The Boys Cast: Making Sense Of This Amazon Hit

The Boys cast includes Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, and new addition Jensen Ackles.

By Doug Norrie | Published 5 months ago

The Boys finished up Season 3 on Amazon Prime with another set of episodes that are about as hilarious and as graphic (and this is an understatement) as anything you will see on television these days. The Boys and its cast has worked to become the anti-Marvel in nearly every way imaginable, taking an almost NC-17 approach to the superhero genre that flips really everything on its head.

Here, the superheroes are the narcissistic celebrities who’ve parlayed their powers into endorsement deals and fleeting fame. The show isn’t for the faint of heart, but there are plenty of payoffs in the Boys’ fight against the Supes and Vought industries.

And The Boys cast has brought along some relative first-timers onto the small screen while giving some other well-known names a chance to do something altogether different.

Let’s take a look at The Boys cast and how they break down along battle lines within the world. Fair warning, there are spoilers coming because not everyone on this The Boys cast list makes it all the way through. This is a pretty deadly world. And along with this, we can see what might be coming with The Boys season 4 as well.

THE BOYS CAST – THE NON-SUPES ARE LED BY KARL URBAN AND JACK QUAID

For the uninitiated, The Boys cast is mostly broken into a few separate groups, all of whom are working their own angles in the series. The show is named after the titular group of fighters, wholly without powers (at least to start) who’ve taken it on themselves to bring the Supes to task and out them for the insanely egotistical bunch they really are. 

Karl Urban as Billy Butcher

The de facto leader of The Boys in this cast, Urban’s Butcher is a cynical and mostly cold-blooded CIA operative who’s been tasked, at times, to use any means necessary to bring down Supes who’ve gotten out of line. Butcher has vendettas of his own he’s seeking to rectify, but at his heart, he has it out for Homelander, the leader of The Seven.

Urban as Butcher is mostly anti-hero with one-liners that are definitely NSFW. He’s struggling with his own demons that often cloud his judgment. When we left him at the end of Season 3 he was definitely paying the price for his Compound V use and now his life clock is ticking.

Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell

A reluctant member of the Boys in that he kind of came along to the group by accident. He’s the first person in The Boys cast we are introduced to when his girlfriend gets pulverized into a million little pieces by A-Train, this universe’s version of The Flash.

From there, Hughie began working with Butcher and company almost by accident and ended up dating a Supe himself. It’s been a wild ride for easily the most likable member of The Boys cast. 

Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk/ MM

Maybe the most grounded member of The Boys cast which really isn’t saying all that much considering this group is all pretty much operating on a very thin thread of sanity. MM has his own reasons for wanting to take down the Supes, stemming from what happened to his own family at one of their hands.

He’s mostly levelheaded and rational when it comes to the operation and acts as a solid foil for Butcher’s “at all costs” methods.

Tomer Capone as Frenchie

The sensitive one of the bunch, Frenchie starts off the series as a drugged-out arms dealer who is quickly humanized when he finds someone else to care about. Highly skilled in basically all weaponry, he’s also very much getting sick of the constant battles.

Among The Boys cast, Frenchie might be the easiest to root for in that he seems sweetly naive and caring while maybe having just chosen the wrong paths in life.

Karen Fukuhara as The Female

Her real name is Kimiko, but early on she’s known only as The Female, a mysterious and powerful mute with Wolverine-like healing powers, super-strength, and speed. Her powers weren’t by choice though. She was injected with Compound V as part of a larger conspiracy.

Among the love stories in The Boys cast, hers and Frenchie’s might be the sweeties mostly because they are mostly just two innocent “kids” who’ve been caught up in something really neither wants a part of.

THE SEVEN IS LED BY ANTONY STARR AS HOMELANDER

Antony Starr as Homelander

The Boys cast version of Superman if Superman was the craziest and most sadistic dude you’d ever met in your life. Homelander is the thought experiment around what would have happened if the guy from Krypton had all the same powers but instead of working for The Daily Planet, wanted to be worshipped like a god and was willing to manipulate and murder anyone who stood in his way.

It’s a star turn from Starr who is truly terrifying in the role mostly because it’s all behind an All-American veneer and smile.

Erin Moriarty as Starlight

When the series begins, in The Boys cast, Starlight is the newest member of The Seven, innocent in her ideas of what this superhero group is really all about. She quickly realizes things are far from what he expected and is determined to turn the Seven on the right path. This is easier said than done, especially after she starts falling for the non-Supe-ish Hughie.

Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve

The Boys version of Wonder Woman, Queen Maeve has been a long-time member of The Seven and was once romantically involved with Homelander. Though she starts the series very much in line with the debaucherous Supes, and often drinks some of her own pain away, over the course of the series there’s a noticeable shift in how she sees the world.

Maeve has her own secrets as well, things she’s worked hard to keep out of the public eye and away from Vought.

Jessie T. Usher as A-Train

What superhero group would be complete without a speedster? A-Train is this world’s Flash, though unlike the Barry Allen we see in the DC Comics, this dude is much more into the style and swagger than he is actually fighting crime.

In fact, it’s almost the complete opposite in that he’s willing to maintain his edge in speed above almost anything else, including his family, relationships, and even moral compass.

Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir

The silent, violent and terrifying masked and mysterious member of the Seven who is bound closely to Homelander and has a strict loyalty to Vought in general. His background and powers a shrouded a bit in the first couple of seasons, though he’s proven incredibly hard to kill.

We do learn a bit more about him during the third season with a look into why he’s hesitant to ever take the mask off completely and why we never hear him utter a single word.

Season 3 ended with Black Noir dead. He finally tried to stand up to Homelander, but that didn’t go anywhere close to as planned.

Chace Crawford as The Deep

Aquaman anyone? The Deep is the master of the underwater world, so much so that it appears he loves fish and sea life considerably more than anyone walking around on the Earth.

The Deep is a total dunce who’s been in and out of the Seven based on his own, pretty obtuse actions, which is really saying something because it isn’t like this group is a bunch of brain surgeons. Of all the Supes, this character has had some of the most consistently-funny scenes in the whole series.

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You’ll notice that though they are labeled The Seven, I’ve only listed six superheroes here. That’s because the seventh position has been a source of problem for the group basically ever since the first episode.

A number of different folks have come along to fill the vacated position but have all had their, well, problems along the way. 

THE BOYS CAST – VOUGHT INDUSTRIES IS LED BY GIANCARLO ESPOSITO

Giancarlo Esposito as Stan Edgar

Esposito has made a career playing just this kind of character: a ruthless and powerful, though soft-spoken and very intimidating guy who seems to understand all of the angles and can fully manipulate any person or group.

That’s exactly who he plays here in The Boys cast as Edgar, the CEO of Vought who actually might be the worst of the whole bunch. Edgar has exerted his power over even the most powerful of supes along the way, Homelander included.

Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett

She starts the series as something of a marketing assistant at Vought though is able to work her way up the ranks because of company attrition (in all of its forms) and her own understanding of just how the business of coddling Supes really works.

She’s an angle-shooter for sure, though does understand some of the base functions of survival in this world which is to choose the right side and lean in all the way.

Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell

The former Head of Superhero Operations for Vought, Stillwell had as close a relationship with Homelander as one could really ever “hope” to have considering the dude’s psychotic nature. Stillwell, much like Edgar, understood just how to coddle and placate the Supes while also taking, at times, a firm hand when it came to manipulating their actions.

Elisabeth Shue didn’t make it through the first season, being killed by Homelander after a seeming betrayal. But her character did come back briefly in the form of a copycat a season later.

JENSEN ACKLES JOINED THE CAST AS SOLDIER BOY

This world is “rich” with folks with superpowers who’ve cropped up along the way in the show’s first three seasons. There are almost two many to name here, but the show has covered nearly all of the superpower spectrum and has a doppelgänger (inducing another Supe named Doppleganger) for nearly everything DC and Marvel have put on the comic book pages over the years. Here are a few of the notables:

Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy

Referred to in the first couple of seasons, Soldier Boy finally makes an appearance in Season 3. He’s this universe’s version of Captain America, though like Steve Rogers he isn’t. They share nearly identical outfits, history, and powers, and he even carries a shield. But Solider Boy is a super bad dude, the leader of a psychotic superhero team called Payback. 

Aya Cash as Stormfront

This character came along in Season 2 and took this world by, well, storm with her brazen attitude, ability to rile up legions of fans, and knack for social media posting that only helped her “cause”. Stormfront is incredibly powerful with a set of abilities that nearly rival Homelander’s. The two develop a relationship even around mutually despising regular old humans. It’s a pretty much a match made in hell.

Stormfront met her own demise essentially in Season 2 when she was lasered in half by Homelander’s son, but we saw the remains of her being kept alive in Season 3 before she ultimately kicked it.

Some others who’ve come around in this world are Laurie Holden as Crimson Countess, Brittany Allen as Popclaw, Haley Joel Osment as Mesmer, David W. Thompson as Gecko, Brett Geddes as Termite, and Sean Patrick Flannery as Gunpowder, among many others.

THE BOYS SEASON 4 CAST WILL HAVE SOME NEW FACES LIKE JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN

The Boys Season 4 production is underway and there will be some new additions to the cast when we finally get the series back up on Amazon. For the most part, the main cast will return seeing as how basically everyone of note made it out alive (unbelievably) to finish off the third season. That’s going to mean Karl Urban (maybe on his last legs), Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Antony Starr, and many others.

But there will be some new faces as well. For starters, Jeffrey Dean Morgan will have a role in The Boys Season 4 cast. We aren’t sure of his exact role just yet, though it would be funny if he were somehow related to Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy. Morgan played Ackles’s father on Supernatural and that kind of casting would be a fun nod to the other series.

Additionally, Rosemarie DeWitt, Elliot Knight, and Rob Benedict are all coming on board as well. It’s not totally clear what their respective roles will be in this new The Boys season.

THE BOYS SPINOFF SERIES GEN-V STARS JAZ SINCLAIR AND LIZZE BROADWAY

Yea, we’re wrappin GEN V production. No, we ain’t tellin ya when it’s coming out yet. pic.twitter.com/BGiaX6fNjA

— THE BOYS (@TheBoysTV) September 16, 2022

There is a The Boys spinoff on Amazon introducing a totally new cast of characters to this world. The series Gen V focuses on the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting which is an analog to the Charles Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters except this is going to be the R-rated version.

The series sets on a group of college students who are vying to be legit Supes in this world giving it a Hunger Games meets Animal House vibe to the whole thing. The Boys fans got a lot of what they were expecting here with the show pushing the envelope in a big way when it came to content.

In addition to Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau and Lizze Broadway as Emma Shaw, the series features Patrick Schwarzenegger as Golden Boy, Sean Patrick Thomas as Polarity and Chance Perdomo and Andre Anderson among many others.

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In all, The Boys cast is about as rich and robust as any series on television these days. There’s been a commitment to keeping the story bursting with new folks and new powers. It’s just one of the reasons the first three seasons have been such a success and why the plot keeps twisting and turning. 

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