Amazon Prime Video
The Boys is a new series on Amazon Prime Video that focuses on a team of vigilantes who take self-serving superheroes down a peg or two. Star Trek star Karl Urban is the leader of the vigilantes, called The Boys. The superheroes, who are warped by fame and various vices, are called The Seven.
Warning: Possible spoilers ahead.
Amazon posted a new teaser for The Boys season 2 on June 26, showing a new female superhero, named Stormfront played by Aya Cash (You’re the Worst), joining the team.
Amazon posted (then pulled) a teaser trailer for season 2 on Dec. 5, 2019. The footage showed a slow-motion shot of Homelander (Antony Starr) floating downward with some sort of gory substance streaming down his face.
There’s also a short glimpse of Terror the dog — a character from The Boys comic book series that the show’s based on.
Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET
The Boys plot (season 1 recap)
In season 1, the corrupt superheroes known as The Seven cause a young man named Hughie (Jack Quaid) to seek out revenge when they accidentally kill his girlfriend. Hughie hooks up with anti-cape vigilantes called The Boys.
The team consists of charismatic leader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), along with Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Female (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon).
But there’s also strife within The Seven when newcomer Annie January/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) joins the superhero crew. She wrestles with everything from the perils of fame to dealing with a #MeToo nightmare. Through her eyes, we see everything that’s wrong with The Seven and how they abuse their power as superheroes.
At the end of season 1, The Seven’s lineup is forever changed. Aquaman-esque superhero The Deep (Chace Crawford) is relocated out of the spotlight after sexually assaulting fellow superhero Starlight in an incident that ended in a #MeToo scandal.
Superhero A-Train (Jessie Usher) is outed as a drug addict who uses a superhero-level steroid to run even faster, with deadly results.
The Seven’s handler, Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), is murdered by superhero-gone-bad The Homelander (Antony Starr) during a shocking revelation that she kept secret from him (he’s secretly fathered a super baby). The twist being that the mother is Billy Butcher’s wife, who he thought was dead.
The Boys plot (season 2 theories)
Season 2 will have to address all these plot points, as well as bring in a new handler and perhaps a few more superheroes.
With The Homelander going off the rails, it may be up to superheroes Starlight and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) to restore The Seven to real superheroes who actually care about protecting humanity more than their own superhero image.
New cast members include Timeless actors Goran Visnjic and Claudia Doumit. Visnjic plays Alistair Adana, the charismatic leader of a mysterious church. Doumit will play Victoria Neuman, a young wunderkind congresswoman.
Another newcomer to the show is actor Aya Cash who plays a super-powered neo-Nazi called Stormfront.
“I think Stormfront is like a nuclear bomb that goes off in the Seven,” Cash told Entertainment Weekly in March. “She’s here to try to get Vought back to the original idea behind creating superheroes, and she can be quite the feminist. There’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say misdirect, but she also is a very empowered woman.”
Who’s making it?
Supernatural and Timeless creator Eric Kripke is behind The Boys.
The series is produced by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. It’s based on the extremely dark comic by Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson, which ran for 72 issues from 2008 to 2012.
Amazon Prime Video
When’s the release date?
The Boys has already been greenlit for a second season. Filming for season 2 started in Toronto in summer 2019. Urban posted on his Instagram on Nov. 6 that filming on The Boys season 2 had wrapped.
The Boys season 2 will premiere the first three episodes on Amazon Prime on Sept 4. New episodes will be available each Friday, culminating in an epic season finale on Oct. 9. There are eight episodes in total.
Meet the cast
Karl Urban as Billy Butcher
Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight
Antony Starr as The Homelander
Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve
Jessie Usher as A-Train
Chace Crawford as The Deep
Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir
Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk
Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell
Aya Cash as Stormfront
Simon Pegg as Hughie’s father
Shantel VanSanten as Becca Butcher
Karen Fukuhara as The Female
Malcolm Barrett as Seth Reed
Goran Visnjic as Alistair Adana
Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman
