When it comes to superhero parody and deconstruction, the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys is one of the most incisive and darkly comedic. If there's one weak point of the show's critique of the superhero craze, it's the fact that it's aimed at DC's output and Marvel has gotten off easy, at least until now.
Season three of The Boys is primed to drop a handful of new supes for the series' actual heroes to face off against. Perhaps the biggest new face or at least the one portrayed by the most recognizable actor is Soldier Boy.
In Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys comic series, Soldier Boy is an extremely minor character. He has no real name, no notable backstory, accomplishes almost nothing, and exists primarily to be violently dispatched. The comics reveal the Soldier Boy label to be a title that's passed down from one hero to the next, the one who appears in the ongoing plot of the comics is the third. Not much is known about the second Soldier Boy, but the first was an inept World War II marketing symbol whose malicious self-promotion led to the slaughter of his team.
The same tremendous failure also led to the death of many American soldiers, leading Colonel Mallory to kill him with a hand grenade. The third Soldier Boy is introduced in issue #32 and his funeral occurs in issue #39. With that pathetic pedigree behind him, it's surprising the show would waste a Supernatural star or a starring role in the trailers on him. This is likely because the version of Soldier Boy that will appear in the show will likely differ greatly from the comics' take on the character.
As everyone can tell by looking at him, Soldier Boy is a mean-spirited parody of Marvel's Captain America. Just like most of The Boys' takes on the superheroes they take shots at, most of his character traits are deliberate reversals of the original source material. So while Captain America is brave, righteous, and good-natured, Soldier Boy is gullible, obsessed with prestige, and overwhelmingly cowardly. Steve Rogers' boy scout-like good nature is heightened to a point of naive innocence. The main thing Soldier Boy does on the page is suck up to bigger heroes. He wants nothing more than to be made part of The Seven, and Homelander is more than willing to use that to his benefit. After being strung along by the number one hero, Soldier Boy is captured alive by Billy Butcher and viciously tortured for information. He dies off-screen, his final appearance marked by his disfigured face.
Jensen Ackles probably will not be in any way recognizable to fans of the comics. On top of looking different, the TV version of The Boys tends to focus its parodies on the big-screen version of the heroes. So Ackles' Soldier Boy will likely mirror the MCU's take on Cap in many ways. Fans only know so much about this upcoming version of the character. For one thing, he, like Stormfront, is old enough to have served the US in World War II. Rather than being the third version of the character, he will likely be one hero who has lived for decades. Or, perhaps the series intends to play Ackles' Soldier Boy straight until revealing the twist that he's just a pretender to the title. This take on the character is being sold as the predecessor to Homelander, rather than a pathetic subordinate to him.
If the show intends to adapt Soldier Boy as he was in the comics, he won't play a particularly large role in the story. However, the series seems to be setting up their version of The Avengers, known as Payback, as the next big thing. The Seven is undergoing a rough time in the series' continuity, so perhaps Payback is being brought out of retirement to fill the hole in Vought's profit projections. Soldier Boy is typically the leader of the group, so his role in the show will be very significant on top of that group. As an old top hero amongst Vought's stable, Soldier Boy could be a hero bad enough to unseat Homelander from his throne as the most hateable supe.
With The Boys taking aim at the MCU, Payback could stand as the most incisive comedic take on the media empire. Soldier Boy seems aimed to be an escalation for the series, less omnipotent than Homelander, but more notoriously horrific. Of course, the series could still be propping him up to be a fun bait and switch to catch viewers who aren't familiar with the comics off guard. Whether they intend to make Soldier Boy a dumb morally bankrupt coward or a proficient monster, he's set up to be one of the big new threats for The Boys season three.