The disappointing fifth and final season of The Boys suffered from a myriad of problems. According to creator Eric Kripke, one issue was that the series was just too darn timely. How could he have guessed that the absolutely absurd moment when Homelander has a gaudy vision that convinces him he is God would be trumped by the President sharing an AI image of himself as the divine?
The first trailer for The Boys prequel series Vought Rising seems to promise a series devoid of such issues. The show goes all the way back to 1950, and seems to present a younger, more earnest Soldier Boy (still played by a 48-year-old Jensen Ackles), who truly wants to serve the flag instead of himself. Injected with Compound V, Soldier Boy joins Bombsight (Mason Dye), Torpedo (Will Hochman), and Private Angel (Elizabeth Posey). But as anyone who has seen The Boys knows that Soldier Boy’s real partner is Clara Vought, played by a returning Aya Cash.
The Vought Rising trailer mostly concerns itself with superheroes, blood-splatter, and ironic needle-drops, the sort of thing you’d expect from a spinoff of The Boys. But the trailer hints at the show’s plans to turn the franchise’s satirical eye toward the greatest generation.
The current president was only a four-year-old at the time, but the odious worldview that drove his administration and has been mocked on The Boys was certainly present at the time—and not just among the Nazis. Racism, eugenic theories, and work camps for those deemed lesser are all part of American policies.
The Boys has previously gestured at the similarities between American idealism and Nazism, most obviously in the reveal that Clara Vought was Klara Risinger, wife of Nazi geneticist and inventor of Compound V, Frederick Vought. Frederick gave his wife the compound, and when they immigrated to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip, Clara became the patriotic superhero Liberty. After her racist crimes were exposed, Liberty went into hiding, only to reemerge decades later as Stormfront, using a codename derived from white supremacist jargon.
By looking at the Eisenhower Era, Vought Rising allows The Boys to remind viewers that the problems of the present day aren’t new, that even in its best moments, the U.S. flirts with fascism and authoritarianism.
The trailer hints at another way Vought Rising will critique America’s past, by following the perspective of Black characters. Although we don’t get much about KiKi Layne’s character, other than her connection to Soldier Boy, we do see a character played by Jorden Myrie getting injected with Compound V and gaining superpowers.
Surely, Myrie’s character will be involved in this universe’s version of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and other forms of medical apartheid in the United States, in which American scientists performed experiments on Black people. Not only will this plot point allow the series to draw stronger connections between the United States and Nazi Germany, but also explore a different side of the American superhero myth.
Unless some historian releases a new book that totally changes the way we think about the 1950s, Kripke won’t have to worry about the news one-upping the stories in Vought Rising. Instead, he’ll just have to worry about the greatest threat with any Boys series: people who don’t get the joke, and refuse to learn the lessons of the satires.
Vought Rising streams on Prime Video in 2027.
