Jensen Ackles on the big Soldier Boy twist of The Boys season 3: 'It really complicates the situation'
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Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Boys season 3, episode 7.
Well, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke did say there were many reasons why he couldn't adapt the Homelander-sexing-Soldier-Boy scene from the comics. Season 3's penultimate episode, "Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed," made that more abundantly clear.
Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) phoned up Homelander (Antony Starr) in the final minutes of the episode because he made a discovery. Back in 1980, he was called into the lab of Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman), the scientist who oversaw the creation of Homelander. Soldier Boy didn't know why he was there, just that it had something to do with genetics. So he beat his meat (his words) into a cup. A year later, Homelander was born.
Yup, Soldier Boy is Homelander's biological father. Suddenly all these daddy issues make a lot more sense. This character element isn't from the original The Boys comics, but was something Kripke and the writer's room came up with for the show. Ackles, in an interview with EW, points out the obvious: "It really complicates the situation in a really interesting way."
Ackles didn't know about his character's big twist until he already started production and received the script for the seventh episode. He feels Kripke might not have wanted the reveal to affect the way he approached Soldier Boy. Once he did know, Ackles says, "I immediately started to shift the performance a bit to be two things."
"One, a little more similar to what Ant does with Homelander because now there's a genetic similarity, but also I paid close attention to what Homelander's relationship with his son was and started to play into that because that, then, played itself out," the actor explains. "Maybe Soldier Boy wants to have a relationship with his son, and maybe Butcher's idea of him taking down Homelander isn't what Soldier Boy wants anymore, because now it's his kid."
Amazon Studios Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) teams up with Hughie (Jack Quaid) to take down a member of Payback on 'The Boys' season 3.
"Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed" further makes clear that the birth of Homelander — whom Vogelbaum was sure would grow to become more powerful than Soldier Boy — was the reason Vought proposed a plan to get rid of the super-soldier. Because of that, Ackles felt the fatherly twist was a great way to show Soldier Boy's own insecurities: "Does he dethrone his replacement, or does he embrace the fact that it's his son?"
Kripke says if you go back and rewatch previous episodes, you'll be able to pick up on the parallels between Soldier Boy and Homelander, including how Homelander's relationship with Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) mirrored Soldier Boy's relationship with Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden). "They say a lot of the same things, they do a lot of the same things," Kripke says, adding, "You start to understand how the notion of this toxicity is passed."
Starr knew about the twist from the beginning of the season and says it felt "very Star Wars." (Homelander, I am your father!)
"It's an interesting conundrum for both characters, but particularly for Homelander," the actor says. "He's always been looking for love and connection, and the revelation that he has a father really resurfaces that craving that he has for family... We tried to make it like Homelander really goes off in his own head. He becomes very mentally fractured and goes off on a bit of a fantasy of family and having the three generations all together. He's going to have a very male [family], but he's going to have a family. There's going to be this intergenerational bonding experience."
Watch Kripke and his cast discuss more behind-the-scenes secrets of The Boys season 3, episode 7 from EW's On Set in the video above. The show's season 3 finale drops on Prime Video next Friday.
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