The seventh episode of the third season of The Boys, available since Friday on Prime Video, ends with a huge reveal about Homelander and Soldier Boy. A twist to which the performers of the two Supers reacted.
Warning, this article contains spoilers on episode 7 of season 3 of The Boys!
The third season of The Boys will have multiplied shock scenes until the end! The latest is none other than the revelation of a relationship between Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) and Homelander (Antony Starr). At the end of episode 7, the first indeed calls the second to tell him that he is his father. A twist that no one saw coming, not even the actors of the series.
“I read it in the script and let out a cry of surprise. We don’t see it coming but when we learn about it we say to ourselves ‘ah but yes of course’. These are the best twists, the ones that have been in front of us from the start”, thus assures Jack Quaid, the interpreter of Hughie, to Entertainment Weekly.
And it is true that the writers had disseminated some clues during the season. “You begin to understand how the notion of this toxicity has passed. Watching the season again, you’ll see all these parallels we’ve drawn between them.”, confides the creator of the series, Eric Kripke, citing in particular the relationship of Soldier Boy with Crimson Countess and that of Homelander with Maeve.
An actor in the unknown…
However, the showrunner had not shared the information with Jensen Ackles who therefore discovered the pot of roses by reading the script for the episode. “In my opinion, this is the most WTF twist of the season”, he says before explaining that this then impacted his interpretation of the Super:
“I immediately started tweaking my performance a bit to be two things. On the one hand, a bit more similar to what Antony [Starr] I did with Homelander because now there’s a genetic similarity, but I also paid close attention to the relationship between Homelander and his son and started playing on that.”
Prime Video
And to continue:Maybe Soldier Boy wants to have a relationship with his son, and maybe Butcher’s idea of him annihilating Homelander isn’t what Soldier Boy wants anymore, because now he’s his child. So that really complicates the situation, in an incredible way.”
… but not the other!
On the other hand, Antony Starr was made aware of this twist which he describes as “very star wars” at the start of the season. He says in this regard:It’s an interesting puzzle for both characters, but especially for Homelander. He’s always been looking for love and connection, and the revelation that he has a father really brings back that need he has for a family…”
And to add:We’ve tried to show that Homelander really gets lost in its own head. He becomes very mentally fractured and embarks on a family fantasy: to have all three generations together. He will have a [famille] very masculine, but he’s going to have a family. There is going to be this experience of intergenerational bonding.”
Prime Video
An invention for the series
Note that, in the comics from which The Boys is adapted, Soldier Boy is not the biological father of Homelander. Moreover, in the paper version of the now famous Herogasm orgy, the two men have a sexual relationship. Before the broadcast of season 3, Eric Kripke had entrusted to EW on this subject :
“I love this scene and it’s hilarious, but for a dozen reasons, all of which will be revealed when you see the season, it couldn’t happen. We talked about it. It conflicted with a lot of other things we were trying to build with Soldier Boy. So, unfortunately, she had to disappear.“And we understand better why now!
To discover the consequences of this huge twist, go Friday, July 8 on Prime Video.