The Boys will be The Boys.
The season three teaser trailer for Amazon’s bawdy superhero drama is below and it’s full of all the sex, violence and mayhem fans have come to expect — plus there’s a look at series newcomer Jensen Ackles as Solider Boy.
The teaser was released during a South by Southwest panel for the series moderated by Christian Slater (who voices a character in the animated anthology series The Boys Presents: Diabolical). Showrunner Eric Kripke was joined by cast members Karl Urban, Laz Alonso, Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Karen Fukuhara and Ackles discussing the upcoming season.
Karl Urban, who plays rebel leader Billy Butcher on the show, teased that The Boys’ characteristic shocking moments will continue. “I promise you have never seen anything like it in the history of cinema,” Urban said of one previewed moment. “We went bigger this season. It’s a fun intense roller coaster ride.”
“[The scene is] in the first 10 minutes,” showrunner Eric Kripke added. “It’s not just the craziest thing we’ve done, I think it’s the craziest thing anybody has ever done.”
Fans will notice Butcher has powers in the trailer, but that’s one thing the cast couldn’t discuss. Kripke did reveal, however, that the mysterious Black Noir will remove his mask for the first time in the new season. Also, the new season, “in a subtle way,” is about the Covid pandemic. “And totally unprepared [the Trump] administration was. It’s like how Homelander (Antony Starr) is always more concerned with how something looks rather than solving the problem … It’s about how certain leaders need to front as macho. We’re watching the world edge towards World War III right now because there’s a guy with a tiny dick trying to do a thing.”
Ackles, who’s coming off The CW’s long-running fan favorite Supernatural, said he wasn’t entirely prepared for the leap to an R-rated-style streaming show. “Reading that script was quite eye opening,” Ackles said. “They somehow managed to tackle Herogasm [a storyline from the comics about a superhero orgy]. How they managed to do that I won’t say but … holy shit.”
Kripke said the show’s college-set spinoff begins filming next month. “It’s still untitled,” he says. “We’re trying to not at all repeat ourselves but have it all in the same world. It’s about superhero kids in school and it’s realistic and gritty but like The Boys is about cops and robbers, in a way, and the college show is a relationship show, but with our spin, so there’s weird sex and all sorts of drugs.”
The teaser is set to the song “Bones,” the first released track from Imagine Dragons’ forthcoming release Mercury — Act 2.
The Boys follows a group of celebrity superheroes who abuse their powers for their own selfish gains and a renegade group of outlaws who are trying to bring them down.
The Boys returns for eight episodes on Prime Video on Friday, June 3. Amazon will release three episodes on the show’s premiere day, then air new episodes each Friday until the season finale July 8.