For season three, Amazon’s The Boys is diving into its past and there is no past without Soldier Boy. As was previously reported, Soldier Boy is being played by none other than Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles; in the world of the show, he was basically the original superhero, long before the Seven were a thing. Now we’ve got our first look at his costume.
“When I cast Jensen as Soldier Boy, the first thing I said was, ‘I’m most excited for you, because of the amazing process you’ll go through with [Laura Jean Shannon], our Super Suit designer,’” showrunner Eric Kripke said in a press release. “It took six months but the experience surpassed Jensen’s expectations. LJ has made a work of art that tips its hat to the WWII Soldier Boy from the comics, while taking it in a sleek new direction. And if you think the photos are cool, just wait till you see Jensen in action. It’s one of my very favourite suits. Also, now you can quit clogging my Twitter notifications with demands to see it.” Here’s what he looks like as Soldier Boy in season three of The Boys.
“Soldier Boy is the original bad arse,” Shannon, who designed the suit along with concept artist Greg Hopwood, said. “Our goal was to highlight a bygone era of overt masculinity and grit. With that pedigree we dove headfirst into baking in an all-American quality grounded in a military soldier’s practicality with a heavy dose of old school cowboy swagger. We knew that the actor had to have Steve McQueen looks and chops with a John Wayne attitude, luckily Jensen Ackles embodies all of that.”
In the comics Soldier Boy and his team, Payback, existed at the same time as the Seven. But on the show, Payback and Soldier Boy will exist long before that, acting more as the Seven’s prototypes or inspiration. It’s unclear if the timelines will cross over or if we’ll see Ackles in the present of the show — but the hope is reportedly that the past storyline will help dig into why and how the world got to the place it is now.
No word on when The Boys season three will debut on Amazon, but when it does, Ackles will be well-equipped to kick all kinds of Nazi butt.