The Boys Season 3 Trailer Breakdown: The Boys Aren't Alright

The world's wildest and meanest superhero satire series has returned — "The Boys" are back, baby! The Prime Video series about the crew of vigilante anti-supes who challenge Vought Industries and their superhero squad the Seven, is returning for a third season on June 3, 2022, and they've released another brand-new trailer to get fans psyched for more caped carnage.

The first full-length red band trailer that dropped in March gave us some pretty big clues about the upcoming season's tone and some of its big plot points, but the new one offers a slightly different and more Butcher and Homelander-centric look at things. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Homelander (Antony Starr) have always been a fascinating duo because they're often surprisingly alike despite being bitter enemies, and season 3 looks like it's going to explore that in even more depth. Butcher probably knows better than anyone that you either "die a hero or live long enough to become a villain," and he's been headed the way of the villain for two seasons now. 

Let's dig deep into that trailer and break down all of the fun little tidbits that might make season 3 the best season of "The Boys" yet. 

The trailer opens with Homelander visiting his old buddy Cameron Coleman (Matthew Edison) from Vought News Networks' "Seven on 7," the faux-Fox News channel that exists in the world of "The Boys." He explains that although he's a superhero, he's also "just a man who fell in love with the wrong woman."

He's talking about Stormfront (Aya Cash), Vought's former wife who turned out to be a Nazi. She ended up getting stomped by Queen Maeve (‎Dominique McElligott), Starlight (Erin Moriarty), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and then burned to a crisp by Homelander's son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) when she attacked the boy's mother. Stormfront is currently in a detention center somewhere, according to one of the "Seven on 7" teaser segments, and it appears that Homelander is going on every possible media network to disavow his involvement with her. He's a terrifying fascist, but even he draws the line at Nazis, apparently. He promises that "out of crisis comes change" and explains that he spent the last year working on himself, and he can't wait for everyone to meet the "real" Homelander. 

Following Homelander's declaration, we hear a voice-over from Starlight, who says "There's something wrong with Homelander."

One look into those bloodshot baby blues is enough to convince anyone she's right, as Homelander looks absolutely unhinged staring directly into the camera. "There's something... broken," she continues. "He's lost his f***ing mind."

Starlight has been around Homelander for quite awhile now and knew what the baseline level of insanity was, so if she says he's lost it, he's really lost it. We know that being betrayed by Stormfront and then seeing her get charred like a brisket didn't exactly help his fragile ego, but it seems like he's gotten even more deranged in the year since we've seen him last. 

Homelander's lactophilia has been well documented by the series, and apparently heartbreak hasn't stopped his intense milk fetish. You would think the character named Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso) would be the one with the udderly unusual perversion but it's actually Homelander, who just really loves making sure he gets all of his calcium and vitamin D. Where are our "Got Milk?" ads, Vought? 

It's worth noting that the first "The Boys" season 3 trailer was flagged for content more than 20 million times. This shot was in both trailers, and will probably be flagged by at least one over-zealous suburban mom who doesn't understand that we don't kinkshame, even if the kinky person is a megalomaniac murderer. The milk thing is fine, the murder isn't!

Next we see Homelander lying on what looks like a hospital bed, tenderly touching an old, dried blood stain. If I were to guess, that's probably Stormfront's blood he's staring at like a total creep, because she was the first woman besides Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) to ever show him affection. Homelander is a product of his traumatic life as much as anyone, and losing the first person who ever seemed to love him is going to do a whopper on his already warped mind.

One of the best things about "The Boys" is that it offers an explanation as to how these evil characters got so wicked, and highlights the fact that good and evil are not a simple binary. There are moments where Homelander deserves empathy, just like Butcher, though the series wisely never lets either of them off the hook for their bad behavior. 

One thing Butcher has done that redeems him a bit is his promise to take care of Ryan. The boy is technically not his son, but was conceived when Homelander raped Butcher's late wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten). Becca tragically died at the end of season 2, attacked by Stormfront and then accidentally killed when Ryan tried to defend his mother by blasting Stormfront away with his laser vision. Homelander blamed Ryan for Becca's death, but Butcher promised her that he would protect and take care of Ryan for her, and it appears that he's doing just that. He can be kind of a jerk sometimes, but it's clear that Butcher cares.

Ryan is the first "natural born" supe, inheriting his powers from Homelander instead of being injected with Compound V, and his upbringing will likely help shape the future of superhero-human relations. We also find out that Butcher is working for Hughie (Jack Quaid) and the Federal Bureau of Superhuman affairs, and that he's given up drinking, fighting, and vigilante justice ... for now, anyway. 

Speaking of fatherhood, Mother's Milk has finally reunited with his family, and it looks like his daughter Janine is celebrating her 10th birthday in superhero style. It has to be weird for Mother's Milk to see his daughter celebrate the very caped chuckleheads he fights regularly, but he seems okay with pretending for her sake. Janine is dressed as Starlight and has a whole The Seven-themed party, complete with a creepy cartoon Homelander in the background. Hopefully Mother's Milk can get some quality time in with his family before going back to work with Butcher fighting supes, because this is the first time we've seen him look happy. 

Giancarlo Esposito has made a career out of playing brilliant businessmen who also happen to be totally evil, in part because he finds some way to connect with them. Stan Edgar is another of his corrupt CEO's, the man in charge of Vought International. He was the kind of man who could even scare Stillwell a bit, and he's only human. We see him talking to Starlight in an office, explaining that real power isn't just being able to shoot beams out of your hands, but something much more. Real power, he says, is "the ability to bend the world to your will." 

That's a power that we know Edgar has, because Vought is one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and much like our own reality, corporations control everything. Even with superpowers, capitalism wins, apparently. 

There was a shot in the previous trailer of Homelander discovering that much of his fan base didn't abandon him after the events with Stormfront. In fact, some seem to support him even more than ever, and it's worth nothing that they are almost exclusively white men in trucker hats and American flag gear. His comments about showing the world "the real me" seem even scarier in light of this fandom, who will follow him in potentially catastrophic ways.

There are still a handful of Stormfront supporters still out there according to "Seven on 7," and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see Homelander picking up where she left off and uniting the two folds of fascists. The horned-Viking guy from the January 6 insurrection is even there, bleeding the commentary eerily close to our reality. Oh well, at least they don't have tiki torches. 

One of the most hotly anticipated parts of season 3 is the introduction of Soldier Boy, played by Jensen Ackles. The character comes directly from the comics written by Garth Ennis, though the writers of the series made some pretty big changes in order to translate him to television. Soldier Boy was one of Vought's first superheroes, and he's a riff on Captain America the way Homelander is a riff on Superman. Fans expecting Ackles to play a hero are going to probably be sorely disappointed, as Soldier Boy is as morally ambiguous as the rest of the supes and probably won't be doing anything all that heroic. The good news is, no matter what he's doing, he'll look good doing it. 

There's a shot of some Vought paperwork, with a memo about Raymond Patriarca and anti-racketeering, along with a photo of what looks like Soldier Boy in his old costume. Patriarca was a real-life gangster, the leader of the Patriarca crime family in Rhode Island. It's impossible to know the exact connection between the two, but maybe Vought had something to do with his arrest? Some of the notes are redacted, so whatever this is, it's highly sensitive and the folks at Vought don't want the information getting out. 

We already knew Butcher would be playing with powers somehow this season, as his laser eyes were revealed in previous trailers, but now we have a bit more information. There's a quick sequence with Maeve giving Butcher some small green vials that look a lot like Compound V. She explains that they will make someone a supe for 24 hours, and we see Butcher inject himself.

Maeve suggests that they use it to "blow Homelander's f***ing brains out," which means she's working with Butcher and The Boys, at least to some degree. Butcher seems like he's having a good bit of fun and says he's finally "leveled the playing field," but Mother's Milk rightly points out that it flies in the face of their entire ethos: "No one should have that kind of power." 

As if to demonstrate exactly what Mother's Milk is talking about, we see a shot of a building that's been absolutely decimated by something. There's a quick shot of a scruffy-looking Soldier Boy immediately beforehand, so it's possible that this is his doing. Who or whatever did this has some serious power, because it looks like a bomb went off. Hughie and Butcher are there, staring at the rubble, so hopefully there aren't any victims we know inside. 

Another character being introduced this season is Crimson Countess, played by Laurie Holden. She is another of the early-era supes, and we see her in the same retro-tinted military encampment that we spotted Soldier Boy and his rocket launcher in earlier. She uses her powers to turn two fleeing soldiers into piles of meat and blood, which is both kind of cool and extremely gross.

Fans were promised that season 3 would show the history of Vought in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, so there's no telling exactly when this takes place. It could be the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or potentially some imaginary conflict, but regardless of who she's fighting, it looks like Crimson Countess wins. 

There are a bunch of quick cuts with footage we've already seen in previous trailers, but I would be remiss if I didn't include a shot of Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Kimiko doing some kind of musical number in a hospital. I would watch three hours of these two singing and dancing about their feelings, so I'm stoked to see whatever is going on here. 

Mixed in with the many quick shots is one new piece of footage, featuring a costumed supe with bug wings running as fast as he can through some jungle ruins while yelling "f*** f*** f***!" Someone in the background clearly didn't get out of the way in time, so it's hard to blame the winged fellow for his profanity or hauling his butt out of there. 

The final shot of the trailer is of Jensen Ackles with long hair and a beard, looking angry and scary. It's the exact same shot that they used at the end of the previous red-band trailer, but who can blame them? Soldier Boy is a big draw for this season, and Ackles fans are fervent. Here's hoping he shows up at Herogasm, for thirst's sake. 

"The Boys" season 3 premieres on Prime Video on June 3, 2022.