Amazon’s hit series and satirical take on superheroes, politics, social media, and…life basically, The Boys chronicles the story of the team of Billy Butcher, Hughie Campbell, Frenchie, Mother’s Milk, and The Female as they take on morally corrupt heroes and the world that enables them.

Thanks to some insightful edits on Garth Ennis’s genre-defying comic books, The Boys is a lot more mature with its more…graphic subject matter and handles timely social issues with adroit management.

Season 3 of The Boys will feature Soldier Boy (played by Jensen Ackles), a spin on the classic Marvel hero, Captain America, and anticipation is high.

But who exactly is Soldier Boy and what can we expect from him?

COMIC ORIGINS

Even though Vought maintains the story that Soldier Boy is the original superhero who has lived into the modern age, the mantle is a legacy title, passed on for three generations.

The first Soldier Boy led the Avenging Squad (Vought’s first attempt to induct supes into the military) and fought in the Second World War. He was, to put it mildly, very incompetent.

The Boys show how Soldier Boy’s utter lack of any training or knowledge in military strategy or protocol created a situation that allowed German soldiers to locate and massacre American soldiers and his team. Greg Mallory (founder of The Boys in the comics) was the only survivor of that incident…and killed Soldier Boy in the aftermath.

Very little is known about the second Soldier Boy but the third always manages to draw Butcher’s ire.

The modern-day Soldier Boy is a wide-eyed optimist in the vein of Captain America but he’s also hopelessly naïve, gullible, and cowardly.

His patriotism and dedication to his role are genuine but those traits are used to manipulate him into depraved acts like mass murder. Soldier Boy never questions any of these atrocities he commits and fully maintains an innocent state of mind.

Despite his superhuman abilities and expertise in combat, Soldier Boy scares very easily and sucks up to Homelander and other well-known supes in hopes of landing a spot on The Seven.

In a confrontation with Butcher, he’s badly beaten, tortured for information and killed.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE LIVE-ACTION VERSION?

In season 3 of The Boys, things are going to be a bit different for Soldier Boy.

Stan Edgar, head of Vought, laid out the history of Soldier Boy for Homelander during a confrontation in his office, telling the story of the greatest soldier to fight in World War II and the foundation of the empire built by their founder.

Season 2 established the increased lifespan of supes that Compound V grants with Stormfront, who lived from the age of Nazi Germany to the present day without aging visibly.

As such, it’s very possible that Soldier Boy could be as old as Vought in the comics pretends.

Eric Kripke, showrunner of The Boys, also revealed that Soldier Boy will basically be Homelander before Homelander and compared the character to John Wayne, famous actor, notorious womanizer, and his fear of horses is rumored to be the inspiration of John Wayne Hated Horses, a 2009 movie.

This seems to be a spin on Captain America from the Ultimate Marvel universe. That version of Steve Rogers was wildly unpopular, given his determined stance on his outdated values and his…disregard for the French.

The Boys season 3 will also feature Payback, a team led by Soldier Boy, and a spin on The Avengers.

CONCLUSION

The Boys proved immensely popular for its satirical take on superhero culture and how it managed to weave that into an examination of our modern age of celebrities, politics, and social lives.

Season 3 is full of promise for another story that will find our erstwhile heroes grappling with the supes once again.