldn’t be able to because I don’t understand, it doesn’t compute for me.
Lynn: Kinda like real life. It might be the neighbor down the street who’s a nice guy, and then he blows someone away over a driveway dispute. It IS complex.
Kripke: Well, psychologically people don’t think of themselves as evil. Nobody in history has ever thought of themselves as evil… the great monsters in history all thought they were saving the world. So, to me, whenever there’s a villain, I say well wow, what makes them tick or what made them that way, or what do they want and why are they able to look at themselves in the mirror every morning and feel good about themselves. Then, conversely, when I’m writing for heroes, it’s a different side of the same coin. You can’t tell me that you’re not sometimes jealous of that guy or you’re angry about that or something. These were such core issues of the comics, I inherited a certain amount of back stories. But when you break them down as characters and take them seriously – Hughie, for example, is really processing trauma… Butcher too – Garth Ennis did a really good job of telling a story about a guy who was eaten alive from the inside out by rage.
Lynn: Yes, that’s just it, there’s trauma and its aftermath on both sides, the heroes and the villains.
Kripke: Mostly I’m trying to honor Garth’s tonal depiction of that character, because to me, we almost never talk about it, but like one of the great themes of the show is the destruction that vengeance causes to the perpetrator as well as the victim. A reference we bring up all the time in the writers’ room and never talk about much publicly is Unforgiven – a guy who got chewed up inside by his vengeance and violence. Violence is as much to the perpetrator as to the victim. If we’re doing a realistic version of a superhero story, those guys were like amazingly well adjusted when the love of their life was murdered, or fridged, and then it sends them on a heroic quest for justice. I’m like bullshit, if you’re getting out of bed to go fucking kill some dudes because your love got murdered, like you’re not processing your shit in the healthiest possible way!
Lynn: Yeah, not what my psychologist self would advise.
Kripke: Exactly!
Lynn: Part of what makes the show powerful is its realism. From a psychological standpoint, the show gets a lot right, and that makes it more impactful even if it makes people profoundly uncomfortable with the shades of gray. I think that’s good for people because we, as a culture, have become so much more black and white. We need to see context and nuance, so I love that it’s there.
At the time of our chat, there hadn’t yet been any public mention of Jared Padalecki possibly joining in the insanity on “The Boys,” but I brought it up to Eric.
Lynn: So, Jared mentioned that you had chatted with him on his birthday. Is there a chance he might make an appearance on The Boys? Because the fandom would lose it.
Kripke: Yeah, they would explode. I told him, like you have an open door, man, so whenever you’re free from Walker, let’s talk about it.
Lynn: If Soldier Boy and Jared’s character end up onscreen together the fandom might implode – in a good way.
Kripke: (laughing) Yeah, it’s true. We have to pull it off with the schedule first but yes – yeah, ideally that would be great.
So, the idea was there way back then. Of course, fast forward to now with Walker cancelled and Jared and Eric having lots more conversation about what the future might hold, with Kripke making it clear he wants Padalecki on board and Jared saying he’s up for it. (Supe villain, anyone?)
Padalecki told Deadline, “I think at this point in my acting life, I only want to work on projects that I care about or with people that I really care about, and obviously Eric and I are indelibly connected forever.”
Kripke, for his part, has said “Like I said, I’m completing my “Supernatural” Pokemon, but the truth is, I just like working with people that I like, and Supernatural just happens to be chock full of people that have remained dear friends of mine. And if I had to choose between someone I didn’t know and a good friend and they’re both talented, I’ll pick the person I know and love every time. So part of it is just, I like working with family.”
We got a “Supernatural” father-son reunion onstage at Hall H at Comic Con this weekend with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jensen Ackles (and creator Kripke) and that made me all kinds of emotional. Fingers crossed that we get a brothers reunion with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles coming up too – even if it does break the internet!
If you like thinking deeply about this show and its complicated characters, check out the new book ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes: Inside the Complex Characters and Twisted Psychology of The Boys’ for more insights from both the actors and psychologists, media experts and fans like me who love The Boys. There are chapters that take a deep dive into the series itself and all the characters, plus exclusive contributions from the cast including Jensen Ackles and Aya Cash, who will headline the new Vought Rising. Both Jensen and Aya’s chapters make it clear just how much thought they put into crafting these characters, who are so different from them in so many ways.
More info at: https://smartpopbooks.com/book/supes-aint-always-heroes/
Thanks to Eric Kripke for the candid Comic-Con photos for this article.
