The Boys Showrunner Reveals the Herogasm Moment They Don’t Do in Season 3

Fans of The Boys book series have had a lot of major moments from the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertsoncomics they’re eager to see realized in the Amazon Prime Video adaptation, and one of them is about to happen. The “Herogasm” episode is set to premiere during season three in just a few short weeks, and for readers it’s something that seems impossible. In the pages of the original story, Herogasm is largely a parody of big superhero event comics but one wherein the heroes engage in a weekend of insane debauchery and lurid conduct instead of fighting aliens. Series creator Eric Kripke has previously teased how they were able to pull this off in the series but has no confirmed a key component of the Herogasm comic plot is absent.

In the original story, Homelander (himself a parody of Superman in the Justice League) is hounded by the character Soldier Boy (a sniveling parody of Captain America of The Avengers). Homelander convinces Soldier Boy that if he sleeps with him then maybe he’ll be able to get into The Seven, but afterward convinces him he wasn’t “good enough.” Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Kripke said this isn’t going to happen in the series. “I love that scene and it’s hilarious, but for a dozen reasons, all of which will be revealed when you see the season, it ultimately just didn’t track,” Kripke said. “We talked about it. It conflicted with a lot of the other things we were trying to build with Soldier Boy. So, unfortunately, that one had to go.”

The new season of The Boys will bring in Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, with the trailers already making it clear that this character is quite different from his comic book counterpart. As Kripke puts it, in the TV series Soldier Boy was Homelander before Homelander, a supe that was the most popular and got his way at every turn.

Regarding the Herogasm episode, The Boys star Jack Quaid added his own thoughts about what they were able to accomplish in live-action adaptation, saying: “I read all of the comic books when I was cast as Hughie, and ‘Herogasm’ was one of those issues where I was like, ‘Okay, we need to do this or some version of this because this is the craziest thing I’ve ever read.’ I think we definitely stayed true to the comic. I can’t really say much about ‘Herogasm.’ I think the joy of ‘Herogasm’ is figuring out what exactly that means, watching it for yourself, seeing how it unfolds. That goes into places where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to go.”  

The first three episodes of the new season of The Boys will debut on Friday, June 3, with new episodes arriving weekly after that. Friday, June 24 will see the premiere of “Herogasm,” the only episode title confirmed by the streamer at the time of their announcement.