Soldier Boy is the name of three superhero characters in the comic book series Herogasm and The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. The first character introduced (but the third Soldier Boy in the timeline, with his two predecessors having died) is the elected leader of the Vought-American-sponsored superhero team Payback. He is depicted as one of the only "Supes" (i.e. "superpowered" or "superhuman" individuals, often acting as "superheroes") with selfless, benevolent motivations, who detests the use of profanity. However, Soldier Boy annually has sex with Homelander alone at the "Herogasm" orgy, under the mistaken hope that the "test" of doing so will convince Homelander to let him join his own superhero team, The Seven. After his most recent dalliance with Homelander, Soldier Boy is captured by CIA black ops agent Billy Butcher and brutally tortured and murdered by him for information on Homelander's recent activities. The original Soldier Boy is later revealed to have been mercy killed by Mallory during his first mission at the Battle of the Bulge, after his "Avenging Squad" inadvertently caused Mallory's men to be massacred, and been replaced by the second for the remainder of the war.
In the Amazon Prime Video television adaptation, Soldier Boy (Ben) is introduced in the third season, portrayed by Jensen Ackles. A composite character of the comic book characters, this Soldier Boy is depicted as the first American non-aging Supe, created by Frederick Vought during World War II, whom Mother's Milk deems responsible for his family's downfall. A vulgar, arrogant, chauvinistic "bonafide war hero", while working with the CIA during the Cold War as the leader of Payback, Soldier Boy was betrayed to the USSR and experimented on for forty years. He is inadvertently freed by the Boys in the present-day while they were seeking the "superweapon" B.C.L. RED to use to kill Homelander, which in actuality is Soldier Boy himself, who, due to experimentation, can now emit an energy beam from his chest (Big Chest-Laser) which negates the superpowers of any other Supes with whom it comes in contact. It is later revealed that Vought used Soldier Boy's sperm to create Homelander without his knowledge (he was told to provide a sample for research purposes), thus making them father and son. Ackles returned in the 2023 spin-off series Gen V, portraying a Supe's imaginary friend Soldier Boyfriend, modelled after Soldier Boy. The character has received a positive reception.
Contents
Appearances
Comic book series
Soldier Boy is introduced in Herogasm as the "elected" leader of the Vought-American-sponsored superhero team Payback. At the titular annual orgy of Supes, he is said to have had sex with Homelander alone every year out of the belief that he will let him join his own superhero team the Seven (a promise which Homelander has no intention of fulfilling), primarily existing as comic relief. As Homelander is inspired to begin planning a "Supe revolution" against Vought and their puppet rulers in the White House shortly after having sex with him for the most recent time, Soldier Boy remains obliviously standing by Homelander's side as he prepares to announce his plans only for him to be interrupted by the Guy from Vought.
In The Boys arc "The Self-Preservation Society", Soldier Boy participates in Payback's ambush on the Boys, along with the rest of his team. Initially he manages to pin Billy Butcher, the Homelander's archenemy and leader of the Boys, against a wall with his shield. But being inexperienced in real combat, he loses the initiative and eventually the battle, having his nose bitten off by the CIA black ops agent before being beaten unconscious. Later, Butcher brutally beats and tortures him for information on the Homelander and his activities over the next few days, mocking him for having claimed to be the same Soldier Boy who fought in World War II, kept alive by being frozen in suspended animation, an identity he was forced to assume and impersonate by Vought. In the "What I Know" arc, Butcher is revealed to have killed Soldier Boy, with a public funeral being held for him and members of the Seven (including the Homelander) serving as his pallbearers.
In The Boys arc "Barbary Coast", in precedence of telling "Wee Hughie" Campbell about the true sadistic nature of Billy Butcher, Lieutenant Colonel Greg D. Mallory tells him about his own history with Supes, beginning with his captaincy during World War II, when his company was made by government and Vought officials to supervise the "Avenging Squad", a team of the first American-made Supes, led by the first Soldier Boy, during the Battle of the Bulge. While eager to serve, Soldier Boy had little military experience, and ordered the flying members of the team to inspect the area for a Nazi presence, oblivious to the fact that doing so would expose their position. Realizing what Soldier Boy had done, Mallory only had time to give his men a brief warning before the enemy (a nearby Waffen-SS platoon) attacked, massacring both his and Soldier Boy's men. After coming across a mortally wounded Soldier Boy, near-vertically bisected by a blast, in the aftermath, Mallory had then dropped a grenade by his feet before walking away, mercy killing him.
Television series
In the third season of the television series adaptation, Jensen Ackles portrays a composite character based on the various comic book characters known as Soldier Boy, created by Nazi defector Frederick Vought during World War II in 1944, via injections of Compound V into a normal soldier. After being mentioned by Stan Edgar in the 2020 second season as an early test subject for Compound V, represented via a statue, Soldier Boy is said by Marvin T. "MM" Milk in the third season to be responsible for killing his grandfather whilst thwarting a carjacking, motivating his father's decision to "work himself to death" as a lawyer attempting to bring down Vought and causing MM's Obsessive compulsive disorder. Soldier Boy was said to have been killed while preventing a nuclear meltdown during the Cold War. Believing this story to be false and upon learning of the location of a Russian superweapon known as B.C.L. RED said to have actually killed Soldier Boy, Queen Maeve sends Billy Butcher to verify whether it did or not and then retrieve it, both hoping to potentially use the weapon to kill Homelander, the unstable leader of the Seven, due to Vought having equated him and Soldier Boy to have been on a similar to equal power level.
Butcher, after injecting himself with "V24" (a temporary variant of Compound V given to him by Maeve, giving himself temporary superpowers) interrogates and kills Soldier Boy's former sidekick Gunpowder not before learning that Soldier Boy was actually killed during a joint black ops mission between his Supe team Payback and the CIA in Nicaragua in 1984, working against the Sandinistas, under the supervision of Butcher's own mentor Grace Mallory. Confronting Mallory, Butcher learns that the vast majority of her men had been massacred by Russian and Nicaraguan troops in an ambush in 1984 and that while she did see Soldier Boy fight off several soldiers in the subsequent battle, she had been knocked out while avoiding friendly fire from Gunpowder and only learned of Soldier Boy's death upon her awakening caused by an unknown "superweapon" (B.C.L. RED), witnessed by his then-girlfriend Crimson Countess.
Not wanting it publicly known that the Russian government had the capability of killing Supes, President Ronald Reagan had ordered the incident to be covered up with Vought receiving full immunity. In reality, Stan Edgar had orchestrated the whole incident to get rid of Soldier Boy by allowing Payback to betray him as revenge for the physical and mental abuse he had inflicted upon them, with the intention of replacing him with Homelander. The team managed to incapacitate Soldier Boy with Novichok, but not before he burned Black Noir's face and bludgeoned him repeatedly in the head with his shield, leaving Noir with significant brain damage.
Video game
In 2026, Ackles reprised his role as Soldier Boy from the television series in the video game The Boys: Trigger Warning.
Powers and abilities
The character was designed as a parody analogous to Marvel Comics' Captain America, a basic "supersoldier" trained in shield-fighting, who maintains a genuinely patriotic and innocent approach to his role, not realizing the depravity of the Supes around him (never resorting to foul language or joining his team during the "Herogasm" orgies, although he privately has sex with Homelander at each one, believing each encounter to be a "test" for him to join the Seven and leave Payback). He is in the habit of reciting the names of states while engaged in battle. It is claimed he fought in World War II, though Butcher claims otherwise and refers to this story as an insult to the people who really did; Soldier Boy is later revealed to be the third Supe to have taken the mantle, after the first was killed during his first mission and the second fought during the war only to die later.
For the 2022 third season of the television adaptation, Soldier Boy was redesigned by Laura Jean "LJ" Shannon and Greg Hopwood as analogous to both Captain America, Superman, and the Winter Soldier, in particular the former's "Nomad" depiction in the 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Avengers: Infinity War, as portrayed by Chris Evans, with a practical pointed shield for defense and attack. Soldier Boy also possesses the ability to produce radiation that can be released from his chest in beams of energy or explosive burst, that can also fry the Compound V out of a Supe's system, courtesy of Soviet-era experimentation. Soldier Boy is frequently described as being nearly as strong as Homelander, which is proven in the episode "Herogasm", where his superhuman strength and durability rivals that of Homelander, allowing him to fight him almost evenly. Soldier Boy is also shown to be a formidable hand-to-hand combatant as well, as he was able to overpower and defeat Butcher in their brawl when Butcher was empowered by Temp-V.
Development
Addressing Soldier Boy III's sexual relationship with Homelander in the Herogasm comic series, Eric Kripke confirmed that it would not be adapted to the television series adaptation, with Jensen Ackles instead portraying the original World War II-era heterosexual Soldier Boy I introduced in the "Barbary Coast" arc of The Boys. In the show, Soldier Boy survived the war into modern times, having been held prisoner and experimented on in a laboratory, in-and-out of an induced coma, from 1984 to 2022. Prior to Ackles' casting, Kripke intended to "cast an older actor, because we were going for like a grizzled John Wayne sort of vibe", before instead offering Ackles the role. Kripke and Ackles had previously worked together on the first five seasons of The CW's Supernatural. Ackles was also "in contention for a brief time" (although did not audition) for the role of Steve Rogers / Captain America in the 2011 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Captain America: The First Avenger (prior to Chris Evans's casting), a character of which Soldier Boy is a parody; Ackles characterized them as "Captain America on his ass, [and] as if [he] gave up super-heroism and was just your drunk and inappropriate uncle". On the character's relationship with Homelander in the third season of the television series adaptation, Ackles stated that:
"Homelander is the new iteration of Soldier Boy. He's the new kid on the block in Soldier Boy's eyes. Going back to that toxic masculinity: very true to form, one of the first things that ever comes out of Soldier Boy's mouth after he looks at a big poster of Homelander is 'What the fuck?' It's just looking at the world around him, knowing he doesn't fit in and [that] things are different. And there it is, personified in this statuesque red, white and blue superhero. He's not thrilled about that. The relationship is immediately contentious. They have their words."
Reception
The character and Ackles' portrayal in the third season of the television series adaptation have received a positive media reception.
Ackles' cover of Blondie's "Rapture" received additional praise from the band itself, with original singer Debbie Harry describing the rendition as "epic".