As fans await word on the release date of the fifth and final season of the hit series The Boys, there’s plenty of superhero/supervillain stories being built around it in the form of spin-offs. One popular spin-off, Gen V, is set to debut its second season on Sept. 17, and the Amazon Prime Video series ended Season 1 with a few cameos from The Boys.
However, the one upcoming show many fans have circled is a prequel to The Boys, called Vought Rising, which features Jensen Ackles reprising his role as Soldier Boy and Aya Cash returning as Stormfront. The show will focus on the early days of Vought, the company behind the creation of Compound V, which gave the duo above, and several others, their superpowers.
While the official release date of Vought Rising hasn’t been set, Ackles recently gave insight into how his character will be quite different from the no-nonsense, straight-shooting Soldier Boy seen in The Boys.
Jensen Ackles Says Soldier Boy Will Have Less ‘Swagger and Gravitas’ in ‘Vought Rising’
Jensen’s character entered The Boys effectively as one of the biggest forces behind Homelander. As he explained during an interview with Variety, Soldier Boy had a “swagger” and “gravitas,” which is something that won’t be quite the same when it comes to Vought Rising.
“Obviously, they’re the same guy, but certainly there’s a lot of life that Soldier Boy has lived when we see him in “The Boys” and when we see him in Season 5,” Ackles said. “How he’s relating to people, the things that are important to him, the things that he’s willing to just slough off, his idea of the life he wants to lead.
“And then going back 70-odd years to see him when he was really starting to get going, I’m able now to deal with the struggles that made him who he became, and you start to see him before he has necessarily the swagger and the gravitas and the life lived of 75 years of being the top dog.”
It’s a great evaluation of his character, and the transition to seeing Soldier Boy in the prequel makes sense. Specifically, the fact that Soldier Boy isn’t exactly the “top dog” who steps into The Boys is a point he spoke more about.
Jensen Ackles Dives Deeper Into Differences Soldier Boy Shows in ‘Vought Rising’
Ackles continued by highlighting that the character in his early stages isn’t the same “tough guy” that fans are used to seeing, which becomes apparent through his relationships and character traits.
“[Vought Rising] predates all that, so I think I’m trying to show a little bit more of an early version of it — not necessarily an innocence to it, but there’s certainly scenes, relationships and character traits that predate how we see him in modern day, and that’s fun to play with,” Ackles said.
“Now, that’s not to say he’s going to be a completely different character and he’s not going to be the tough guy that I think we know and love. That’s there, and we’ll get there quickly, but it is fun to show the origin of how this guy became who he is, and what were the little tricks and little ticks that crafted him into where we see him now.”
From the sound of it, fans of Soldier Boy could be treated to a character with many different traits, depending on how things start in Vought Rising. There were a few clips over the first four seasons of The Boys that flashed back to Soldier Boy’s early years, so it’ll be interesting to see if they build off that or simply hit the reset on how the character’s personality comes across.
Related: ‘The Boys’ Star Jensen Ackles Breaks Silence on Potential Batman Role
