Right now, DC Comics characters have spent weeks punching each other in the face on account of the DC K.O.event. Plenty of heroes and villains have been eliminated and it’s nearing the last leg of its story—but not without having some last-minute fighters entering the fray.
Earlier this week, the publisher announced a one-shot called Boss Battle that brings in some guest fighters from other universes. Included in this new lineup are Vampirella, Red Sonja, The Boys’ Homelander, and The Conjuring headliner Annabelle. (No, really.) Preview images for the book, written by Jeremy Adams and drawn by artists such as Hi-Fi and Carmine Di Giandomenico, highlight face-offs like Superman vs. Homelander (obviously), Wonder Woman crossing swords with Sonja, and Black Lightning and Plastic Man fighting the Mortal Kombat 1versions of Shang Tsung and Sub-Zero.
The narrative justification for this is the remaining fighters need more Omega Energy to continue the tournament and so one of them can go fight Darkseid, so they decide to use these characters from other universes as a means to grind. It’s a silly reason to get Lex Luthor in position to get attacked by bear woman Samantha Strong or for Batwoman to get seduced by Vampirella but hey, it sounds like DC K.O. is just that kind of event.
For those into that sort of “who would win??” thing, the one-shot will help fuel your agenda for or against a particular character you don’t like, such as, say, Homelander or the Kombat characters. Read the fists flying and see who comes out on top when DC K.O.: Boss Battle hits shelves on February 4.
Karl Urban has hinted that The Boys Season 5 will include a long-awaited revelation about his character, Billy Butcher. During a recent appearance at the MCM London Comic Con, the actor teased that fans can expect to learn about an important detail from Butcher’s past.
Karl Urban says The Boys Season 5 will reveal how Billy Butcher got his forehead scar
Karl Urban has confirmed that the upcoming fifth season of The Boys will address the origin of Billy Butcher’s forehead scar.
Speaking at the MCM London Comic Con, the actor shared that Season 5 will explore the story behind the scar. He added that he initially preferred to leave it a mystery, but the new season will reveal the truth. Urban said, “Personally, I would actually love to keep that a bit enigmatic. But, Season 5, you’re going to find out the origin of Butcher’s scar. That is one spoiler I will tell you – so I can’t divulge it in this room, but you are going to find out.” (via Games Radar)
While specific details about the upcoming episodes remain a secret, filming for the final season has officially wrapped. Series creator and showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed the news in July, calling it a “bittersweet” moment. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he wrote, “This is the last time I’ll ever be on this set. It’ll be torn down soon. It’s bittersweet, but my primary feeling is gratitude.”
Urban will reprise his role as Billy Butcher in the upcoming season. Other returning cast members include Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Laz Alonso, Karen Fukuhara, Tomer Capone, and Antony Starr. The fifth season is expected to continue the storyline from the events of Gen V Season 2.
An official premiere date for the upcoming season, which will conclude the Prime Video show, has yet to be confirmed.
Originally reported by Disheeta Maheshwari on SuperHeroHype.
After reflecting on the conclusion of The Boys season four, it became time to shift our focus back to its surprisingly good, and dare we say even better, spin-off series, Gen V.
Season two had a lot to build upon, especially considering the cliffhanger that season one left us with: Homelander ruining the fun and Billy Butcher pursuing the Supe-killing virus. While the series retained some elements that fans have come to love and appreciate more than its predecessor, season two showed signs of senioritis, suggesting that a series known for satirizing the management of other superhero franchises and their overflowing release schedules can’t monkey-see, monkey-do its way into mimicry.
When cast member Chance Pedromo passed away, many fans questioned how Gen V would address the character of Andre Anderson. Instead of recasting the role, the showrunners chose to honor Perdomo by incorporating his character’s off-screen sacrifice into the storyline, making it the driving force behind the ensemble. Although this approach could have been clumsy, it ultimately resulted in a stronger narrative.
Not only did it closely resemble Ryan Coogler’s approach to addressing the passing of Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther 2, but it also highlighted a glaring blind spot in the shared mythology of both The Boys and Gen V: despite the presence of superpowered beings and the rise of fascism, racism persists, and having superpowers does not exempt one from being viewed as disposable by those in power.
It’s a delicate line to walk, but the show succeeded by illustrating that the powers that be at Vought are no different from any other fascist regime. Andre served as a significant catalyst throughout the season, with characters donning his hoodie and reminding others of his light, becoming a poignant high point in an otherwise lackluster season.
Liked: Hamish Linklater’s scene-stealing performance as Cipher
Being the new headmaster at God U, especially amid the looming threat of Homelander, required a commanding presence to rival the menace of that insecure, overpowered man-baby. Casting Hamish Linklater as Cipher in Gen V was a sensational decision. In a meta sense, it made perfect sense to have Linklater in this role, especially considering his recent subdued yet charismatic portrayal of Batman in Batman: Caped Crusader, which cleverly folded into the character’s mythos. And fans of Midnight Mass know that he has the power to convince anyone of anything with his monologues, regardless of their length. He truly has a way with words.
In this season of Gen V, Linklater’s performance as Cipher acted as a stimulus to the show’s quality while cranking the dial to 11 on the scale of villains you definitely don’t want to mess with in The Boys universe. His unnerving portrayal combined elements of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones with a heavy-handed dash of quirky Gen V humor and quips, elevating every scene he was in and stealing moments of the spotlight. It’s unfortunate that the show took some of the momentum away from his character toward the finale. We’ll discuss that later.
Emma had a tough break last season. Her powers to grow and shrink intrinsically tied into her body dysmorphia, and she basically ended up being the butt of the joke for everyone on campus. While she was off on her own side quest, the rest of the gang did their thing, converging every so often. That meant Emma got some much-needed character development to address the elephant in the room: her powers, their harmful triggers, and how to try to overcome them. In a show all about gross-out moments, it was nice to see this handled with a modicum of maturity and a deft hand, even as her antics this season were no less madcap than last. More of this, and less of that going-nowhere-fast love-triangle subplot, please.
Liked: The on-the-ground approach to The Boys‘ political anarchy
With the ever-expanding parody of our political landscape that The Boys represents, it’s refreshing to see its aftereffects and consequences from the ground level. This was one of the qualities that made season one of Gen V a welcome companion to The Boys. Gen V is not bound by source material, allowing it more freedom to explore themes without being confined to the mean-spirited plot developments typical of The Boys, which often boil down to someone being a sex pest and viewers having to watch how in exhaustive detail.
Gen V feels more thoughtful about its direction, pulling at your heartstrings and engaging your mind, rather than relying on a gross-out punchline that you have to brace yourself for because you know it’s coming. While The Boys often draws direct political parallels that sometimes feel like throwaway Saturday Night Live sketches, Gen V offers a more humorous perspective on the ramifications of Homelander’s overt fascism and its impact on the students at God U. The exploration of power dynamics between superpowered and non-superpowered students, along with the propaganda disseminated online and on campus, added an intriguing depth to what could otherwise have been a shallow direction for the season.
We’re not made of stone! This budding relationship was hecking cute. Seeing them go from the kind of offhand, reluctant allies to close partners (and exes) was a pleasant bit of levity to witness in the show. Plus, seeing how their bond grew, even when they were literally pitted against each other in a school-approved superpowered fight with all the microaggressions (and aggression aggressions) lambasted at them for being who they are, was good shit. We love the tenderness that Jaz Sinclair, London Thor, and Derek Luh brought to these characters and eagerly await the fix-it fanfiction that’s no doubt being written as we speak.
It’s a pretty bad sign for a superhero show when you can comfortably look away to futz around on your phone whenever bouts of fisticuffs are on display and feel like you’re not missing much. For whatever reason, this season of Gen V lacked the sauce to make any of its fights feel like they were worth watching. Some dude gets shoved, hands are outstretched to, you guessed it, push more guys, and occasionally there will be copious amounts of blood.
It’s not that the show engendered desensitization to it all; it just looked a bit like a cheap afterthought in its presentation this season. It can sometimes feel like the show forgot that being the teen-forward CW version of The Boys doesn’t mean it has to look like it’s operating on a shoestring budget, cutting corners to make its action look worth the sliding-scale fee Prime Video is charging subscribers (with ads!).
Being the second season of a show that spins off a series nearing its conclusion, unfortunately, means that Gen V‘s more methodical pacing from the previous season—characterized by gradually building mysteries—felt rushed this time around. While it’s understandable that The Boys can seem a bit rapid in its scene transitions as it approaches its climax, the quickened pace of Gen V diluted character development and weakened the overall viewing experience. Instead of focusing on its own storylines, it seemed to prioritize adding intrigue for The Boys, ultimately hurrying through its own narrative without fully resolving the plot points it introduced well.
At first, it made its characters feel pragmatic, almost to the point of voicing every possible contingency in their hastily made plans, as if they were battle-hardened, to avoid their plot against God U gong awry. But with each passing episode, it started to feel less like the shrewdness of the ensemble and more like the writers’ room laying everything bare on the table for things to either go south or just as planned, as a way not to try to explore them fully.
As a result, people wound up exactly where they’re supposed to be. Even when things went kaput, our heroes were allowed to just… leave and reconvene later to decide what to do. Any sense of stakes this season with the Gen V cast felt all but moot; instead, the main objective seemed to be helping The Boys carry the baton to its series finale, and that sucked.
As mentioned up top, Cipher is a cool concept for a character from top to bottom. Having the power to body-snatch anyone as if he were a protagonist in Quantic Dream’s The Nomad Soul is some scary stuff, and Linklater’s performance added to the weight of his imposing presence.
All respect to SpongeBob Broadway actor, Ariana Grande’s beau, and Wicked star Ethan Slater, but the reveal that he was actually Cipher the entire time completely took all the air out of the room. He’s an entirely different character when Slater shows up. Gone are the playful, catty quips, and all we’re left with is a kind of dorky guy trying to seem imposing, but he’s clearly not that guy. Generational aura loss, as the kids say.
Didn’t like: Clunky dialogue and humor skewing more toward The Boys’ worst bits
Let’s be honest for a moment: The Boys‘ brand of humor is one short walk away from being Deadpool‘s, and not in the good way. They’re the kind of juvenile jokes that, once you’re subjected to them, don’t improve with a revisit. And sure, while comedy is subjective, the dissonance of edgy high school humor sliding out of the mouths of grown ass adults always makes The Boys feel a bit off and unserious. Gen V, with its school setting, makes its crass jokes feel a bit more at home because its shock-humor antics require less suspension of disbelief from the audience.
But for whatever reason, the types of jokes this season started to lose their armor, garnering either a cheap pity chuckle at the desperate attempt to be funny or no pop at all from viewers. It also didn’t help that this season suffered from “people don’t talk like that,” with a majority of its ensemble’s would-be funny men making the long walk to their jokes not worth suffering through.
Didn’t Like: The late-stage MCU-ification of Gen V
As we’ve expunged exhaustively at this point, Gen V‘s second season felt like The Boys crew finally buckled from talking out of both sides of their mouths about Marvel and DC Comics’ incessant need to franchise-build—all while showing signs of the same lackluster result. This time around, Gen V felt less like a refreshing offshoot and more like an episodic trailer to get folks hyped for the tentpole extravaganza that is The Boys.
We saw a lot of cameos around where The Boys characters were tantamount to TV bumpers advertising another show airing after the one you’re currently watching, rather than actually enriching the plot. It will be really embarrassing if the show isn’t picked up for a third season after spending so much time trying to beef up hype for The Boys‘ series finale. But honestly, what would be the point, since the narrative railroad for Gen V feels like it has effectively run out of track to continue on after however the hell The Boys wraps up? Watch the space, we guess.
Gen V season two is now streaming on Prime Video. The fifth and final season of The Boys arrives in 2026.
To deal with the fallout of Jordan’s decision from last week, Cipher whips up a disturbing solution: Marie and Jordan will duke it out on live TV. Photo: Prime
When Chance Perdomo died last year, Gen V lost its most promising young performer. But season two has avoided recasting the character or introducing a prominent new student to take his place, instead focusing on a smaller group and developing the people we already know: Marie, Emma, Jordan, Cate, and Sam. That shift is working pretty well for me overall, even if this season feels slightly less novel than the first.
It feels right that season two is kicking into gear as we reach the midpoint. “Bags” starts to really peel back the curtain on what this story is about, digging into Project Odessa and the true nature of the villainous new dean. Cipher is a huge presence here, lingering in the air even when he doesn’t appear in a scene, and Hamish Linklater is really selling the character’s creepiness.
This is an episode all about the fallout of Jordan’s decision to reveal the truth about Andre’s death and Cate’s attack. On Vought News, Cate is still parroting the story that she was assaulted by Starlighters and Jordan is lying for likes. But this situation won’t just go away, so Cipher whips up a disturbing solution: Marie and Jordan will duke it out on live TV. It’s blood bender versus gender bender, and Jordan will get their ass kicked to provide the public some catharsis. Marie doesn’t want to fight her partner, but neither of them have any leverage here; Cipher can haul them off to Elmira whenever he wants.
Much of “Bags” is about the heroes trying to find that leverage, to figure out some way of resisting. Nobody loves the idea of enlisting Cate’s help, especially since she’s still a Vought puppet, but Marie knows it might be the only way to learn more about Cipher. Unfortunately, Cate’s powers are still on the fritz. And even before the attack, she couldn’t read Cipher’s mind; he has an ironclad barrier around his mind, perhaps an effect of his own powers.
That doesn’t mean they can’t dig up some dirt on him, though. During Marie’s private lesson with Cipher, Cate and Jordan infiltrate the dean’s house, finding a withered old man in a hyperbaric chamber. They also bond a little along the way. Jordan isn’t sure they can forgive Cate, but they come a long way in this episode, especially after an apology and an argument that devolves into mutual slut-shaming and laughter. It’s a helpful reminder that these two were friends years before the events of the show. There’s a sense of history there, and it makes their alliance feel believable despite Cate’s ever-questionable morality.
She gets another chance to prove herself that evening when Cipher texts her after realizing she poked around his house. The plan to get him to call off the fight is pretty straightforward: Cate will visit Cipher in the VIP box during the big fight and get him to admit that he’s not a supe. (During her lesson, Marie didn’t sense any Compound V in his blood.) Emma, meanwhile, will shrink down and sneak in through the pipes to plant a tiny camera and capture the whole thing, gaining the leverage they need.
It’s nice to see Emma in a new mode this season: much more self-assured and actively working to overcome the deep-rooted self-loathing that still remains. Part of that is having friends like Harper and Ally who really look up to her, viewing her the same way she viewed Andre as a freshman. As a chameleon, Harper can access the same powers as Emma, but she doesn’t need to internally self-flagellate to shrink down. She plays coach in a touching scene, gassing her up in the hopes that she’ll grow to massive size. Apparently Emma is the only other person Ally has told about her power: pubic hair–bending, which I’m surprised hasn’t already appeared in The Boys.
Ally provides the camera, and Emma’s trek through the pipes goes well until the water turns back on and she’s washed away. Luckily, she makes it to Cipher’s toilet and manages to crawl out right before he takes a shit. I will not forget the toilet-POV shot of Linklater’s (presumably prosthetic) ball sack descending from above anytime soon.
It’s a happy ending for Emma, who has a wholesome reunion with her new buddies after successfully growing back to normal size by being “too tired to think.” Elsewhere, though, everything is going off the rails — or, from Cipher’s point of view, going to plan. He admits to Cate that the old man she saw is his father, but he seems completely unfazed by her claim that she can read his mind and knows he isn’t a supe. Her attempt to broker a deal is doomed from the start, and she doesn’t even know it yet. We have some idea this won’t go her way, but we don’t know how.
Jordan gets boos when they come out for the fight, of course, while Marie gets universal cheers. But to her credit, she makes an effort to reject this false choice altogether, kissing Jordan instead of hitting them. It’s not until Cipher says “Watch this” and Jordan punches Marie that we realize what’s going on: He has his own form of mind control far more powerful than Cate’s. He can watch from the VIP box and speak through Jordan, controlling them like a puppet.
When Marie realizes what’s happening, she’s forced to employ the lesson Cipher taught her earlier: lifting living beings through blood-bending. She concentrates and connects with the cells in Jordan’s blood, levitating them and dropping them only when they’re on the verge of exploding. It’s the ideal ending for the narrative Cipher and Vought are constructing: Now satiated, the angry public can cheer for Marie and take joy in Jordan’s punishment.
Viewers of The Boys know that all-powerful supe villains can be narratively frustrating; Homelander is basically unstoppable, and we know he likely won’t die until the end of the show, so it’s just a matter of watching the heroes fail to find leverage over and over. “Bags” arguably has that same issue, but at least the characters know who they’re dealing with now. And unlike Homelander, Cipher might just be a one-season villain like the dean before him. At least in this episode, Cipher getting what he wants successfully raises the stakes. Watching these shows, you don’t want to be thinking, Oh God, they’ll never beat him. You want to be wondering, How the hell will they beat him?
• Cate’s attempt to push a security guard into handing over his keys results in him fucking a garden gnome. Truly classic Gen V humor. Kudos to Maddie Phillips for her urgent delivery of “He’s rearranging a gnome’s guts right now.”
• I always like a hero-villain dynamic in which the villain is the mentor helping the hero unlock new powers (season one of The Flash comes to mind), and the blood-bag training sequence is pretty effective. As soon as that goat appears, you just know it’s going to burst midair.
• Cipher tells Marie that the whole point of God U is to produce someone like her, potentially the most powerful supe ever. We sort of already know that, though. It feels as though there’s more to uncover here.
• “Ease up, Yoda.” “Fair enough. Sorry.” This is a nice, rare moment of Cipher actually backing down slightly.
• Not sure what to think about Cipher saying the goats are named after “assholes” and then using Elon Musk and Julia Fox as the two names.
• Ally’s Starlighter brother is Greg, the cute guy Emma knows from Modesty Monarch’s class. More to come, presumably.
• Emma suggests Bush Master as Ally’s supe name. She loves it.
• Cipher complaining about the bad camera angle might be my favorite Linklater moment of the episode.
• Cipher does seem to lose control of Jordan there at the end, allowing them to tell Marie to stop. What happened there?
Season two of Gen V, the college-aged spin-off of The Boys that some fans argue outshines the original, is back in action, kicking off on Prime Video with a three-episode drop. And its new season wastes no time confronting the tragic passing of cast member Chance Perdomo. In the wake of the gnarly superhero show’s premiere, its showrunner shared how the team chose to honor Perdomo’s legacy throughout the show.
Speaking with Deadline, co-showrunner Michele Fazekas unearthed how the writer’s room went about handling Perdomo’s death. Last March, the 27-year-old actor who portrayed Gen V‘s magnetism-manipulating hero, Andre Anderson, died following a motorcycle incident. The tragedy led production of Gen V‘s second season to pause, allowing the cast and crew to grieve.
Conversely, its production hiatus gave time for its writer’s room to deliberate over whether they’d recast or write off the character, and they chose the latter. The show opened with a tribute that reads “For Chance.” What followed was Gen V giving Andre a heroic send-off, as he sacrificed himself to protect his friends between the events of its two seasons.
“I think we had set out at the beginning, because we sort of knew right out of the gate, we’re not just gonna recast him, and literally no one was saying recast,” Fazekas told Deadline. “Studio, network and everybody was kind of like, ‘No, of course not.’ So, we knew that we had to treat this like this character, as much as people have lost the real Chance, our people have lost Andre. And what does that look like in a world where it’s superheroes in college and a lot of ridiculous gore and funny? And so we just sort of made it like we wanted the season to certainly honor him, and then at the end, we realized the season is about him, everything, and all of the drive comes from him. So, by the end, I was very sort of proud of that, and I just remember being in the writers’ room and talking about Andre—cause we had broken Andre’s story.”
Fazekas went on to reveal that the Gen V writers originally wrote five episodes of Andre’s story in season two’s eight episodes, which they had to spike following his passing.
“We definitely did actually talk about it like, I think it’s OK to actually grieve something, cause you grow to love these characters as much as you love the people who are portraying them,” she said. “And in some ways, we knew Andre better than we knew Chance. Chance was in Toronto. We spent more time with Andre in a way, and it was like, losing Chance is incredibly unimaginable in a way, but we all were like, ‘Oh, we also lost this Andre guy we really liked.’ So, at the end, I was like, ‘Oh, this was about Andre,’ and it was about Chance, the season was. I’m very proud of that.”
Gen V‘s approach to honoring Perdomo’s passing carries an emotional weight that uncannily echoes what director Ryan Coogler did with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s passing in 2020. Like Coogler’s film, Gen V interweaves the loss into its narrative, making Andre’s death the emotional backbone of this season.
Across its three-episode premiere, Andre’s sacrifice for his friends—killed by the Gestapo-like forces behind God U—is framed as a galvanizing moment. The show also doesn’t shy away from the racial implications of the character’s death as a Black casualty among the lineup of imprisoned superpowered teens. The memory of his off-screen sacrifice becomes a rallying cry, pushing both heroes and former allies to keep resisting as they navigate the dystopian nightmare of a Homelander-run America.
New episodes of Gen V release every Wednesday on Prime Video.
Jordan and Emma aren’t taking their forced reenrollment all that well, but they’re still doing better than Marie’s time living as a dropout. Photo: Jasper Savage/Prime
Welcome back to school! How was everyone’s summer break? Hopefully you had a much better few months than the rising sophomores of Gen V. Either way, there’s no time like the fall semester to start anew. An apple cider a day keeps the fascism away, right? The Boys has been an explicitly political show from the beginning, but recent seasons have leaned harder into real-world parallels, especially with Homelander’s ascent to governing power in the season-four finale. It was a bit unsettling last year to witness the supe-supremacist speech where Homelander vowed to take revenge on America’s “enemies” and ordered his puppet, incoming president Calhoun, to declare martial law. But the college-campus setting of Gen V has allowed the spinoff to carve out its own identity, coming at many of the same satirical targets from a different angle.
Take the recap early in “New Year, New U,” which updates us on where The Boys left off while filtering the big world changes down to the campus level. At least among conservative-coded Hometeamers and supe supremacists, it’s accepted knowledge that Robert Singer and Starlight colluded to kill Victoria Neuman, a deep-state conspiracy that necessitated Homelander taking control. Now, Godolkin University is “free from the woke agenda” and staffed entirely by supes, including the mysterious new dean, Cipher (a marvelously creepy Hamish Linklater). It’s pretty clear where some of these ideas originate: Rightwing leadership is hellbent on reshaping higher education in America right now.
Much of season one revolved around a supe-killing virus engineered by scientists in the Woods at Dean Shetty’s instruction; here, that’s not so relevant anymore, even though we know it’s still very much a factor in the parent show. Based on the opening flashback to 1967, just two years after God U was founded, the focus this time will be Project Odessa, led by Thomas Godolkin (Wicked’sEthan Slater) himself.
This premiere has a lot to take care of, introducing new threats while untangling the messy fallout from the season finale. We last saw Cate and Sam taking power as the “new Guardians of Godolkin” after liberating Shetty’s supe test subjects and pinning the death of 12 innocents on Marie, Jordan, Andre, and Emma. Season two has no interest in limiting itself to a jail cell, though, so right away we learn that Cate has persuaded the administration to let the kids reenroll. Well, to let Jordan and Emma reenroll, since Marie is off the grid and Andre is dead.
We lost actor Chance Perdomo at the far-too-young age of 27 last year, and the show has a duty to wrap up his arc as naturally as possible while leaving space to mourn both the actor and the character. And honestly, this premiere does a pretty good job with a tough situation. We don’t need to actually see Andre’s failed escape attempt; hearing Jordan tell the story near the end of the episode is powerful enough. It’s easy to picture Andre making the rash choice to brute-force his way out when a safer method (an open maintenance pipe) falls through.
But easily the best Andre tribute of the episode is the scene between his father and Emma. When Emma walks into Polarity’s house, she finds him depressed, drunk, and full of self-loathing. It’s a foregone conclusion that she’ll ultimately convince him to get back up and start looking into Cipher — the man was present at Elmira when Andre died, and the prospect of revenge is tempting — but it also makes sense that Polarity initially wouldn’t see the point. Even setting aside his own role in “shoving Andre into the Vought machine,” there’s no way he can get his son back now. Sean Patrick Thomas’s performance here is deeply affecting, especially his disbelief at the idea of rectifying this somehow (“He was all I had!”). Thomas has always been one of the strongest performers on the show, and here he reaches new levels.
Emma kind of takes on the protagonist role for much of this premiere, and it suits her surprisingly well. She’s smart enough to understand the necessity of complying — she and Jordan read canned PR statements about their exoneration after being wrongfully accused — but also brave enough to proceed with her investigation of Cipher and search for Marie instead of just keeping her head down. Drowning her sorrows at a frat party, she happens to see a video of wounded Hometeamers lying in their own blood and recognizes Marie’s handiwork. So she gets Jordan’s reluctant approval to go find their friend, mentioning that Andre was the first person to help her see herself as a hero.
Marie has been through a hell of a day fighting off Dogknott (Zach McGowan), a bounty hunter with dog-like abilities who tracked her to a motel in Weehawken. All Marie really wants is to find her sister Annabeth, but she’s getting nowhere, and it doesn’t help that she can’t stop bringing attention to herself by beating up Hometeamers. Starlight herself has to step in to save her during the brutal Dogknott brawl, and she has some advice Marie doesn’t want to hear: Take a deal and return to God U. She wants her to look into Project Odessa, which Vought is apparently resuming.
In the dramatic final scene, Emma and Jordan find Marie, leading to the expected fight about Marie abandoning the group and arguably leading Andre to make a foolish sacrifice. But when Cate follows them there, everything escalates. Now, Cate has always been a bit inscrutable; her motivations are sometimes hard to parse, which makes her the show’s most potentially interesting character but also its most frustrating. In this episode, she’s still trying to play both sides: grieving Andre and “protecting” her friends, but also being a huge narc because she has no actual leverage over Cipher and Vought.
Cate’s efforts to manipulate Marie this time are laughable; she’s not on her A-game, and nobody trusts her enough to let those dangerous fingers anywhere near them. Case in point: Jordan blasting her into an electrical box when she reaches out for Marie. To make matters worse, Marie can’t risk touching Cate to heal her skull. All they can do is leave her to die.
Would Gen V really kill off Cate at this stage? I doubt it, especially since the cast is already down a major cast member. But you never really know with this bold, brutal franchise. Good thing we already have two more episodes available.
• Those explosive deaths in the flashback are basically Gen V dunking you headfirst back into this world. The tentacles shooting out of a man’s ass are particularly memorable.
• Another signature gross supe moment: Jordan punches a guy mid-butt-chug, causing him to explode beer (and whatever else) all over a group of people.
• Not a ton from Sam in this episode, but he’s with Justine now. Emma also gets a nice scene declining his truce offer and telling him off for, you know, killing people. At least Cate is still around to mind-control him into guiltlessness!
• Linklater’s performance is a real highlight of this premiere, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of him. We don’t know much about Cipher or his powers yet, and that blank-slate quality makes him all the more menacing — along with the moment when he almost sticks Cate’s hand in a blender.
• Zach McGowan will always be Jody from Shameless to me.
• Apparently Emma’s new party buddy worked with Jacob Elordi and already has a role secured in the sequel to Saltburn, titled Saltburnt.
• RIP to Chance Perdomo, to whom this season is dedicated.
The Boys spin-off series Gen V returns for its second season this week. While we won’t grieve Prime Video for making more sequel TV series for the tongue-and-cheek superhero show that built a career on taking the piss out of DC and Marvel, we will give it grace by picking up the pieces of Gen V‘s first season so viewers are all caught up just in time for its return on September 17. Here’s everything you need to know about Gen V season one.
Gen V centers on Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), a Supe with the power to manipulate blood like she waltzed out of Avatar: The Last Airbender. She enrolls in Godolkin University, a superhero academy that’s been training Supes on ethics, crime fighting, and branding since 1965.
There, she meets an assortment of cool, superpowered friends, like magnetism-manipulating Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo), mind-warping telepath Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), size-shifter Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway), and Jordan Li (London Thor/Derek Luh), Marie’s maybe sorta kinda pre-Facebook official partner whose gender-swapping powers grant them super strength and energy blasts.
Maria witnesses star student Luke “Golden Boy” Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger) incinerate Professor Brinkerhoff (Clancy Brown) and self-implode, kicking off a series of events that not only unearth secret experiments taking place under the school’s watch but also have huge implications for The Boys‘ finale as well.
After some sleuthing, Marie and her friends discover that Luke was completely justified in attacking his teacher. It turns out that Brinkerhoff was just one of many staff members and trustees at God U involved in secret experiments aimed at creating superhumans.
One of these experiments produced a serum designed to kill Supes. Unfortunately for the students, their story doesn’t end in victory, as Homelander (Anthony Starr) crashes their party and quickly apprehends them.
One unfortunate real-life detail that’ll ripple into the upcoming season of Gen V is the passing of Perdomo. The 27-year-old actor died last March following a motorcycle incident. Production on Gen V was delayed as a result; when work resumed, Gen V‘s creators aimed to honor Pedromo with how they handled Andre in the second season (a feat Variety reports is earnest, if not awkward in execution).
From what we saw in season four of The Boys, Gen V‘s Cate and Sam Riordan (Asa August Germann) switched teams, joining Homelander in his reign of terror. We’ll have to wait and see if the Supe-killing virus from God U, which Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) possesses, will come into play or if Marie will be the key to Homelander’s downfall.
Gen V returns to Prime Video for season two on September 17.
As Prime Video heads south of the border with the next The Boys offshoot, franchise boss Eric Kripke has an update for fans.
The 2x Emmy nominee recently revealed that The Boys: Mexico, which hails from executive producers Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, is “super fun” and “a totally different tone” from its parent series.
“The pilot of [The] Boys: Mexico is being developed right now,” Kripke told Collider. “It’s very cool. I mean, who knows — obviously you never know, but I can say that the world itself meets the standard of all of our spin-offs. It’s our world but a totally different tone, and it’s super fun. Gael and Diego are executive producers, which is amazing and [they] really engaged with it, so — short answer is we’ll see, but I think the script is good.”
Back in 2023, Deadline reported that The Boys franchise was expanding with the Mexico iteration, which will be penned by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Blue Beetle). With the series expected to film in Mexico, no plot details have yet been revealed.
Luna and Bernal, longtime friends who previously starred together in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (2001) will potentially star in the spin-off as well, although not in major roles.
Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna attend the Cannes 75 anniversary dinner on May 24, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
In July, Kripke wrapped the fifth and final season of The Boys, which premieres in 2026. Meanwhile, Season 2 of Gen V debuts Sept. 17, and the prequel series Vought Rising is currently in the works. Prime also has the animated spin-off The Boys Presents: Diabolical.
The Boys got a dose of college-age heroics with Gen V, which focuses on a group of Supes in training attending the prestigious Godolkin University. While the main show is coming to a close, the spinoff is going back to class, and it’s bringing some new students along for the ride.
Per Deadline, actors Keeya King (Yellowjackets), Julia Knope (In the Dark), Tait Fletcher (The Mandalorian), Stephen Kalyn (Warrior Strong), Stacey McGunnigle (This Hour Has 22 Minutes), Wyatt Dorian (Eerie Hall), and Georgie Murphy (Accused) will have recurring roles during Gen V’s sophomore outing. What roles will they have to play in the show’s story, and who will they be at Godolkin? Prime Video’s not saying yet, but season one stars Derek Luh and Maddie Phillips revealed production on the new season wrapped earlier this week. This past March, production paused following the death of Chance Perdomo, who played Andre. In May, Prime Video said his role wouldn’t be recast, and plotlines for the season were subsequently rewritten. Fellow season one stars Jaz Sinclar, Lizzie Broadway, London Thor, Asa Germann will reprise their roles from the previous season.
Both Gen V and The Boys are expected to come back to Prime Video sometime in 2025. The streamer’s also got other spinoffs cooked up: at SDCC, it revealed Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy and Aya Cash’s Stormfront are set to headline Vought Rising, a prequel series set in the 1950s about the birth of the titular Corporation and its rise to creating superheroes. That’ll also joined by a show set in Mexico and executive produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and Andor’s Diego Luna. After that, who knows—maybe a movie?
San Diego Comic-Con is counter-Olympic programming for nerds everywhere. Running the same weekend as the 2024 Games opened, SDCC features panels from the stars and creators of our favorite IP-driven projects — including Transformers, the Marvel cinematic universe, Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, and more — all for the sake of giving fans what they want: a few crumbs or even a whole new detail about releases in postproduction, newly green-lit shows, and maybe a spicy spoiler a panelist spilled, to the horror of press people the world over. Aside from all the trailers, what are we getting? Let’s dive into the Olympic swimming-pool-size highlights out of San Diego Comic-Con 2024, including a surprise virtual appearance from Kamala Harris, plus major news from Dexter, Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Boys, and more.
A July 27 Star Trek panel doubled as an info dump about several differentprojects. The two-episode premiere of the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks got a date: October 24. But if the show ending makes you sad, you can rest assured that the franchise still other content in the works. For example, Alex Kurtzman is co-writing a live-action, half-hour comedy with Justin Simien (Dear White People) and Star Trek: Lower Decks star Tawny Newsome. Currently in development at Paramount+, the show will follow Federation outsiders who are serving on a gleaming resort planet — and having their day-to-day “exploits” broadcast to the entire quadrant.
It also seems like some sort of Star Trek musical, in the vein of the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds musical episode “Substance Rhapsody,” might be on the way. Per Deadline, EP Akiva Goldsman told a fan who asked if there would be any similar episodes in the future, “We’re in the very early stages of figuring out whether we can bring a version of that to the stage.” Meanwhile, Cillian O’Sullivan has joined the cast of the upcoming season of Strange New Worlds and will recur as the legacy character Dr. Roger Korby.
Show creator Matt Groening surprised the audience by playing a clip of Kamala Harris during a July 27 panel, introducing her as a Simpsons “super fan.” Quoting the 1996 episode ‘Treehouse of Horror VII,” Harris said, “We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” Per The Hollywood Reporter, this is a resurfaced video message that was taken years ago, so it wasn’t recorded specifically for Comic-Con. Still, after a presidential campaign that has included Brat summer memes and an appearance on Drag Race, it doesn’t seem like Harris would mind an opportunity to keep courting the stan vote.
IFC Films and Shudder had Johnny make a surprise appearance in a July 26 panel to help announce that we’re getting In a Violent Nature 2. Chris Nash will return as screenwriter for the slasher sequel.
Michael C. Hall made a surprise appearance in a July 26 panel where Showtime announced that he would return as Dexter in the new series Dexter: Resurrection, a present-day follow-up to 2021’s Dexter: New Blood. It is set to premiere in summer 2025. Hall will also narrate the inner voice of young Dexter in the previously-announced origin story Dexter: Original Sin, which is expected to launch in Decemeber 2024.
The Who-niverse is expanding. Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw will lead the cast of The War Between the Land and the Sea, a five-part spinoff from Russell T Davies ordered by the BBC and Disney+. The news was announced in Hall H on July 26. Per an official description, the show will see a “fearsome and ancient species” emerging from the ocean to trigger an international crisis. It sounds like UNIT — including Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) — will have to do their best to save humanity without the Doctor.
We also got some casting news for the main show. A preview of the Christmas special showed Nicola Coughlan’s character, Joy, coming face to face with a Silurian and the Fifteenth Doctor. Meanwhile The Little Mermaid star Jonah Hauer-King was confirmed to star in Doctor Who’s next season as part of Ruby Sunday’s story.
Haven’t had enough of The Boys? Don’t fret; there’s more coming even after the series concludes with season five. Prime Video has green-litVought Rising, a prequel following the rise of the franchise’s New York–based evil media empire in the 1950s. Aya Cash and Jensen Ackles reprise their roles from the original series, while Boys writer and executive producer Paul Grellong will serve as showrunner, Prime Video confirmed. The news was announced at a July 26 panel featuring Boys creator Eric Kripke and cast members Anthony Starr, Jessie T. Usher, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Karen Fukuhara, Claudia Doumit, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capone, Nathan Mitchell, and Chace Crawford. It’s the series’ second spinoff after the college drama, Gen V.
Before he embarks on headlining The Boys prequel series Vought Rising alongside Aya Cash, Jensen Ackles will be a major part in the mothership’s upcoming fifth and final season.
During The Boys‘ Comic-Con panel, on which Ackles made a surprise appearance to announce Vought Rising, The Boys developer, executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke revealed that Ackles will be returning as a series regular for Season 5 of the mothership series, reprising his Soldier Boy character.
“We can announce that Soldier Boy will be a regular in Season 5,” Kripke said Friday. “The motherf*cker’s back.” (You can watch the video below.)
Kripke had previously said in a 2022 interview, “We’ll all have to wait and see, but I can’t imagine the series ending without Soldier Boy making another appearance.”
Ackles’ return was teased in the recent Season 4 finale. Soldier Boy, who was a series regular character when it was introduced in Season 3, was MIA in Season 4 before making a return in a finale post-credits scene. In it, after Senator Calhoun is sworn in as the new President, he takes Homelander to a chamber where Soldier Boy — Homelander’s biological father– is lying in a drug-induced slumber he was put into by Grace Mallory in the Season 3 finale.
During the panel, Ackles was asked what Soldier Boy was doing in that chamber, to which he had a succinct, NSFW reply. You can watch that and Kripke’s Soldier Boy return announcement below:
More than a decade later, Chace Crawford has made quite the onscreen leap from locking lips with Serena van der Woodsen.
The Boys star admitted he “would have” had second thoughts about joining the show if he’d known about his aquatic superhero character The Deep’s sexual relationship with octopus Ambrosius (voiced by Tilda Swinton) on season 4 of the Prime Video series.
“It’s so funny and brilliant now, but when that came up, I was like, ‘Oh God, how’s this going to work?’” Crawford told Rolling Stone.
He also detailed how the intimate scenes were devised by showrunner Eric Kripke, recalling being “in total denial about it” the first time he had to film a sex scene with the sea creature in the infamous season 3 episode ‘Herogasm’.
“And then it got 24 hours out from the first day I had to shoot it and I almost had a panic attack,” said Crawford. “I called Kripke — he’s so great. He’s got a million things going on but his door’s always open. So I was worried about the scene. I’m like, ‘How are we gonna do this? What are the angles gonna be? How naked do I have to be?’ He changed one shot for me. And it was great.”
Tilda Swinton voices octopus Ambrosius, the love interest of Chace Crawford’s The Deep in season 4 of The Boys. (Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Crawford noted the show has an intimacy coordinator for sex scenes, “but not with the octopus,” adding: “But they treated it like, ‘quiet everyone, clear out’ — a closed set. But yeah, just the act of picking up the octopus and getting a wet octopus in the bed was so funny and weird. And then it doesn’t come out for a year almost, and you’re like, ‘How is this going to be received?’
“But everyone loved it,” added Crawford. “I saw someone at the gym the other day and he was like, ‘I’m actually going to show you this.’ And it was him in a Deep costume with a pink octopus wrapped around him at Comic-Con or something. Everyone loved it, man. I get ragged on a little bit, but it’s good.”
Kripke previously told Varietyhow Swinton’s surprise casting came to be after the writers decided they needed “the classiest, Oscar-winningest, British actress we can get our hands on” to voice Ambrosius. “And that’s a really short list. And Dame Judi Dench was unavailable,” he added.
To Swinton’s “everlasting credit,” Kripke said, “she didn’t know any of us, but she was like, ‘That sounds hilarious, I’m in,’ and she did it.”
Warning: Huge spoilers for The Boys season 4, episode 6.
Valorie Curry grew up in California, but not the progressive California people so often think of. “I grew up in Orange County, in the suburbs south of LA,” she tells StyleCaster. “So these days, it’s very purple, but when I was growing up, it was very conservative, very religious. We took school field trips to the Nixon Library.”
Playing a far-right ideologue and conspiracy theorist, Curry’s character in Prime Video‘s hit series The Boys draws from many larger-than-life nut jobs—some of Firecracker’s dialogue comes from the actual mouths of politicians—but this actor has a lot of personal experience to be inspired by, too. “There is something cathartic in getting to do this clowning act,” she says. “It’s that stuff that you forget from your childhood, and then there’s this muscle memory that kicks in.”
When she signed onto the show, Curry didn’t know much about her character, other than “her history with Starlight, her podcast, and her politics,” but it wasn’t until the making of Firecracker’s supersuit, an arduous, time-consuming process, that it really all started to come together. Curry was flying in and out of LA every 10 days for months because every detail of Firecracker’s suit is intentional, right down to the zip pull at the back. “It’s a cock ring,” she laughs. Of course it is! “It has to hold, but it also has to be soft enough if you’re getting thrown around,” she explains.
Curry has never played such a hyper-feminine, sexualized role before, and in episode 6, Firecracker’s true powers are explored in great detail. “This character essentially embodies the male gaze,” she observes. “A weaponization of femininity and self-objectification.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. We did warn you, spoilers ahead.
There’s a lot to unpack in this episode. We learn that Firecracker has been taking hormones to make herself lactate to prove she’s loyal to the cause and to Homelander (Antony Starr). Did you know the breastfeeding scene was on the agenda at the start? I did not know. The idea was floated to me a couple of months before, and then I saw the script about a month before. It seems inevitable, like, “Of course, this is happening.” I’ve watched the show and it’s been building to somebody doing this with Homelander. I don’t think of it so much as a being about loyalty though, Firecracker does have this really preternatural intuition about what people need and a shameless willingness to give that to them, whatever it is.
In shooting this scene and going back and forth on the dialogue, there’s a real danger about it. There is a vulnerability in saying to Homelander, “I see your humanity, I see what you’ve been trying to hide—this thing that’s viewed as a very freakish fetish,” and she’s naming it to him. At that moment, she also gets to show him she’s not afraid of him. Because he could, at any point, laser her face off.
How many takes of the milk squirt did you do? The good thing about having the time built in to really fine-tune that scene was that we got to work with this incredible intimacy coordinator, Casey Hudecki. She was invaluable to me in the process. So when we got to set, we knew exactly what every single shot was going to be. It was very clearly storyboarded.
Is there a bottle or something just off-camera? No! This is all sightline gags, so two things have to happen—and credit to the crew to make this work. One of them was that the wardrobe department had a weekend to build some kind of undergarment structure that would allow me to unzip the front and still have the cleavage still be perky. I’m literally wearing two cutlets per breast [laughs], there is so much padding.
They went through three or four different phases of corsets, and then I think it was Casey’s idea—because she’s a fencer—to use a fencing breastplate. Then, if you can picture a microphone stand with a tube running from the other side of Homelander’s apartment, there’s this little nozzle that they kept having to adjust so it was at the right height for me to get the right trajectory and the right amount of milk. Anthony did take almond milk straight in the eye in one shot.
You would think that this very sexualized character is going to be the one who’s doing very sexually explicit things. Even though the scene is extreme in its content, it’s not sexual by nature.
Valorie Curry
I was going to ask if it was real milk or just milky water. Yeah, I think it was almond. And I think I was at least two and a half feet away from him.
His reaction is just so good, too. Yeah, the timing and the edit of it, it’s just beautiful.
It’s an interesting contrast, too, because we’ve seen Homelander grapple with aging this season—he’s literally plucking his gray pubes out and keeping them in a jar. Then you see him with you and he becomes an infant again. Yeah. The other thing I want to speak to about this scene in particular is that it could have been very sexual and it could have been a joke. I love that where we got—and Antony and I were still on the same page about it—that it is so vulnerable and not sexual.
You would think that this very sexualized character is going to be the one who’s doing very sexually explicit things. Even though the scene is extreme in its content, it’s not sexual by nature. In contrast, you’ve got characters like Sister Sage and Ashley…
This episode is INSANE. Ashely’s stuff in the dungeon! Everyone is finding a new limit that we did not know existed [laughs].
Can you talk about how this moment changesFirecracker’s trajectory? So much of this episode is about Firecracker and her trauma of being dismissed or being marginalized or being treated like she’s trash. This is finally the moment where she thinks she’s in, and even then, she’s not really in. I think she’s also pushed to this moment with this choice because she’s finally showing that she should not be underestimated.
There’s even this joke about being in The Seven and what powers she really has, but it’s a real turn in that jostle for power. I don’t think Sage saw Firecracker coming, which serves her because sometimes it’s really cool to be underestimated.
I want to touch on something you said in a previous interview about being a queer person yourself playing this character who is aggressively anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQIA, etc. You said that it should be one of our own that gets to make an ass out of Firecracker.I loved that. Thank you. Yeah, I have a pet peeve with actors who are on shows that clearly have political themes or have something to say, and then when they’re asked to speak to it, they equivocate. I understand the desire to not alienate anyone, but with a character like Firecracker, she has to be dealt with delicately because there’s a real danger there.
She’s representing real dangers with real people who are committing real violence against marginalized communities, and if you play the role in a way that minimizes that violence, and that danger, that is a problem. I’m not saying that an actor who isn’t queer wouldn’t do that, but I am excited to get to play her and get to have conversations like these where I get to make the politics explicit.
The show is unapologetic, I love working for a showrunner like Kripke where his politics are explicit. I felt like I was on a show where I could trust that this character could be handled responsibly. I do find it cathartic, and it’s what I hope for queer audiences, for any audience, that in watching the show, it’s sort of a reverse gaslighting. Another interviewer called it “spotlighting.”
There might be a catharsis in saying, “This is real, this is happening, and we’re going to show it and we’re going to show it as ugly and villainous, and absurd and stupid,” but also not undermining the real danger of it.
The Boys is available to stream on Prime Video with new episodes dropping each Thursday.
Claudia Doumit often feels like she’s in a very exclusive book club. When the cast of Prime Video’s hit series The Boysreceives the next round of scripts from showrunner Eric Kripke, the group chat goes nuts. You see, they’re only given their character’s basic arc at the beginning of the season, and more information is drip-fed as filming commences.
“It’s so funny because not everyone has read the script at the same time,” she tells StyleCaster. “They’ll say, ‘You won’t believe how it ends for you,’ so it’s really exciting … Every cast member is so enthralled with what’s essentially the next installment in our book club.”
As Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, Doumit joined the cast as somewhat of a secret antagonist. She’s originally portrayed as an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-like figure—one hell-bent on dismantling Vought, regulating Supes, and reclaiming America for us regular folk. In the season 2 finale, though, there’s a huge twist: She’sa supe! Not only that but the head-popper from the congressional hearing.
The following season, Vicky’s powers remain secret from the public—they have to be because she teams up with Hughie (Jack Quaid) at the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs to regulate supe activity. We learn that Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), the former CEO of Vought International, is Vicky’s adoptive father and he injected her with Compound V as a child. He’s eventually arrested for keeping classified documents from Vought and it’s Vicky who puts him behind bars.
Going into season 4, Doumit says it was exciting to explore that relationship further as well as slowly reveal Vicky’s true motivations. “She’s incredibly manipulative,” says Doumit. “She operates in the shadows. And she is a character that wears many masks. So to be able to see the cracks start to come through—those masks are such a gift as an actor and it’s just wonderful to explore.” Is she a villain? It’s just not that simple.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Your character’s relationship shifts a little bit in this seasonbecause Stan Edgar didn’t know Vicky shot up her daughter, Zoey, with Compound V. Can you speak to that? I think it’s really interesting because where we left it off in season three, there was such a great loss in that relationship and heartbreak on both sides.
But also, Victoria Neuman has always had the safety net of Stan Edgar, and this season, she very much does not have that safety net, so she’s finding out what it’s like to go out into the world on her own. It’s something that she wanted, it’s something that she thought she’d be better at, but she’s very quickly realizing that that’s not the case. She’s walked into a shitstorm. So it’s quite hard for her to navigate through that without Stan. And it only gets worse and worse.
Vicky and Stan have a reunion in episode 5. After learning she dosed her daughter with V,Stan strikes a deal with The Boys to take down Vicky in return for his freedom. It’s another betrayal. She’s still quite hurt. She still doesn’t trust him, and rightfully so, because he’s taken the very people who want to kill her to a top-secret facility where she’s working on a virus to kill supes. It’s it’s quite a chaotic reunion.
I think Neuman seeks out control and positions of power to feel safe and secure, which is a really interesting thing when it comes to someone who has the ability to pop someone’s head.
Claudia Doumit
And we knew your character was coming because everyone got nosebleeds. It’s always a fun little precursor to whenever I get to make an entrance [laughs]. In the arc of this episode, she comes back to Stan Edgar. And I think that has to do with the fact that she’s lost Sameer, the father of her child and the only man she’s ever loved. I think she feels very lost at the end of that episode and then detached, like she has nowhere else to turn. And I think that’s when a lot of kids go home.
It’s interesting you phrase it that way because Homelander (played by Antony Starr) went home in the previous episode, butchering all but one scientist responsible for his creation. There are a lot of parallels to draw between Vicky and Homelander. I think that too! I’ve said that many times. There’s a far deeper understanding between Neuman and Homelander and how their psyches operate. They’re the only two supes who have grown up as test subjects, the difference is that Neuman got to go to boarding school, but Edgar still used her like a lab rat.
It’s a different environment, sure, but the same test. Neuman has just had this false backdrop of normalcy. But between the two of them, that’s how they ended up. She’s had a father figure, and she’s had some sense of human experience, whereas Homelander has been locked in this underground space for years and years.
In this episode, we meet Vicky’s husband and suped-up farm animals. Can you talk me through the mechanics of the chicken fight? It’s really funny because a lot of that is just us looking at a spot. Sometimes it’s a tennis ball, but mostly the first assistant director will walk us through the areas that we’re supposed to look at—”This is one, that over there is two, there’s a spot by the door, that’s three.” Then when they call “action,” they’ll call out the numbers so you know where to look, which is hilarious. So when we’re supposed to look up at the sky, you’re clocking everyone else’s eye line.
The final scene in this sequence is Stan Edgar being driven back to prison. Then his driver’s head explodes, so we know Vicky’s caught up to him. You two exchange a look, and I’d love to know what the direction was. Shana Stein was the director and it’s a conflicting moment. They’ve been through so much and they both betrayed each other to an extensive degree. So, in that moment, for me as Neuman, there’s a sea of emotions that I’m experiencing. And it’s really supposed to leave you in a place of questioning which emotion is coming through the strongest.
I remember Shana saying, ‘We don’t want to know exactly what’s going on, we want to feel like, ‘Is she going to pop his head? Is she going to embrace him? Is she gonna slam the door and leave?’ It’s all of those thoughts and emotions all at once. What Neuman lands on is that she’s scared and she needs a parent.
I read somewhere that Vicky was more dangerous than Homelander, do you agree? I don’t think so. Based on the emotional state of these characters alone, Neuman is quite strategic and she keeps her emotions at bay. She’s very logical. Homelander is a quite volatile and erratic character. You don’t know if he’s going to kill you based on what kind of a day he’s having, and that isn’t really the case for Neuman.
What are Vicky’s motivations, do you think? For a large portion of her life, she has been operating in a manner that suits Stan Egdar’s needs. Essentially, what she is for him is a weapon. That’s quite hard for her because all she ever wants from Stan is to be loved as a daughter, but she only ever gets praise from him when she’s a weapon.
So I think that’s been the goal for many, many years. I think she’s been Stan Edgar’s weapon and on this track for so long that in this season, she realizes the cost of it. It, perhaps for the first time, begins to stir something within her, and because she’s been alone for so much of this season and because she finds herself in so many compromising positions, it actually forces her to really look at herself in the mirror and assess what she actually wants and what she’s doing all of this all.
I think Neuman as a character, in general, seeks out control and positions of power to feel safe and secure, which is a really interesting thing when it comes to someone who has the ability to pop someone’s head.
I don’t think that she ever pursued politics in the first place as a means to do better or to help the world in any way. I think it’s always been something that has been in service of her own safety and security, or something to make Stan Edgar approve of and love her. It’s very human. I think a lot of us do things without actually realizing why.
The Boysis available to stream on Prime Video, with new episodes dropping each Thursday.
“Bridgerton” had a predictably massive week on Luminate’s weekly viewership rankings, landing as the No. 1 streaming original for June 14-20. In the first full week of availability of Season 3’s last four episodes, the season was watched for 3.1 billion minutes. The earlier seasons of “Bridgerton” continued to see solid viewership, with Season 1 landing at No. 4 with 297.8 million minutes watched and Season 2 taking No. 9 with 255.6 million minutes watched.
“The Boys” was the second-most-watched title of the week following its Season 4 debut. The June 14-20 window marked the first full week of availability of the season’s first three episodes plus the first day of availability for Episode 4; during that time, the season was watched for a strong 744.4 million minutes. Episodes will continue to release weekly on Thursdays, so it’s likely that the Amazon superhero series will remain on the chart for weeks to come.
Season 2 of Netflix’s “Perfect Match” rose from No. 4 in its debut week to No. 3. The dating series was not far behind “The Boys,” with 650.5 million minutes watched. The rest of the chart saw a steep drop off, with each title clocking in between 240 and 300 million minutes watched.
“Eric” charted again at No. 5 with 291.6 million minutes watched. Behind it, Apple TV+’s “Presumed Innocent” made its chart debut, followed by another week of “The Acolyte” on Disney+ and the debut of Peacock’s “Love Island” Season 6. After “Bridgerton” Season 2, Season 3 of “Sweet Tooth” was the 10th TV title.
On the film side, “Hit Man” was most-watched for the second week in a row with 636.2 million minutes watched. “Brats,” the Hulu documentary about the Brat Pack, debuted with 264.6 million minutes watched.
Other debuts were “Ultraman: Rising” at No. 4 with 217 million minutes watched and “Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors” at No. 5 with 123.4 million minutes watched, both on Netflix. The rest of the chart was populated by repeat titles: “Under Paris” at No. 2, as well as “Atlas,” “How to Rob a Bank,” “Mother of the Bride,” “Luca” and “Die Hart 2: Die Harter” lower down.
(Disclosure: Variety and Luminate share a common owner in PMC.)
The Boys are back and this season is great! With all new characters to meet and a new version of the Seven to build, there is a lot to unpack so far. And now we are proud to debut an exclusive clip for the next episode of season 4!
Firecracker (Valorie Curry) and Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) are the newest members of the Seven and they are already finding ways of “fitting in.” But in a new clip for the episode, we get to see what their goals really are. Sister Sage is kind of leading the charge and giving Firecracker her time to shine and…it doesn’t seem like it is going to be a good thing in the long run. I mean Sister Sage is willingly sleeping with the Deep so that has to give us some insight into who she is. And well…Firecracker is the embodiment of the worst people.
The episode is described as follows: “It’s the premiere of Firecracker’s new Vought News show, THE TRUTHBOMB, broadcasting live, right across the street from Starlight House. And Firecracker’s hateful lies and public attacks finally push Annie to her breaking point, costing Annie her credibility and a powerful new ally. Meanwhile, it’s all-hands-on-deck after The Boys learn of Homelander’s horrifying plans for the future. Hughie makes a desperate attempt to save his father from dying, which leads to the first ever Hughie and Kimiko team-up! Frenchie can’t stand the guilt of lying to Colin any longer and reveals the shocking truth about his past. And Homelander, seeking to rid himself of his humanity once and for all, pays a horrifying visit to the place he grew up. “
The Boys airs every Thursday morning and…there was a lot to dig into in those first three episodes and it just seems to be getting worse and worse for the Boys and Annie.
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Look, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know The Boys is full of NSFW moments. Season 4 is no exception, but there’s one moment in particular that has fans swarming Reddit for answers. Just who’s butthole was that??
For context, this all goes down in episode 1. Billy Butcher (played by Karl Urban) is texting the vice presidential candidate, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit). She asks to see all the files Hughie was using to blackmail her, promising in return to get Ryan away from Homelander so Butcher could save him and fulfill his promise to his late wife Becca. Turns out, Billy’s loyalty is still to The Boys, and his explicit text is proof of that (it was so explicit that it was actually censored in several countries along with the sauna scene).
Whose butthole was it?
Sorry to disappoint, it wasn’t Karl Urban’s. The story about whose butthole it actually was is perhaps funnier, though. “Because hundreds of you asked: the butthole from #TheBoys Season 4, Ep 1 is NOT Butcher’s (or Karl’s),” showrunner Eric Kripke tweeted. “We hired a model (I don’t know his name). I chose the pic, based on about 20 different butthole shots. Yep, Hollywood is a glamorous dream factory.”
Karl Urban (Billy Butcher)Amazon Content Services LLC
Kripke also explained that Doumit’s reaction was genuine because she had no idea it was coming. “When Claudia was shooting it, for all the wide angles, it’s a blue screen. You can’t see what’s on the phone, so she’s reacting to a blue screen,” Kripke told Collider.
“And then, when we moved in for close-up method acting style, we put the real butt on the phone, so her reaction is her real reaction to seeing that butt. I don’t know if we should feel good about that or horrible, but that’s how we got a real reaction from Claudia,” he added.
Before Kripke addressed the speculation, Reddit was full of theories. “Did butcher take a picture of his own hairy asshole or did he google ‘hairy asshole’ and spend some time scrolling to find a good one to send?” wrote one fan.
“For some reason I find it funnier to imagine butcher googling pictures of hairy assholes than him actually bending over and setting up the camera to take a picture of his own asshole. [sic]” Another added: “The lighting in the picture wouldn’t make much sense for this. It makes way more sense that it’s not his own but people will prefer to believe it’s his because funny. [sic]”
The BoysSeason 4 is headed for darker times according to the teaser trailer recently released ahead of launch.
Based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, who also serve as executive producers, the Amazon Prime Video superhero series was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Phil Sgriccia, Michaela Starr, Paul Grellong, David Reed, Meredith Glynn, Judalina Neira, Ken F. Levin, and Jason Netter also serve as executive producers.
Those eager for all the details currently available about The Boys Season 4 release date, cast and more can find everything we know below.
When does The Boys Season 4 come out?
Season 4 of The Boys will debut on June 13. Three episodes will premiere that day, followed by a new episode each week. The season finale is set for Thursday, July 18.
The Boys stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Colby Minifie, Claudia Doumit, and Cameron Crovetti. Newcomers for Season 4 are Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
What is The Boys Season 4 about?
According to Prime Video, the world is on the brink in Season 4. Victoria Neuman is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the muscly thumb of Homelander, who is consolidating his power. Butcher, with only months to live, has lost Becca’s son and his job as The Boys’ leader. The rest of the team are fed up with his lies. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it’s too late.
Is there a trailer for The Boys Season 4?
Yes, a trailer for the upcoming installment of the Amazon series launched at CCXP México, raising the stakes for the fourth installment.
While the country is seemingly beyond repair, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is committed to finding a way to bring a stop to the supes, who are as power hungry as ever. Watch the entire trailer below.
Will there be more seasons of The Boys?
Yes, Prime Video has already renewed the show for a fifth season.
Gen V was renewed for a second season in October 2023. Set at America’s only college exclusively for young-adult superheroes, run by Vought International, the spinoff explores the lives of hormonal, competitive Supes as they put their physical, sexual and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the school’s top ranking.
Producers confirmed in a statement that they will not recast Chance Perdomo’s role of Andre Anderson after the actor’s untimely death in March. Production has been delayed in the wake of the loss of Perdomo.
Chance Perdomo in ‘Gen V’
Photo: Brooke Palmer/Prime Video
The cast includes Jaz Sinclair, Lizze Broadway, Shelley Conn, Maddie Phillips, London Thor, Derek Luh, Asa Germann, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Marco Pigossi. Gen V also features guest stars Clancy Brown and Jason Ritter, as well as appearances from Jessie T. Usher, Colby Minifie, Claudia Doumit and P.J. Byrne, reprising their roles from The Boys. Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters serve as showrunners and executive producers.
Are there other The Boys spinoffs in the works?
A spinoff series, The Boys: Mexico, has also been announced. The offshoot will hail from Blue Beetle writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer with Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal set to executive produce. Luna and Bernal are also considering appearing in smaller roles in the series.
A search is currently underway for a co-showrunner to join creator, writer and executive producer Dunnet-Alcocer, who is now working on the script. The team behind The Boys: Mexico, which will be shot in the Latin American country, is working on budgets for the new series and they have yet to begin casting, sources said. Mothership developer Kripke and Kripke Enterprises, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Grey Pictures, Neil H. Moritz’s Original Film, Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios will back the spinoff as well. Loreli Alba is expected to oversee for Point Grey.
Erin Moriarty, who plays Annie/Starlight on Amazon’s The Boys, has quit Instagram after former Fox News pundit and white supremacist Barbie Megyn Kelly accused her of having extensive plastic surgery.
Kelly made the accusations via her Sirius XM podcast The Megyn Kelly Show, where she targeted Moriarty and baselessly claimed she had an “addiction” to plastic surgery. Kelly’s fans quickly turned on Moriarty, flooding her social media accounts with nasty and harassing comments.
Erin Moriarty says she is leaving social media after receiving torrents of abuse following Megan Kelly falsely claiming that she has had plastic surgery.
“You’ve broken my heart. You’ve lost the privilege of this account. so, you can believe whatever you want. But there’s no… pic.twitter.com/lT8h9aeYzV
Moriarty posted a statement to her Instagram announcing she was deactivating her account. She wrote, “This is something I truly never anticipated writing. We’re all subject to levels of bullying throughout our lives but I am horrified, and I felt that I deserved to take a second to address these things … To receive a message about a disgustingly false, counterproductive to the degree of being ironically misogynistic video of Megyn Kelly commenting on the manner — to learn the widespread nature of this has left me horrified.”
Moriarty added, “This is becoming harassment. This is becoming false news … And I am horrified by the reaction, the reductive assumptions, and the aforementioned video that is a primary example of such harassment. It’s broken my heart. You’ve broken my heart. You’ve lost the privilege of this account. so, you can believe whatever you want,” she continued. “But there’s no excuse for these horrific allegations, the verbal abuse that I have had to delete, and the genuinely false information that is being used to perpetrate a message that is exhibitionist feminism. You don’t have to believe me when I say these videos are absolutely false but the way this has been spoken about, the way I have been spoken to, I will not accept.”
Moriarty finished her post by writing, “Shame on you Megyn Kelly. Shame on you, Fox News (Vought incarnate).”
Moriarty has since received supportive posts from co-stars Jack Quaid and Chace Crawford, as well as her many fans. This isn’t the first time Moriarty has been targeted by trolls, but it is the first time she’s been attacked by a mouthpiece with a large audience. Kelly, who is 53 years old, seems to think she has a right to bully anyone she wants. Perhaps she is just jealous of the actress, who is 14 years her junior. More likely, she is scrambling for relevance after getting fired from NBC for defending blackface. After all, it must sting to go from network news anchor to moderator of debates on a right-wing offshoot channel.
(featured image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images and Prime Video)
Amazon Prime Video has announced that The Boys: Mexico, a spin-off series of The Boys, is in the works. But perhaps more exciting than the new series are the men behind it: Mexican actors, producing partners, and close friends Diego Luna (Andor) and Gael García Bernal (Old, Mozart in the Jungle).
The duo broke onto the scene in Alfonso Cuarón’s critically acclaimed film Y Tu Mamá También in 2001, and have built careers working in both independent films and blockbuster productions. The Boys: Mexico will be co-showrun by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Blue Beetle). Casting and plot details are currently under wraps, but Luna and García Bernal may be appearing onscreen in minor roles. Both actors are already part of major genre franchises with Disney. Luna is best known for his role as Cassian Andor in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the spin-off series Andor. And García Bernal recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Jack Russell in the Disney+ Halloween special Werewolf by Night.
The Boys: Mexico will be the third spin-off series for the raunchy Amazon franchise, following the animated anthology series The Boys Presents: Diabolical and the college-set series Gen V, which has already been renewed for a second season. Season 4 of The Boys will be released sometime in 2024. Like many projects, season 4 was delayed as executive producer/series creator Eric Kripke didn’t want to premiere the series during the WGA strike.
The Boys is based on the best-selling comic series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, which debuted in 2006. The series quickly amassed a devoted fanbase thanks to its graphic violence, explicit raunch, and satirization of modern-day superhero culture and fandom. While the series takes aim at both DC and Marvel, it has developed into a razor-sharp indictment of the Trump presidency, with lead villain Homelander (Antony Starr) getting Trumpier with each season.
Amazon is quickly assembling a sprawling shared universe based on The Boys, which is one of the streamer’s most successful original series. The Boys is quickly shaping up to be a major superhero franchise, not unlike the very franchises it mocks. This kind of corporate synergy is right up Vought International’s alley.
(featured image: Kurt Krieger/Corbis via Getty Images)
