The Boys Season 3 Cut A Controversial Scene
The Boys season 3 will not include one particularly infamous scene from the comics, but they probably will have some more heads explode.
The Boys was renewed for season 3 all the way back in 2020, which means it has been quite a while since we have seen the gory, bloody, highly edgy exploits of its heroes and villains. The hit Amazon Prime Video show has been highly praised for its ability to mine very dark humor out of the idea that maybe costumed superheroes aren’t actually all that good, but it looks like the series is finally balking at something. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, series creator Eric Kripke revealed The Boys season 3 will not include the notorious scene in which series main antagonist The Homelander coerces Soldier Boy, another superhero, into sex with promises of career promotions.
The Boys season 3 will reportedly include aspects of Herogasm, a limited comic book series by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns. Although Herogasm was originally presented as a spin-off of The Boys series proper, it was eventually folded into the trade paperback editions, and now will be part of the show. Eric Kripke previously Tweeted that the sixth episode of The Boys season 3 would share the title of the series and also that that he had been dared to do so (at some volume):
From day one, everyone dared me to make this episode. CHALLENGE MET MOTHERFUCKERS#TheBoys #TheBoysTV @TheBoysTV @PrimeVideo @SPTV #SPNFamily @Sethrogen @evandgoldberg pic.twitter.com/q4pAMZWZDl
— Eric Kripke (@therealKripke) January 17, 2021
But despite Kripke’s very emphatic statement that he had met the challengers who said he could not adapt the events of a comic book into the continuing run of a very popular streaming television show, it looks like they are going to back down a bit. In The Boys season 3, The Homelander (Antony Starr) will apparently not push the new character of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) into sex acts during a week-long orgy of superheroes because it does not match up with the direction of the season as a whole. Here’s what Kripke says:
We talked about it. It conflicted with a lot of the other things we were trying to build with Soldier Boy. So, unfortunately, that one had to go.
All that may very well be so and the trailers for The Boys season 3 have definitely indicated that the show’s Soldier Boy does not have very much in common with the comic book version. However, without mincing words, it is pretty glaring that a show that both prides itself on and is praised for graphic violence at every turn cannot possibly figure out a way to include a specific sexual moment. It is very reminiscent of how the Motion Picture Association (which assigns parental guidance ratings to films) is far more likely to assign more severe ratings to depictions of sexual acts than to violence. It is also far more likely to view homosexual sexual acts as graphic than similar heterosexual ones.
It could also be noted that the first season of The Boys managed to figure out a way in which the female lead character was sexually humiliated by a male superbeing, but it just is not possible for male on male sex to work within a story that they themselves are writing. For whatever narrative reason, it seems The Boys season 3 is going to skip past this particular issue and continue to focus on some good, old-fashioned hyperviolence and the thematic possibilities of “what if Superman had emotional baggage?” The Boys season 3 will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on June 3.
