The Boys, is a show that is just expanding its universe through piling up season after season, and then spin-offs and even marketing cheeky videos as well, without disspointing fans at either of these accounts.
The show has been nothing but a surprise as it managed to maintain its authenticity, great character arcs, morally-gray human vigilantes and evil superheroes, all in this twisted world of satirical and dark commentary on lots of issues our world faces today.
And unlike other shows like She Hulk: Attorney at Law, this show subtly and successfully embed what it wants to say or the ‘politics’ in the storyline without compromising the entertainment.
Not to mention, all the gore, weird stuff, nudity and all sorts of methods of killings explored so far all wrapped in nuinsance that further demonstrate this bizarre universe.
The season 3 end up on the bang, making this show very few TV or streaming shows which maintains the quality throughout.
Well, the same is expected from The Boys Season 4 as well for which there are lot of information, updates, and rumors out there.
Here we are going to take a look to all the information we know so far about the upcoming season 4 of The Boys, including the cast, plot, release date and a possiblity of spin-off.
‘The Boys’ Season 4 Release Date
Well, the fact that the season 4 announcement of the show The Boys was done on June 10 only, it is hard to say when exactly this new season will update.
So, there is no official annaouncement for the The Boys season 4 release date has been out from the showrunners.
However, if you compare the difference of time between different season releases, it seems that the next season might be premiering sometime between summer 2023 to spring 2024, more broadly between 2023-24.
So far what we know through Karl Urban who played Billy The Butcher in the show, that the filming of the series will begin on August 22nd.
Further Antony Starr, the Homelander from the show, also teased about the shoot for the new season. He basically shared his picture with co-star Chase Crawfor who played Deep.
He tweeted this picture with writing “Back in Toronto with the deep @chacecrawford”.
Again, he also shared another post on his Instagram with a caption saying “Travel time…Wonder what that means..”
What is interesting here is the reply from the official account of Prime Video UK, saying “Whatever it means we’re excited for it.”
It is more than fair to assume that they are talking about the filming of The Boys Season 4, well we are too excited for this season as well.
Apart from this, Showrunner Eric Kripe tweeted a photo on August 22 with the caption saying “Day One”. The photo was basically what seems to be the image of the front page of the The Boys season 4 script with the first episode title “Department of Dirty Tricks”.
Anthony Starr and Karl Urban weren’t the only cast members from the show to post about the new season on their social media accounts.
Jack Quaid who plays Hughie in the series tweeted a post with the caption “Today we start work on season 4. This photo is from the first day The Boys were all on set as a team during season 1. I feel so lucky and grateful that I get to start this journey all over again with my @TheBoysTV family. Let’s do this!!!!”
Well, clearly, it was an unofficial announcement from the cast regarding the shoot of the series to begin.
‘The Boys’ Season 4 Cast
So what’s the new update regarding The Boys Season 4 casting?
Which actors are reprising their roles from earlier seasons and which ones will be new additions to the series? Also, what characters will the new additional cast be playing?
On August 1st, The show announced that there are two new cast members joining the show, that are Susan Heyward as Sister Stage and Valorie Curry playing Firecracker.
Both of these new additional cast for season 4 seem to be superhero additions to the team. Perhaps they will be new supes to The Seven.
This was the news shared by the The Boys official twitter account, further retweeted by showrunner Eric Kripe with caption “These new Supes are some of the best & craziest ever written for #TheBoys. You are going to love them. And by love, I mean be absolutely horrified & a tiney bit nauseous. WELCOME TO THE FAMILY YOU GUYS.”
It seems that these superheroes are going to be more on the villaneous side rather than someone morally straight like Annie.
Or they could be like Maeve who later become more on the side of morals and good guys, or helping Boys but certainly will be introduced as menacing a**holes like Homelander.
Other news which also included the part in the tweet, was promoting Cameron Crovetti to a series regular. He is the actor who plays the role of Homelander’s son Ryan Butcher, yes, the kid who became creepy and twisted at the end of season 3.
From his son-father relation with Butcher to becoming this twisted kid who likes the taste of power, this character has some journey, surprising the audience for sure.
After going against Homelander and laser-burning Stormfront, he seemed to be on the side of The Boys and the Butcher, developing a relationship with him that changes towards the end of the season, making him go completely against him.
Well, it is tough to say whether there is a hope for this character to come back or not but it is sure that we might see Homelander jr. this new season.
Another update regarding the casting of the show was on August 25 by Deadline. It was about Jefferey Dean Morgan joining the cast of the show as a recurring guest star.
We still don’t know which character he will be playing. He already worked with the showrunner Kripe on his previous successful show CW’s Supernatural.
So, here’s the cast members of The Boys Season 4, as so far we know or most likely to be returning and reprising their characters :
- Karl Urban as Billy Butcher
- Jack Quaid as Hughie
- Antony Starr as Homelander
- Erin Moriarty as Annie January/Starlight
- Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk/ M.M
- Tomer Capone as Serge/Frenchie
- Jessie T. Usher as A-Train
- Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko
- Jim Beaver as Robert Singer
- Chace Crawford as The Deep
- Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett
- Cameron Crovetti as Ryan
- Laila Robins as Grace Mallory
- Giancarlo Esposito as Stan Edgar
- Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman
So far we haven’t heard any news regarding Jensen Ackles coming back for season 4, the actor who played Soldie boy.
It is safe to assume that since there hasn’t been a proper ending given to him, he certainly is going to come back in The Boys season 4 or if not, might be in further seasons.
Interestingly, even though Nathan Mitchell’s character Black Noir didn’t survive the season 3 finale, died by the hands of Homelander facing his wrath for ditching him, he still will be coming back in the new season.
Apparently, the actor is going to play a different version of the masked vigilante as told by the showrunner Eric Kripke.
Here’s what Kripke said about this to Entertainment Weekly “It’s definitely not the last we’ve seen of Black Noir as a hero. It’s just that the guy who was inside [the Noir suit] in season 3, he’s gone, But we have Nathan [Mitchell] playing a really interesting and hilarious character who wears the suit next season.”
Another character in the show seemingly part their ways but might come back or show up is Maeve played by Dominique McElligott. She lost her powers after trying to save people from the Soldier boy explosion.
‘The Boys’ Season 4 Plot
Some plot details can be confirmed by simply looking at all the major reveals from the The Boys Season 3 finale.
The most interesting part was the change in the dynamics of the relationship between Ryan and Billy the Butcher which was so far going quite as sweet father-son.
Even though it was going all bad due to Butcher acting all rude to the kid as to detach him, it still expected that this relationship would heal.
Surprisingly, the dynamic took a complete U-turn when he joined Homelander and took off with him.
And at the end of the season, he seems to be going all well with his father Homelander. He got corrupted as it felt good to abuse superpowers.
And boy! That smirk at the end when Homelander laser burned a protesting guy in the crowd brough a whole different storyline for this new season.
At one point, Butcher promised his wife Becca to keep Ryan safe, and then their relationship became all bad and now he has to bring Ryan to the good side.
And all this when Butcher has only 18 months to live, so this new dyamics between Ryan, Homelander and Butcher becomes so much interesting.
Remember that scene in the finale episode where Soldier Boy attacked Ryan against which Homelander and Butcher came together as both cared for Ryan.
But we have something more regarding the plot that this speculation, and it comes directly from the showrunner Eric Kripke who talked about the expectations in the next season.
He said “A lot of the season will be a battle over Ryan because if Homelander ends up raising and influencing the kids that’s basically a second Homelander with apocalyptic stakes.”
Kripke also commented about the scene we just mentioned where Homelander laser-burned a Starlight supporter “It’s a hint of one of our big themes in Season Four, which is society as a whole is fracturing into these two factions and no one’s listening to each other and the threat of violence just gets worse and worse every day,”
‘The Boys’ Spin-Off ?
‘The Boys’ doesn’t seem to be stopping with their own series, rather they are expanding to become their own cinematic universe
Apart from the season 4 of the show, Amazon is already working on The Boys first live-action spinoff called Gen V.
The show will be about a group of supes competing against each other in Godolkin Univeristy School of Crime Fighting funded by Vought to get best placements after graduating.
This indeed sounds quite interesting, surrounding the story around ‘gifted youngsters’ and since the show has a reputation for mocking the superhero genre in a satirical fashion, this might be a stab on X-men and their upstate school for gifted individuals.
This spin-off will feature actors like Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Lizze Broadway and others as well.
They announced the show through a video shared from The Boys official social media account.
Lizze Broadway says “It’s gonna be a rollercoaster,” in the clip where Chance Perdomo adds “It’s gonna be filled with blood, guts and everything else. It’s f*cked up. You’re gonna like it.”
So far we also know that Sean Patrick Thomas, who voiced the character Polarity in animated series spin-off The Boys Presents: Diabolical, is also going to appear in this series as well.
We are also going to see other cast members such as Shelly Conn, London Thor, Patrick Schwarzeneggar, Marco Pigossi, Maddie Phillips, Asa Germann and Derek Luh.
If you read the official logline of the show, it is a irreverent R-rated series from the world of ‘The Boys’ exploring the lives of competitive, hormonal young supes as they go on to put their physical, sexual and moral boundearies to the test to get the best contracts of the city.
The show seems to be part-college superhero drama part ‘Hunger Games’ with all the gore, grit, humor, satire, raunch and hear of the ‘The Boys’.
Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas will be the showrunners behind the show as well as the executive producers.
Erick Kripke was also asked about whether these both shows have a cross-over which, he gave a positive response to Deadline, saying “There’s definitely crossover, and we’re doing our best to design a universe that sees some of the issues and storylines in Season Three hand off to the first season in Varsity [now Gen V].”
He further added “Like there’s a presidential campaign happening in the background of that season, and there’s certain things that are happening at that school that are both in reaction to Season 3 of The Boys. There’s Soldier Boy, etcetera, but also some new storylines that are happening in that season of the spinoff that we have to pick up and take into Season 4 of the show.”
The production of this series is going to start in May where perhaps the release date might be sometime around 2023.
Sources: Eric Kripke Twitter | Antony Starr Twitter | Jack Quaid Twitter | ‘The Boys’ Twitter | Variety | ‘The Boys’ Instagram | Entertainment Weekly | The Hollywood Reporter | Deadline
Featured Image Source: VEJA