Soldier Boy

• 1. Introduction

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  Soldier Boy is a superhero name worn by three different men in the comic series Herogasm and The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. On television, the name belongs to a single man who combines all three. One comic version is a hero played for laughs. Another is a doomed soldier on a European battlefield. The screen version is a war hero who was betrayed to the USSR and experimented on for forty years. What links these men is a red, white and blue costume and a company that keeps reusing it. So who was the first man under the shield? What did Vought take from the television version without asking? And why does a hero built on patriotism end up despised by the people closest to him?

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• 2. The Believer

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  Every year at the Herogasm gathering, one member of the team Payback quietly goes off alone with Homelander. That man is Soldier Boy III, introduced in the comic Herogasm as the elected leader of Payback, a team sponsored by Vought-American. He is one of the few Supes, the superpowered people of this world, with selfless and kind motives. He also detests profanity. Each year at the annual orgy of Supes, he sleeps with Homelander in private. He believes it is a test, and that passing it will win him a place on Homelander's team, the Seven. Homelander has no intention of keeping that promise, and the character mostly exists as comic relief.

  Homelander's plan for a Supe revolution against Vought and its puppet rulers in the White House begins right after their latest encounter. Soldier Boy stands obliviously at his side as Homelander prepares to announce it. The Guy from Vought then interrupts the moment.

  In The Boys arc called The Self-Preservation Society, Payback ambushes Billy Butcher and his team. Soldier Boy pins Butcher to a wall with his shield, but his lack of real combat experience costs him the advantage. Butcher is a CIA black ops agent and Homelander's archenemy. He bites off Soldier Boy's nose and beats him unconscious. Over the next few days, Butcher tortures him for information about Homelander's activities. He also mocks Soldier Boy's claim to be the World War II hero, supposedly kept alive in suspended animation. Vought forced him to adopt that identity.

  In the arc called What I Know, Butcher is revealed to have killed him. A public funeral follows, and members of the Seven, Homelander among them, serve as pallbearers. The real original had a very different ending, which Lieutenant Colonel Greg D. Mallory would later describe to a young man named Hughie.

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• 3. The Avenging Squad

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  In the arc called Barbary Coast, Lieutenant Colonel Greg D. Mallory tells Wee Hughie Campbell about his own history with Supes. He does so before warning Hughie about the true sadistic nature of Billy Butcher. During World War II, Mallory was a captain. Government and Vought officials ordered his company to supervise the Avenging Squad, a team of the first American-made Supes. The first Soldier Boy led it.

  At the Battle of the Bulge, that first Soldier Boy was eager to serve but had little military experience. He sent the flying members of the team to check the area for Nazis. He did not realize this would reveal their position. Mallory had time only for a brief warning before a nearby Waffen-SS platoon attacked. The platoon massacred both Mallory's men and Soldier Boy's.

  Afterward, Mallory came across Soldier Boy mortally wounded, nearly cut in half by a blast. Mallory dropped a grenade by his feet and walked away. It was a mercy killing, and it happened on the squad's very first mission. Vought then replaced the dead man with a second Soldier Boy, who served for the rest of the war.

  By 1950, Mallory had learned that Vought had made new versions of Soldier Boy and his teammates, with the same designs and branding. These replacements fought elsewhere. After the war they were known as Crimefighters Incorporated, and they made propaganda films for the United States government. The second Soldier Boy later died in unknown circumstances. Vought presented his successor, in modern times, as the first Soldier Boy still alive.

  On television, the creators would fold all three men into one, and give him a different fate.

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• 4. The Cover Story

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  A statue of Soldier Boy appears in the second season of The Boys, released in 2020, when Stan Edgar mentions him as an early test subject for Compound V. The third season fills in the rest. Frederick Vought, a Nazi defector, created him in 1944 by injecting Compound V into an ordinary soldier. That made him the first American Supe who does not age.

  Marvin T. Milk, called MM, holds him responsible for his family's downfall. MM says Soldier Boy killed his grandfather while stopping a carjacking. That pushed MM's father to work himself to death as a lawyer trying to bring down Vought. MM also blames him for his own obsessive compulsive disorder.

  The public story says Soldier Boy died preventing a nuclear meltdown during the Cold War. Queen Maeve does not believe it. She learns the location of a Russian superweapon called B.C.L. RED, said to have really killed him, and sends Butcher to check. Both hope to use it against Homelander, the unstable leader of the Seven. Vought had ranked Homelander and Soldier Boy as nearly equal in power.

  Butcher takes V24, a temporary variant of Compound V that Maeve gave him, and interrogates Gunpowder, Soldier Boy's former sidekick. Butcher kills him, but only after learning the truth. Soldier Boy died during a joint CIA and Payback black ops mission in Nicaragua in 1984, against the Sandinistas. Grace Mallory, Butcher's own mentor, supervised it.

  Mallory tells Butcher that Russian and Nicaraguan troops ambushed her team and massacred most of her men. She saw Soldier Boy fight off several soldiers. Then Gunpowder's friendly fire forced her to dodge, and she was knocked out. She woke to learn of his death from an unknown superweapon, which his girlfriend, the Crimson Countess, had witnessed.

  President Ronald Reagan ordered the incident covered up, and Vought received full immunity. The government did not want it known that Russia could kill Supes. The deeper truth is that Stan Edgar arranged the whole thing. Payback had suffered physical and mental abuse from Soldier Boy, and Edgar let them betray him as revenge, planning to replace him with Homelander.

  The team incapacitated Soldier Boy with Novichok, but not before he burned Black Noir's face. He also bludgeoned Noir repeatedly in the head with his shield, leaving significant brain damage. Butcher now had one more name to chase, the Crimson Countess, the witness who was still unaccounted for.

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• 5. Loose in the Present

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  The secret Russian laboratory that Maeve believed held B.C.L. RED holds something far stranger than a weapon. Butcher and the Boys infiltrate it, and Russian soldiers overwhelm them. Butcher and Hughie take more V-24 and kill the soldiers. Butcher then opens the pod and finds a living, comatose, bearded Soldier Boy inside.

  Woken from his induced coma, Soldier Boy steps out and fires a powerful radiation blast from his chest, the Big Chest-Laser. It hits Kimiko Miyashiro, leaving her powerless and wounded, and cancels her usual healing. The Boys retreat to stabilize her while Soldier Boy escapes. Butcher guesses that experimentation gave him these new abilities.

  Soldier Boy smuggles himself onto a commercial flight back to the United States. In New York City, he hears a song that was playing during his experiments. It triggers a flashback to several traumatic moments in Russian captivity. His rage sets off a destructive radioactive burst that levels most of a five-story apartment complex. The destruction draws Homelander's attention to a potential new supervillain.

  At the home of a former Vought executive known as The Legend, Soldier Boy recovers his original uniform. Then he confronts the Crimson Countess, whom Butcher had restrained as a show of good faith. MM was falsely led to believe she would be used as bait. Soldier Boy describes his torture and his disappointment that Payback never came for him. She answers that the whole team secretly despised him and betrayed him to the Russians for no money. He kills her with a radioactive burst.

  Mindstorm and Noir are the last two members of Payback. While hunting Mindstorm, Soldier Boy starts hearing voices, which worries Hughie and Butcher. Butcher admits he has been supplying Soldier Boy with marijuana to prevent another destructive episode. After a booby trap goes off, Mindstorm forces Butcher to relive his traumatic past endlessly. Soldier Boy leaves Butcher for dead, despite Hughie's protests.

  The Legend had told Hughie that Soldier Boy's World War II service was mostly propaganda. His more active roles, the Legend said, included suppressing race riots and opposing the Civil Rights and peace movements, with rumors about Dealey Plaza. Hughie confronts Soldier Boy about his PTSD, his drug use and his constant showboating of his military past. Then Hughie betrays him and saves Mindstorm, who frees Butcher by teleporting him to safety. Soldier Boy arrives soon after and bludgeons Mindstorm to death with his shield. Before he dies, Mindstorm tells him about Edgar's role in his capture and the reason for it. Mindstorm's last disclosure concerned something Vought had taken from Soldier Boy years before his capture.

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• 6. Father and Son

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  Jonah Vogelbaum, a Vought scientist, asked Soldier Boy for samples a few years before the Russians captured him. Soldier Boy was told they were for research purposes. In fact, Vogelbaum used his semen for genetic experimentation, creating Homelander as a stronger replacement. After Mindstorm explains this, Soldier Boy reveals it to a shocked Homelander in a phone call. He then tells Butcher and Hughie that he is Homelander's father. The rest of the Boys and Maeve soon fear the two will team up.

  Soldier Boy's own father was a prominent steel magnate. He neglected his son and regarded him as a disappointment. He disowned both Soldier Boy and his new superhero persona, because the boy had not earned his powers himself. Soldier Boy tells Butcher this privileged background, which contrasts sharply with the humble story Vought invented. That invented story is what had gotten him into Frederick Vought's Compound V trials.

  At Seven Tower, Soldier Boy, Butcher and Maeve go to fight Homelander, while the rest of the Boys are left shut in a disused safe at the Flatiron Building. Homelander has already killed Noir for keeping his parentage secret, and has retrieved Ryan. He tries to connect with Soldier Boy, saying the three of them could be a family. Soldier Boy disowns him as weak, damaged, attention-seeking and a disappointment. Then he tries to blast him, as he had agreed with Butcher.

  Ryan lasers Soldier Boy to stop the attack, and Soldier Boy makes the mistake of striking Ryan in return. A brawl follows in which he faces Butcher, Annie, MM and Kimiko, while Homelander reluctantly fights Maeve. Frenchie has improvised a batch of Novichok to knock Soldier Boy out. He tries to release an energy blast in retaliation. A grievously injured Maeve pushes him out of the window to save the others, and she loses her own powers when he discharges mid-air.

  On Mallory's orders, Soldier Boy is placed in cryostasis. His statue in front of Seven Tower is toppled by supporters of both Homelander and Stormfront. That follows a report from Vought's news media wing that Russian indoctrination motivated his attack. The pod holding him was not forgotten, as the fourth season would show.

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• 7. Back on Ice

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  Speaker of the House Steven Calhoun assumes the office of President of the United States on behalf of Homelander in the season 4 finale. He discovers Soldier Boy alive in a stasis pod and brings Homelander straight to him. Homelander looks over the pod with a sad expression.

  Running out of allies, Homelander awakens his father from cryostasis. Soldier Boy is apprehensive, but Homelander persuades him to join the Seven to kill Butcher. He presents Soldier Boy's repaired shield and promises that he can repair his reputation as a Russian spy.

  Soldier Boy tracks down Butcher, Hughie and Kimiko, and the latter two are shocked that he was only frozen, not dead. He confronts the now-superpowered Butcher for betraying him to save Ryan. Butcher replies that he carries a Supe virus that could kill Supes, and knocks Soldier Boy out with a car. When Soldier Boy reawakens, he allies with Teenage Kix members Jetstreak and Sheline to find the Boys.

  The Boys lure Soldier Boy and Jetstreak into the Teenage Kix compound. There, Hughie and Frenchie expose them to the virus. It kills Jetstreak and another Teenage Kix member, Rock Hard, instantly, while Soldier Boy convulses and seemingly dies. Homelander mourns as a body bag is carried out, but Soldier Boy suddenly sits up, alive.

  The discovery that Soldier Boy is virtually immortal and immune to the virus gives Homelander a god complex. It also sends him searching for V1, the compound Soldier Boy was subjected to. Soldier Boy disagrees and sets out to find any remaining V1 and destroy it before Homelander gets it. When they obtain the final sample from Bombsight, Soldier Boy gives Homelander the V-1 in memory of Stormfront, making him immortal. Soldier Boy tells him he is no god and that he is leaving for Bogotá, never to return. Homelander chokes him unconscious and puts him back in cryostasis, so the season ends with Soldier Boy frozen a second time.

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• 8. Behind the Shield

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  The comic Soldier Boy was designed as a parody of Marvel Comics' Captain America. He is a basic supersoldier trained to fight with a shield, who sincerely believes in his patriotic role. In battle, he recites the names of states.

  For the third season, released in 2022, Laura Jean "LJ" Shannon and Greg Hopwood redesigned him. They drew on Captain America, Superman and the Winter Soldier. Their closest reference was the Nomad version of Captain America in the 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Infinity War, as portrayed by Chris Evans. His shield became a practical, pointed weapon for both defense and attack.

  The television version can produce radiation from his chest in beams or explosive bursts, courtesy of Soviet-era experimentation. This radiation can fry Compound V out of a Supe's system. He is often described as nearly as strong as Homelander, and in the episode "Herogasm" the two fight almost evenly. He is also a formidable brawler. He overpowered and defeated Butcher in a fight even though Butcher was empowered by Temp-V.

  Eric Kripke, the showrunner, confirmed that the comic Soldier Boy III's sexual relationship with Homelander would not be adapted. Jensen Ackles instead portrays the World War II-era Soldier Boy I, who survives into modern times. In the show, he was held prisoner in a laboratory, in and out of an induced coma, from 1984 to 2022. Kripke first intended to cast an older actor, for "a grizzled John Wayne sort of vibe". Then he offered the role to Ackles.

  Kripke and Ackles had already worked together on the first five seasons of The CW's Supernatural. Ackles had also been in contention, without auditioning, for Steve Rogers in the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger, before Chris Evans was cast. He described Soldier Boy as "Captain America on his ass, and as if he gave up super-heroism and was just your drunk and inappropriate uncle".

  Ackles has also explained the character's bond with his son. In his words, "Homelander is the new iteration of Soldier Boy." He adds, "He's the new kid on the block in Soldier Boy's eyes." In Ackles's view, the relationship is immediately contentious.

  The character reached viewers outside the main series as well. Soldier Boy is mentioned and pictured throughout the 2020-2021 promotional web series Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman. It says his last film, 1983's Red River, was released to Vought's new Vought+ streaming service. The first season finale of The Boys Presents: Diabolical, titled "One Plus One Equals Two", calls Homelander the first Supe since Soldier Boy to match his caliber in the public eye. Kripke has also expressed interest in a future Diabolical episode that would adapt the comic relationship between Soldier Boy III and Homelander, with Ackles possibly voicing the younger character.

  To promote the third season, Ackles appeared in videos showing Soldier Boy's in-universe campaigns for Vought and the United States government in the 1980s. They included anti-drug public service announcements. In another, he serenaded the dancers of Solid Gold with a rendition of Blondie's "Rapture". The band's original singer, Debbie Harry, praised the cover as "epic". Ackles then voiced interest in recording an album of similar covers, tentatively titled "Soldier Boy Sings The Hits". The character and Ackles's portrayal have received a positive reception.

  Ackles returned in the 2023 spin-off series Gen V, in the episode "Jumanji". Trapped inside Cate Dunlap's mind, the main group meets Soldier Boy as her imaginary friend, known as "Soldier Boyfriend". He explains what is happening in her mind, such as lightning that is really bursting blood vessels, and warns them to escape before her mind collapses. Electricity from Cate's mind zaps him before he can explain the method of escape. In 2026, Ackles reprised the role once more in the video game The Boys: Trigger Warning.

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