The Boys Is Switching Main Characters For The Second Time Next Year

Published Sep 19, 2026, 12:01 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

A couple of months ago, The Boys ended — not with a bang, but with a whimper. The entire final season was painfully underwhelming; it kept spinning the wheels, promising us that all the payoffs were right around the corner, and then it procrastinated all those payoffs until the series finale. The climactic showdown between Billy Butcher and a depowered Homelander was extremely cathartic (it’s always fun to watch a bully get bullied), but the Boys’ last stand against the Seven was nowhere near as epic and explosive as it was hyped up to be. The scorched earth we were promised turned out to be more of a scorched carpet as the whole final fight was confined to the Oval Office.

The ending of The Boys turned out to be pretty lackluster, but at least it’s over now, and it can’t hurt us anymore. Well, not quite. Just because The Boys is over, it doesn’t mean The Boys is over. Just like they’ve done with Bosch and Reacher and The Terminal List, Amazon is expanding The Boys into a shared cinematic universe with prequels and sequels and spinoffs.

The difference with The Boys is that overstuffed cinematic universes are the thing it was designed to spoof. The Boys started out mocking the oversaturation of sprawling superhero franchises like the MCU and the DCU. The show used its in-universe superhero studio, Vought Studios, to satirize Marvel’s formulaic storytelling, greenscreen cinematography, and penchant for announcing a dozen projects at once. But now, The Boys itself has multiple projects in the works, lined up for years in the future. Just because they’re not calling it a “phase,” it doesn’t make them any less audacious than Kevin Feige.

While The Boys was still on the air, Prime Video premiered The Boys Presents: Diabolical — a near-flawless anthology series telling different stories in The Boys universe with different writers and animation styles — and Gen V, a college-set spinoff exploring this world through the eyes of young-adult supes being trained by Vought. Where Marvel and DC have been wildly hit-and-miss, The Boys has delivered nothing but hits (so far).

But now that The Boys is over, Amazon is going gung-ho on more spinoffs. Gen V was cancelled after two seasons, and Diabolical was a one-off, but The Boys universe will return in 2027 with the release of Vought Rising. Prime is also developing a Boys spinoff set in Mexico, starring Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, and there are other spinoffs in various stages of development that have yet to be announced.

Soldier Boy Will Be The Boys' Third Main Character

When the flagship show premiered in 2019, it introduced a massive ensemble of superheroes and supervillains: the Seven, a Justice League-style superhero team comprised of sociopaths and sycophants, and the Boys, a plucky anti-supe vigilante squad dedicated to bringing them down. When the franchise premiered its first spinoff, Gen V, in 2023, it pivoted to a brand-new cast of characters, specifically focused on young blood-bender Marie Moreau. In 2027, when Amazon premieres Vought Rising, it’ll pivot to yet another main character: Soldier Boy.

Set in the 1950s, Vought Rising will explore the dark origins of Vought through the lens of a twisted murder mystery. Jensen Ackles is reprising his role as Soldier Boy, and Aya Cash is returning as Stormfront. Arguably, The Boys already pivoted to Soldier Boy as its new main character. Soldier Boy got an inordinate amount of screen time in The Boys’ final season, mostly setting up his spinoff with references to his past and his relationship with Stormfront.

“What Clara would’ve wanted” became a meme, because it was such an absurd left turn. It makes sense in the context of Amazon setting up its next Boys spinoff, but they shouldn’t have gotten ahead of themselves; maybe finish this candy bar before opening another.

Gen V Proves The Boys Can Successfully Change Main Characters

Although it stumbled in the back end of its second season, Gen V proved that The Boys can successfully switch its main characters. No one else on television is quite as compelling as Antony Starr’s Homelander, but Marie proved to be a great protagonist. She was likable and relatable, but not without her flaws; Jaz Sinclair brought real depth and nuance to the character. The success of some franchises is intrinsically tied to their main character; Bourne and John Wick both crashed and burned when they tried to do a TV spinoff without Jason Bourne or John Wick.

But the appeal of The Boys is this gruesome, X-rated world, putting a depraved spin on the familiar tropes of Marvel and DC superhero comics, and you can do that with any character. Gen V looked at this world through a Y.A. lens, showing the messy lives of the college kids who have grown up in it; Vought Rising is going back to the ‘50s to explore this world in a totally different time period; and The Boys: Mexico will take us across the border to see how other nations are affected by the proliferation of psychopathic superheroes.

Who Was The Boys' First Main Character? Butcher, Hughie, Or Homelander?

While Marie was the undeniable star of Gen V, and Soldier Boy is front and center in the marketing for Vought Rising, The Boys never had one clear main character. Hughie was the audience surrogate — the fish out of water being introduced into this world at the same rate we were — but the central conflict of the series was the intense feud between Butcher and Homelander. Butcher was definitely on the right side of that feud, but he was far from a hero.

In the beginning, The Boys had three main perspective characters in Hughie, Butcher, and Homelander. But as the series went on, and it became clear that Homelander was the best and most popular character in the show, he started getting more focus and more screen time. Throughout the series, Homelander became a 1:1 avatar of Donald Trump, and the show as a whole became a broad political satire. By the end of The Boys, Homelander was the undeniable main character. In season 1, it was a three-hander, but by season 5, it was a one-hander.