“It’s Captain America on his a–,” says Ackles. “It’s as if Captain America gave up superheroism and was just your drunk and inappropriate uncle.” More than that, this super-soldier emits toxic masculinity like it’s exhaust — another concept at the forefront of season 3. “It’s mind-blowing how the most powerful white dudes in the world are the ones that are first to claim that they’re being victimized and disenfranchised and persecuted,” Kripke elaborates. “We’re trying to call attention to what bulls— that is.”
Ackles recalls how Kripke would actively try to push the limits of what you could show on screen during their days working on the WB/CW’s Supernatural. The showrunner felt like a caged lion at the time — or at least a lion caged by Standards and Practices censors. To some extent, Ackles knew what he was getting into when, after Supernatural’s conclusion in 2020, the pair decided to work together again on The Boys, this time with the narrative liberties that come with making a show for a subscription streaming platform. Still, Kripke managed to push the actor to the edge.
Ackles was game for just about everything season 3 had to throw at him, except for one part of the Soldier Boy arc. The actor called up Kripke after reading the scripts and, based on the pair’s accounts of that call, the conversation went something like this: “As a father of three, and a son and a husband and a self-respecting human being, I can’t do this. I didn’t know where my line was, but you found it.” For now, they both decline to say what this scene entailed exactly, but Kripke admits to laughing when he got Ackles’ call. Not that he found the situation funny. It was more the thought that maybe they had finally pushed the TV limits too far. “We worked out a compromise where I got what I needed without him destroying his soul,” Kripke says.
Urban sees it as a good sign: “When Jensen Ackles is making calls like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ that’s when you know you’re in the right place.” It’s clear the cast has a lot of faith in Kripke’s vision. When he asks someone to climb into a dead whale carcass, the reply would likely be, “In what shoes?” So, when it was finally time to adapt something that faithful fans of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original The Boys comics have been waiting years to see realized, everyone was on board.
