‘The Boys’: Antony Starr Discusses That Shocking Homelander-Soldier Boy Reveal

For a moment on this week’s episode of The Boys, titled “Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed”, you might have thought you were watching Maury Povich instead. Spoilers past this point, but in the very last scene of the episode, it’s revealed that Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) is actually Homelander’s (Antony Starr) father.

“It’s a bombshell moment, right?” Starr told Decider on the reveal. “When he gets that news delivered that he actually has a blood father. Then he’s got to try and patch it together, and that’s really what he’s always wanted.”

There are still a few details to piece together in next week’s season finale, but the long and short of it is that the reveal brings together several threads that have been laid throughout Season 3 of the Prime Video series. Back in the day, Soldier Boy, as he so crassly puts it, “beat the meat” into a cup for Vought, and specifically for a young Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito). Soldier Boy didn’t know it at the time, but with Vought able to successfully harvest his genetic material, Edgar didn’t need him anymore. He manipulated Soldier Boy’s team, Payback, including current The Seven member Black Noir, into subduing him and trading him to the Russians. With Soldier Boy out of the way, Edgar was able to focus solely on his progeny, a (seemingly) more controllable, lab-grown Supe named Homelander.

Interestingly, and surely not coincidentally, this reveal parallels something that Homelander does in this same episode: tell a captured Maeve (Dominque McElligott) that he’s going to harvest her eggs, in case he some day wants to make a baby with her after she’s dead. It’s horrifying to think of, but is, without knowing it, something that essentially led to Homelander’s own birth. Like father, like son?

It’s also something that Homelander has been looking for, for a long time: family. Last season he tried to find that with his biological son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti). Now that he knows he has a father, the previously antagonistic dynamic between Soldier Boy and Homelander may change dramatically. But don’t think that family will make Homelander weaker… If anything, according to Starr, this reveal will make him stronger, and that’s bad news for everyone.

“I would argue that his humanity is his kryptonite,” Starr said. “And family and connection is, like most people, is what he’s striving for. And I think he thinks there’s a chance to achieve it in this season.”

If he does, and Soldier Boy and Homelander team up in the finale? Look out, world.

The Boys Season 3 finale premieres next Friday, July 8, on Prime Video.