How ‘The Boys’ Season 3 Casting Spoiler Connects to ‘Doctor Strange 2’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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[Editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for “The Boys” Season 3 premiere.]

A fake movie within a parody show of a real genre, with a surprise A-list cameo from a real superhero movie? Yep, our heads are super-spinning right now.

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Within the first minute of Prime Video’s “The Boy” Season 3 premiere, Oscar winner Charlize Theron takes over the acting duties for disgraced supe Stormfront (Aya Cash), who turned out to be an ageless Nazi who helped found the sinister Vought conglomerate half a century prior. Stormfront’s ex and leader of Avengers-meets-Justice League type superhero group The Seven, Homelander (Anthony Starr) has to embark on an apology tour for “falling in love with the wrong woman” — and that also means Vought International has to similarly lead a PR blitz, including recasting Stormfront in the upcoming “Dawn of the 7” movie.

“The Boys” introduced the fictional production of “Dawn of the 7” in Season 2, and after Stormfront’s true identity was leaked in last season’s finale, Vought recast her with Theron and firmly placed the Stormfront character as the Nazi villain of the film.

“You’ll always be in my heart, but the Fourth Reich is in my soul,” Theron as a version of Stormfront tells Homelander. “Join me and we can reign together for a thousand years.”

Prime Video has been marketing “Dawn of the 7” like a real Amazon streaming film, including an official website and plot synopsis for “The Boys” movie within a series joke.

“When darkness descends on the world, and it seems all hope is lost, seven heroes will rise,” the logline reads. “Seven who will stand. Seven who will fight. Seven who will restore light and hope, and see the sun rise on a new era. This is the true story of the greatest superhero team the world has ever known. This is the Dawn of the Seven.”

Theron most recently appeared in the actual superhero ensemble film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” as wizard Clea, who in the comics eventually marries Doctor Strange and later becomes Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme.

So, is the timing really a coincidence for Theron’s supe surprise on “The Boys” only a few weeks after the “Doctor Strange 2” premiere?

It’s all part of the larger meta game of “The Boys” series: Just look to the other plot details for direct spoofs of the film industry as a whole.

In the series, Adam Bourke (P.J. Byrne) was the filmmaker hired to direct and write “Dawn of the 7,” although the script got rewrites from Joss Whedon, a nod towards Whedon helming “Justice League” after Zack Snyder. A reference to Tony Gilroy reshooting “Dawn of the 7” also references Lucasfilm hiring the screenwriter to oversee reshoots of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”

And, with Stormfront (Cash) being replaced by Theron in the movie-within-a-show, Vought is forced to premiere “Dawn of the 7” on the Vought+ streaming service, causing fans to start a #ReleaseTheBourkeCut social media campaign identical to #ReleasetheSnyderCut that led to “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” on HBO Max.

Snyder even joked about the “Dawn of the 7” jest on Twitter, writing, “Congratulations to Director Bourke. Excited to see your vision realized,” after Amazon released the fake trailer for the movie.

As for Theron, we won’t have to wait much longer to see her as another franchise baddie: Theron reprises her villainous role as Cipher in “Fast X,” the tenth “Fast and Furious” film which is currently in production.

“The Boys” Season 3 is now streaming.

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