Ladies and gentlemen, the moment is nigh.
The first two episodes of the final season of the hit superhero satire, The Boys, are set to release in less than four months, April 8th, and fans have been clamouring for any information whatsoever on what to expect from this long-awaited season of television. Lucky for them, and presumably anyone who is reading this article to begin with, over the weekend Prime Video treated us to the season’s first trailer, which not only hints at how the season will kick off, but also offers up the tantalizing teasers we have come to expect from trailers for The Boys.
When we last saw our intrepid band of dysfunctional do-gooders, all but Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Butcher (Karl Urban) had been apprehended by Vought, which is now being led by the villainous psychopath Homelander (Antony Starr), who now also happens to be the President of the United States by proxy, rounding up problematic humans under the guise of martial law and imprisoning them in concentration camps.
We are shown one such camp early in the trailer, whose core purpose is unsettlingly contrasted by its colourful, star-spangled façade, and it is here we find our captured heroes, with one shot in particular showing a close-up of Hughie (Jack Quaid) in the camp. However, the trailer does little to hide the fact that they will be busted out of Starlight, who we see using her newly improved powers as she hovers over the camp. Later on in the trailer, we see that she is aided by a reformed A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), who was revealed to be working with Starlight in the Gen V finale, and he seems to be getting his very own slow motion sequence, clearly referencing the iconic Quicksilver set pieces from the X-Men franchise.
Yet before we are shown any of this, the trailer opens in a solemn manner, with a voiceover of M.M. saying, “We ain’t survivin’ this fucking war,” as the group come upon and a decrepit lot with bodies and gore strewn all about. We then see tender moments between the likes of Annie and Hughie, and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), while Butcher proselytizes, “You wouldn’t be the first to throw their life away in a war. But you would be the first to save the world doing it So how about it you lot. One last go?” As you can tell, there is a sense of culmination and finality to this last hoorah for a group that we have come to know over the course of four seasons, a tone I welcome as much as I fear, not just because the show is on the cusp of its conclusion, but also because the trailer is potentially conveying that not all will make it out alive.
Putting aside such morbid thoughts, though, there is a lot to be excited about watching this trailer. We get glimpses of the likes of Zoe Neuman (Olivia Morandin) using her…mouth-tentacle ability, her grandfather Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), a bloody and laser-eyed Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), and Ashley (Colby Minifie), the latter of whom is seemingly the press secretary to the President, though she is possibly hiding the physical changes hinted at in season 4, when she injected herself with compound V. We also get glimpses of Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), a muddied and seemingly troubled Deep (Chace Crawford), Gen V’s Dogknott (Zach McGowan), and even the fan-favourite Soldier Boy, played by Jensen Ackles. However, the most tantalizing detail in the entire trailer is who we see Soldier Boy with.
Prior to The Boys, series creator and showrunner, Eric Kripke, was best know for his work on the first five seasons of the long-running series he also created and ran, Supernatural. Several cast members of the show have appeared in The Boys throughout its run, such as Jim Beaver, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Ackles, who was a co-lead in the show. Well, the fifth season will also star Supernatural’s other lead actor, Jared Padalecki, who we see walking into a room with Ackles’ Soldier Boy following closely behind, before he is later seen to be covered in, and surrounded by, blood and gore.
Even when Ackles was cast, his role as Soldier Boy was not kept hidden for long, but Padalecki’s character is a total mystery, and there is as much of a chance of him being a character from the comic book source material as there is of him being an original creation for the show, given the liberties taken with the source material. What we do know is based on a quote from Padalecki himself, who teased, “I’ll say this much – my character is very excited to meet Soldier Boy.” Frankly, that could mean a lot of different things, but it is certainly exciting to see two talented actors with such undeniable chemistry sharing the screen once again.
There is undeniably a lot to unpack in this trailer, and fans can be sure that there will be another trailer dropping before the release of The Boys’ fifth and final season. In the meantime, this is surely more than enough to keep this fan going.