Eric Kripke Reveals Why They’re Bringing Back Soldier Boy for Season 5: “Soldier Boy is really driven to kill Butcher”

The Boys is one of the most popular superhero series in the world, and its fourth season ended recently, on July 18, 2024. The initial reactions to the season were lukewarm, but the series has been picking up the pace and ended up being Certified Fresh with high ratings as well.

There have been many fascinating and surprising during the fourth season, most of which we have already discussed in our weekly reviews of the show and its episodes. Among these discussed topics was the Soldier Boy’s brief appearance. We know that the character had a very important role in the third season and that he managed to survive.

This is why fans were hoping that Jensen Ackles’ character would have a bigger role in Season 4, but as things stand, the character is going to have his major moment(s) in the series’ final season, as was confirmed by Eric Kripke as well.

When Soldier Boy first appeared in The Boys, he was a very fascinating and well-liked figure. Despite not being any better in the end, he was a supe who worked with the Boys against Homelander, and he had one of the best character arcs in the show. Although he appears to be dead at the end of Season 3, Kripke and Ackles have both stated that Soldier Boy’s narrative will continue, as we have already covered.

We had correctly predicted Soldier Boy’s return in Season 4, but not the proper form, as it was just a teaser cameo that set up Soldier Boy’s bigger role in Season 5 of the series. This is quite obvious, and while we expected this, showrunner Eric Kripke was kind enough to elaborate on why Soldier Boy is being kept for Season 5 of the series (aside from the planned Jared Padalecki cameo):

“You know, what we realized was we really hadn’t explored the father-son relationship much between Homelander and Soldier Boy. There’s a lot of material there, how soldier boy feels about Homelander, how Homelander feels about his dad, and so we really wanted to dig into that relationship. (…) Soldier Boy is really driven to kill Butcher after Butcher betrayed him in season 3. So he’s just an excellent antagonist, to switch sides and basically, you know, to be with the supes.”

Source: Gamesradar+

With the current state of things being as it is, we are – indeed – in for an exciting final season of The Boys, and we’re quite glad that Ackles’ Soldier Boy is going to play a bigger and, possibly, major role in the upcoming season. The character definitely merits more scene time and he is, based on everything, going to get a lot more of it.

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