The Boys Season 3 Opens With Surprising Marvel Cameo

Spoilers for ! The first three episodes of The Boys season three have arrived and to start things off the series began in incredibly surprising fashion, including a cameo that Marvel fans didn’t see coming. Where the episode begins isn’t actually with The Boys storyline but the long-teased “Dawn of the Seven” feature film, the filming of which has been part of the TV series since it began. In a scene mirroring the “Knightmare” reality of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the film begins with a tease of Stormfront, but it’s not Aya Cash reprising her role, it’s Charlize Theron playing her in the feature film.

Yup, Charlize Theron, who appeared as Clea in the MCU’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness post-credit scene, makes a cameo appearance in the first 30 seconds of The Boys season three. It’s not explicitly said but it seems like Theron is playing herself, simply an actress hired to play the part of Stormfront in the “Vought Studios” movie. She shares the screen with Antony Starr’s Homelander, the scene between the two clearly written to be in-universe PR designed to make Homelander look as good as possible while putting plenty of distance between him and his former partner (who was, as you may recall, a secret Nazi, and not even a new Nazi, a literal, old-fashioned Nazi).

Truthfully, the appearance of Theron in The Boys seems entirely unrelated to her place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s in fact a major possibility that she shot her sequence for The Boys long before she even knew she would be in Doctor Strange 2. To make it slightly funny though, she definitely has more screentime in The Boys than she does in her Marvel Studios debut.

The new season picks up a year after the events of season two of The Boys, and it’s clear that Vought is still doing A LOT of damage control for Homelander and in the wake of Stomfront’s revelation. The use of Theron as the character “on the big screen,” isn’t the only Stormfront appearance though as Aya Cash makes a surprise cameo near the end of the first episode. Having had an eye stabbed out by Becca, and roasted/having most of her limbs severed by Ryan, she’s not in the best of shape, and is recovering in a hospital bed in Homelander’s room in Vought Tower.

Season three of The Boys also stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Claudia Doumit, and Jensen Ackles. You can read our review of the new episodes by clicking here.