How The Boys Spinoff Series Connects To Season 3

We now have an idea of how The Boys spinoff series Diabolical will connect to The Boys season 3. One story, in particular, is canon

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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Warning: There are some spoilers for The Boys Presents: Diabolical below. Steer clear if you are still planning on watching the series on Amazon before watching The Boys season 3

We are only a few months away from finally getting The Boys Season 3 and Amazon has been working to heavily promote the next round of stories about Vought, the Supes, and the groups trying to stop these folks. In the interim, they’ve come out with some companion pieces and there is another spin-off show in the works as well. One of those was the animated short series The Boys Presents: Diabolical which just premiered this week. We are starting to get an idea of how these episodes will, and won’t work into the overall canon of the series. There are some connections that do set up what we will see in The Boys Season 3. 

In an interview with Variety, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke helped to clear up just how Diabolical will work into the main story. For starters, the biggest piece that will play into how The Boys Season 3 story develops is from the Diabolical finale. That episode titled “One Plus One Equals Two” focuses on the relationship between Homelander and Black Noir. This is something not really explored at all in the main series because we meet these characters well into their run in The Seven. Apparently, this relationship and the events of the episodes are definitely canon now. 

Kripke hinted that the events in this episode will play a part in what is to come in The Boys Season 3. That is because during Diabolical, the two are basically partners and are tasked with clearing out a hostage situation in a chemical plant. Except things go completely sideways when Homelander just basically nukes the entire group, hostages and terrorists alike. Instead of turning him into Vought though, Black Noir helps him cover up the event even though Homelander tried, unsuccessfully, to kill the silent one first. We’ve learned from the first two seasons of The Boys, that though Black Noir is quiet, you basically can’t get rid of the guy. 

While this seems to be the biggest tie-in to The Boys Season 3, Kripke did also hint that there was something from Justin Roiland’s episode “An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents” that will also carry over into the main series. But along these lines, he was much less specific. In all, Diabolical is eight episodes of animated goodness around a series that has helped upend some of the conventional ideas around superhero adaptations. It makes for a great companion to the main show, mostly in that it just drops us into different spots within the world. 

The Boys Season 3 is set to debut on Amazon on June 3rd with the first episode “Payback”. This is surely a reference to another group of superheroes in The Boys universe. And this one should introduce us to the newest member of the cast with Jensen Ackles on to play Soldier Boy. If the first two seasons were any indication, there will once again be nothing held back in one of the most R-rated series that’s ever his a streamer.