Soldier Boy is the name of three superhero characters in the American comic book series Herogasm and The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. The first character introduced (but the third Soldier Boy in the timeline, with his two predecessors having died) is the elected leader of the Vought-American-sponsored superhero team Payback. He is depicted as one of the only "Supes" (i.e. "superpowered" or "superhuman" individuals, often acting as "superheroes") with selfless, benevolent motivations, who detests the use of profanity. However, Soldier Boy annually has sex with Homelander alone at the "Herogasm" orgy, under the mistaken hope that the "test" of doing so will convince Homelander to let him join his own superhero team, The Seven. After his most recent dalliance with Homelander, Soldier Boy is captured by CIA black ops agent Billy Butcher and brutally tortured and murdered by him for information on Homelander's recent activities. The original Soldier Boy is later revealed to have been mercy killed by Mallory during his first mission at the Battle of the Bulge, after his "Avenging Squad" inadvertently caused Mallory's men to be massacred, and been replaced by the second for the remainder of the war.
In the Amazon Prime Video television adaptation, Soldier Boy (Ben) is introduced in the third season, portrayed by Jensen Ackles. A composite character of the comic book characters, this Soldier Boy is depicted as the first American non-aging Supe, created by Frederick Vought during World War II. He is responsible for Mother's Milk's grandfather's death. A vulgar, arrogant, chauvinistic "bonafide war hero", while working with the CIA during the Cold War as the leader of Payback, Soldier Boy was betrayed to the Soviet Union and experimented on for forty years. He is inadvertently freed by the Boys in the present-day while they were seeking the "superweapon" B.C.L. RED to use to kill Homelander, which in actuality is Soldier Boy himself, who, due to experimentation, can now emit an energy beam from his chest (Big Chest-Laser) which negates the superpowers of any other Supes with whom it comes in contact. It is later revealed that Vought used Soldier Boy's sperm to create Homelander without his knowledge (he was told to provide a sample for research purposes), thus making them father and son. Ackles returned in the 2023 spin-off series Gen V, portraying a Supe's imaginary friend Soldier Boyfriend, modelled after Soldier Boy.
Appearances Comic book series Soldier Boy III Soldier Boy is introduced in Herogasm in 2009, created by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns. The character is a legacy hero and the third version of Soldier Boy. He is the "elected" leader of the Vought-American-sponsored superhero team Payback. At the titular annual orgy of Supes, he has had sex with Homelander alone every year out of the belief that he will let him join his own superhero team the Seven (a promise which Homelander has no intention of fulfilling).Herogasm #1 (May 2009) As Homelander is inspired to begin planning a "Supe revolution" against Vought and their puppet rulers in the White House shortly after having sex with him for the most recent time, Soldier Boy remains obliviously standing by Homelander's side as he prepares to announce his plans only for him to be interrupted by the Guy from Vought.
In The Boys arc "The Self-Preservation Society", Soldier Boy participates in Payback's ambush on the Boys, along with the rest of his team. Initially he manages to pin Billy Butcher, the Homelander's archenemy, CIA black ops agent and leader of the Boys, against a wall with his shield. However, being inexperienced in real combat, he loses the initiative and eventually the battle, having his nose bitten off by Butcher before being beaten unconscious. Later, Butcher brutally beats and tortures him for information on the Homelander and his activities over the next few days, mocking him for having claimed to be the same Soldier Boy who fought in World War II, kept alive by being frozen in suspended animation, an identity he was forced to assume and impersonate by Vought. In the "What I Know" arc, Butcher is revealed to have killed Soldier Boy, with a public funeral being held for him and members of the Seven (including the Homelander) serving as his pallbearers.
Soldier Boy I
In The Boys arc "Barbary Coast", in precedence of telling "Wee Hughie" Campbell about the true sadistic nature of Billy Butcher, Lieutenant Colonel Greg D. Mallory tells him about his own history with Supes, beginning with his captaincy during World War II, when his company was made by government and Vought officials to supervise the "Avenging Squad", a team of the first American-made Supes, led by the first Soldier Boy, during the Battle of the Bulge. While eager to serve, Soldier Boy had little military experience, and ordered the flying members of the team to inspect the area for a Nazi presence, oblivious to the fact that doing so would expose their position. Realizing what Soldier Boy had done, Mallory only had time to give his men a brief warning before the enemy (a nearby Waffen-SS platoon) attacked, massacring both his and Soldier Boy's men. After coming across a mortally wounded Soldier Boy, near-vertically bisected by a blast, in the aftermath, Mallory had then dropped a grenade by his feet before walking away, mercy killing him.
Soldier Boy II
Continuing to tell Hughie about his own past in The Boys arc "Barbary Coast", Mallory reveals that by 1950, he learned that new versions (new Supes under the same designs and branding) of Soldier Boy and his brethren had been created by Vought to replace them, fighting elsewhere, known as "Crimefighters Incorporated" after the war and making propaganda films for the United States government. This second Soldier Boy would eventually later die in unknown circumstances, and be succeeded by the third in modern times, presented by Vought (like the third) as the first still-alive Soldier Boy.
Television series The Boys (2019–2026)
In the third season of the television series adaptation, Jensen Ackles portrays a composite character based on the various comic book characters known as Soldier Boy. Prior to Ackles' casting, Eric Kripke intended to "cast an older actor, because we were going for like a grizzled John Wayne sort of vibe", before instead offering Ackles the role. Kripke and Ackles had previously worked together on the first five seasons of The CW's Supernatural. Ackles was also "in contention for a brief time" (although did not audition) for the role of Steve Rogers / Captain America in the 2011 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Captain America: The First Avenger (prior to Chris Evans's casting); Ackles characterized them as "Captain America on his ass, [and] as if [he] gave up super-heroism and was just your drunk and inappropriate uncle". Soldier Boy is a parody of Captain America. On the character's relationship with Homelander in the third season of the television series adaptation, Ackles stated:
"Homelander is the new iteration of Soldier Boy. He's the new kid on the block in Soldier Boy's eyes. Going back to that toxic masculinity: very true to form, one of the first things that ever comes out of Soldier Boy's mouth after he looks at a big poster of Homelander is 'What the fuck?' It's just looking at the world around him, knowing he doesn't fit in and [that] things are different. And there it is, personified in this statuesque red, white and blue superhero. He's not thrilled about that. The relationship is immediately contentious. They have their words."
Soldier Boy's appearance was designed by Laura Jean "LJ" Shannon and Greg Hopwood. His emerald-colored costume and golden shield resemble Soldier Boy I's costume design. Addressing Soldier Boy III's sexual relationship with Homelander in the Herogasm comic series, Kripke confirmed that it would not be adapted to the television series adaptation. The character was straightwashed for the adaptation.
Soldier Boy was created by Nazi defector Frederick Vought during World War II in 1944, via injections of Compound V into a normal soldier. He was named Ben at birth. After being mentioned by Stan Edgar in the 2020 second season as an early test subject for Compound V, represented via a statue, Soldier Boy is revealed by Marvin T. "MM" Milk in the third season as responsible for killing his grandfather whilst thwarting a carjacking, motivating his father's decision to "work himself to death" as a lawyer attempting to bring down Vought and causing MM's post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and hatred of superheroes. Soldier Boy was said to have been killed while preventing a nuclear meltdown during the Cold War. Believing this story to be false and upon learning of the location of a Russian superweapon known as B.C.L. RED said to have actually killed Soldier Boy, Queen Maeve sends Billy Butcher to verify whether it did or not and then retrieve it, both hoping to potentially use the weapon to kill Homelander, the unstable leader of the Seven, due to Vought having equated him and Soldier Boy on a similar to equal power level.
Butcher, after injecting himself with "V24" (a temporary variant of Compound V given to him by Maeve, giving himself temporary superpowers) interrogates and kills Soldier Boy's former sidekick Gunpowder not before learning that Soldier Boy's death was staged during a joint black ops mission between his Supe team Payback and the CIA in Nicaragua in 1984, working against the Sandinistas, under the supervision of Butcher's own mentor Grace Mallory. Confronting Mallory, Butcher learns that the vast majority of her men had been massacred by Russian and Nicaraguan troops in an ambush in 1984 and that while she did see Soldier Boy fight off several soldiers in the subsequent battle, she had been knocked out while avoiding friendly fire from Gunpowder and only learned of Soldier Boy's alleged death upon her awakening caused by an unknown "superweapon" (B.C.L. RED), witnessed by his then-girlfriend Crimson Countess.
Not wanting it publicly known that the Russian government had the capability of killing Supes, president Ronald Reagan had ordered the incident to be covered up with Vought receiving full immunity. In reality, Stan Edgar had orchestrated the whole incident to get rid of Soldier Boy by allowing Payback to betray him as revenge for the physical and mental abuse he had inflicted upon them, with the intention of replacing him with Homelander. The team managed to incapacitate Soldier Boy with Novichok, but not before he burned Black Noir's face and bludgeoned him repeatedly in the head with his shield, leaving Noir with significant brain damage.
After failing to track down the Crimson Countess in the present, Butcher and The Boys make their way to Russia and infiltrate the secret laboratory which Maeve believed to hold B.C.L. RED. After being overwhelmed by Russian soldiers, whom Butcher and Hughie Campbell then kill after taking more V-24, Butcher discovers and opens the B.C.L. RED. pod, only to find it contains a still-living, comatose, and bearded Soldier Boy. Inadvertently awakened from his induced coma, Soldier Boy exits the pod and releases a powerful radiation blast from his chest (Big Chest-Laser) that hits Kimiko Miyashiro and leaves her powerless and wounded (counteracting her usual regenerative abilities). The Boys retreat to stabilize her as Soldier Boy escapes, with Butcher surmising his new abilities to be a result of experimentation.