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beaudeanw · 3 years

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Soldier Boy- What can we expect?

- Possible spoilers ahead

Gif credit : @justjensenanddean

The Boys S3 will have Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy - A Captain America-esque Supe, also known as the original superhero.

In the comic books, there are three versions of Soldier Boy. Ackles will be playing the first one. According to Eric Kripke, Soldier Boy is like the Homelander before Homelander. He has a similar kind of ambition & ego. It will just come in a different way.

He was a leader of the Team Payback - a Parody of The Avengers.

In the show, Soldier boy was the only one to ever exist.

Soldier Boy as a Character

As said above, Soldier Boy is touted to be very powerful. His powers are almost on the same level as Homelander.

According to a recent q&a with Kripke, he mentioned that Homelander will be threatened by Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy is said to be very Charming and Funny.

He will have this charisma that attracts the public towards him. As mentioned in the first episode of The Boys Season 2, Soldier Boy killed Nazis by a huge amount and he helped the Allies win the World War 2 against Germany. After that he went on to become a movie star and a huge mainstay of American culture.

During the course of S2 we saw some Easter eggs like his movie posters on the wall. Kripke compared his character to somewhat like John Wayne. If you google search John Wayne, you will get to know that he was conservative, racist, homophobic etc. John Wayne although famous for playing Soldiers in cinema, never served in WW2. He also had a complicated relationship with women.

Soldier Boy might take some similar route considering the fact that he is in fact from the 1940s. The q&a mentioned that he will be involved in a lot of Sex, Violence & Swears. Needless to say, soldier boy can totally be a. One of the 2018 tweets of Kripke said that Soldier Boy was involved in drugs & stuff. This might also be a part of his personality.

Since it's also said to be a parody of Cap America, Soldier Boy a complete anti-thesis of what former stands for. Cap America is sort of a moral, altruistic, kind & good superhero. Soldier Boy might be completely opposite. That he has no shame in hurting people & possesses no morals in order to get his work done & his ambition fulfilled. He can be the reason for the war crimes that America did after the WW2.

How the character might fit in S3

Now The Boys Season 2 ended with Stormfront becoming Stump-front. We have Homelander who got blackmailed by Queen Maeve with the footage from the airplane back from S1. We have Starlight & A- Train back in the Seven. However, the most important part is how both Vought & Homelander are completely screwed in the public eye. As we know in S2, Homelander was getting boo-ed by the public for indulging in war crimes. Now Stormfront's Nazi reveal should have some serious repercussions. The public people might boycott Vought because of their alleged ties with a literal Nazi. Homelander might not get the same love & respect in the public because he had love affair with her. We also have a Federal Bureau of Supe Affairs to keep Vought into check by Victoria Neumann, who is also a supe but thats not the point. The point is Vought needs a good PR to get themselves out of this mess.

Enter- Soldier Boy

Now there is a common theory that Vought must have kept him in some kind of facility & have him trapped. This is a very good possibility since that will mean that he is basically has no idea about the modern world. During S2 we saw a statue of Soldier Boy which showed that he sort of died in the 80s. So it will be interesting to see how Vought brings Soldier Boy back in the public eye.

Now Soldier Boy coming back to Vought can help them with Good PR. I mean who better than a Supe who killed Nazis in WW2 can help Vought clean up the Nazi shitstorm. He is the golden boy of patriotism. He is like a blue print of how they wanted Homelander to be when they created him the lab.

Another common theory that spread which was also kind of agreed by Laz Alonso, the actor who plays Mother's milk said that only his character until now never had something personal against a supe. We also learnt sort of MM's backstory in S2 which mentioned his father working against Vought & how he fought until he died. We have an idea that there is a possibility that both Soldier Boy & his father might have existed at the same point & SB might have something to do with his dad.

This can also be the reason why he vanished in the 80s & Vought lied about his death.

This also makes sense because at the end of S2, we saw all the members of The Boys seperated. One of the major reasons why they come back together is to help MM. I mean MM has been kind of a backbone keeping all of them together. A moral conscience. He is a good friend of all. So if he is in problem, the boys will come back together to help him for a change.

I am pretty sure that with Soldier Boy we will get to learn a lot about the dirty past of Vought & metaphorically, America.

Soldier Boy and Homelander

So first of all, Ackles' Soldier Boy & Homelander didn't have any sort of sexual relations. What happened in the comics was a sexual assault. That was Solder Boy #3. That character was a bumbling idiot, subservient to Homelander who got manipulated by him. It's also not logical for the show to have that kind of relationship of SB & HL. Homelander doesn't have that kink that is shown in the comics. Also, soldier boy in the show looks like has a dominating personality as opposed to of an idiot.

What Ackles is playing is Soldier Boy #1, the one fought in WW2 & as mentioned above, he is the only one to ever exist in the world of TV Show.

However, both of these characters have a lot of similarities. They are both powerful, egotistical, narcissistic, pathetic male superheroes. The difference is the situations they will be in. Homelander is currently in a problematic situation as his issue with wanting validation are bare open. He is emotionally at its weakest point. He wants to be loved. He longs for validation from the public which Maeve uses to threaten him. As he was made in a lab, he didn't have a normal childhood. He didn't have friends or anything. However, Soldier Boy was given Compound V when he was an adult. That means he might not require the same kind of validation. He is a very self-assured man. Also, since he was around in public life for decades, he has received love for years. So he not only he is physically strong, he might be emotionally capable against Homelander.

S3 might create a problem of Power Struggle.

Homelander might struggle to keep his head strong & possibly be threatened by Soldier Boy. Since the latter seems very confident, he might be able to take his position in Vought back. In the S2 premiere, we get to see how Homelander thinks of himself as indispensable for Vought as a company & how Stan Edgar shuts him down. Now think about how Homelander will react when Vought's original golden boy comes back & takes his what he thinks is his. There is a power struggle here. It's likely that Soldier Boy might corner him because of how popular he is in the public and how Homelander wants that same love that SB is getting. S3 might present a situation in front of him when a supe who might almost be as powerful as him & emotionally stronger than him kind of threatens both his power and position.

Soldier Boy and Stormfront

Speaking of Stormfront, Eric Kripke mentioned in a TV guide article that Soldier Boy had a connection with her when she was Liberty. Now both of them were created at the same time by the same man. Liberty was married to Frederick Vought but he then joined the Allies & injected Soldier Boy with Compound V. Now they are basically two sides of the same coin.

Some of this is from articles with Kripke's description of the character, some of them are common theories that have floated around & some of it is my predictions about what direction the character's storyline can take. This is majorly based on everything I have read, heard or watched. It doesn't mean that any of it will turn out the way it's written here. But I still hope this is helpful.

Anyway, I am very excited to see Jensen in this new role. I know he will rock it and I can't wait.

Some Articles I took into consideration -

#soldier boy #jensen ackles #the boys #the boys s3 #the boys tv #the boys amazon #Homelander #Stormfront #vought #solider boy #antony starr #aya cash #eric kripke

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hotdadslade · 5 years

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Pennyworth Impressions

So I have seen more or less nothing about Pennyworth, and it’s little wonder why. It was released episodically on a channel/streaming platform no one I’d spoken to had ever heard of, with zero fanfare, and what marketing there was seemed to exclusively focus around ‘it’s about Batman’s Butler’.

So, first things first: Pennyworth is an alt history story with a young Alfred Pennyworth as the main character. That ‘alt history’ bit is important, but is in absolutely NONE of the promotional material I saw. Specifically, the story takes place in probably-the-60s, only it’s a vaguely dystopian world: people are executed publicly, there’s bodies in gibbets hanging around London, etcetc. I’ve seen a lot of people saying they’re not interested because... well, what’s so interesting about this kind of prequel? You already know what’s going to happen.

The actual plot is only barely about how Alfred meets the Waynes. The real plot is about political squabbling between two groups, the Raven Society and the No Name League, who are both secret societies which later become political parties, and they’re pushing England towards a full on civil war. Alfred gets involved on both sides, things get fucky, you know the deal.

That said, I’ve got four big points about the show for anyone interested so far.

One: This show is VERY gory. Not as bad as Swamp thing (which was some top-class body horror), but we’ve got torture, mutilation, heads blown off, etc... All shown with some pretty extreme detail. It is downright gratuitous at times and as someone who’s not a huge fan of gore I had to look away quite a bit. There’s also at least one rape, lots of animal dismemberment, cannibalism... You name it. If you have any sort of content you’re worried about, it’s probably in there.

Two: This show does nothing with the DC license, and seems to actively be made worse by it. The only named characters from the comics are Alfred, Martha, and Thomas. You’ll spend more time wondering how things connect to the characters they’re named after then making any actual connections, such as the reveal that Thomas Wayne has a sister and that he works for the CIA. Nothing really connects back and this would honestly have been a better story if it was just billed as a standard alt history political drama, because then I wouldn’t have spent all my time wondering wtf is going on.

Three: This show is, in theory, a political drama. That’s what it’s trying to be. However it has almost nothing to say about politics and the way it portrays politics is a bit... tone deaf. The fact that one side is described repeatedly (even by their own people) as fascists who are willing to engage in everything up to and including assassination and suicide bombing while the other side are socialists who... might be willing to kill a mass murderer - but are depicted as being on the same level is kind of surreal. All the sides are terrible yet the impression I got while watching is that we’re supposed to be cheering for the old guard (the Queen and Prime Minister) who are also terrible.

For a show almost entirely about two secret societies with opposing political views, the show doesn’t say anything about them, and keeping them all straight is... difficult. Alfred himself is almost staunchly apolitical, refusing to take sides, but considering one side is running around with women’s heads in jars while the other side is guilty of... trying to stop the other side... it kind of falls into the ‘not making a choice is a choice in itself’ category.

Four: The show has no idea what it’s doing.

There’s no nice way to say this, so I’ll be direct. There is a plot. There’s a story here. But that story is wandering and meandering in the most bizarre way. The first episode is astounding. Great character moments, fantastic world building, and it works almost as a standalone movie in its own right.

But every episode after that the plot gets more and more muddled. The characters wander around doing their own thing and only really come together at the end. A character who we should absolutely hate because he’s a complete fucking monster gets a multi-episode recovery arc to make him sympathetic, only for him to toss it away at the last minute.

The best example I can think of this comes midway through the series, and I’m going to go right on ahead and spoil it so I’ll drop it under the cut.

Midway through the season, Thomas needs to go out and do something to keep the show’s main plot going on. However, his drug addict sister, Patricia, has shown up at his hotel room, and he needs to make sure someone keeps an eye on her while he’s gone. He gets Martha to do this. Martha, for some reason I do not understand in the slightest, both says yes and then immediately agrees to go to a party with Patricia.

They then attend a bizarre party at the satanist Aleister Crowley’s house. It is vaguely implied that Martha might have been drugged, but left unclear. The party devolves into an orgy, and Martha repeatedly attempts to leave only to find herself back in the main room. The last time she does this she returns to find the room silent, with everyone staring at her, and she carefully walks across the room to be faced with the devil, featuring a goat head and six creepy eyes.

The scene cuts and we go back to Alfred’s stuff which seems absolutely inconsequential in the face of this bizarre reveal in what should be the B plot.We don’t pick this plot thread up again until the end of the episode, when Martha wakes up completely naked in a field.

The next episode establishes that Patricia has not come back, and that Martha has been missing for three whole days. Martha and Thomas investigate, find Patricia happy and healthy with Crowley, and Crowley is VERY intent on making it clear that no, he’s legitimate, he actually works for the devil. Thomas calls his bluff, insisting on negotiating, and is shown a piece of satanic ritual pornography featuring his sister, which mind controls him into attempting to murder Crowley’s assistant. He’s traumatized and more or less flees the building. At this point, Martha strongly implies that something terrible happened, and it is strongly implied she was raped by the devil and may or may not be pregnant or changed by this in some way.

This plot arc is then completely forgotten and effectively never brought up again.

It is so completely out there that my head was actually spinning by the end of the episode, because Pennyworth just established that the devil is real and may have raped Martha and then does absolutely nothing with it. It almost completely forgets about it, and I can’t even remember Patricia coming up again after that point. It was so bizarrely out of place that going back to it’s usual thriller political drama stuff felt completely wrong. If this was supposed to be a season two tie-in, they did a terrible job of it, because all I could think watching the last few episodes were ‘why do I care about this when the devil’s running around London’.

Overall, Pennyworth was a show with no clear direction and no idea of what it wanted to be. It didn’t use it’s license, it overly relied on shock value, and while there was some fantastic acting, it didn’t save the fact that the plot was all over the damned place. While it had some fun moments, I’d say most of those moments were at the very start and the very end. If you’re interested, I’d say the first three episodes (available for free on amazon) are pretty enjoyable as a standalone set, but I wouldn’t bother with the rest. If it gets a S2 (which so far seems unlikely), I’m not even sure I’ll go back to it.

#pennyworth #alfred pennyworth

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