The Boys season 2 release date has been announced, and we don’t have long to wait to be reunited with our favourite rogue supes. Adapted from the famous Garth Ennis comic, the first season of The Boys saw a group of nobodies in their quest to defeat The Seven, a corporate-owned and corrupt group of superheroes. Now that we know when the second set of episodes are coming, the anticipation has just gone up a level.
On June 26, creator Eric Kripke revealed the The Boys season 2 release date, and that the first three episodes will land all at once, in a live online event hosted by actor and comedian, Patton Oswalt. In case you missed the stream, we’ve embedded the full footage including the first three minutes of season 2 and another glimpse of Stormfront.
The Boys season 2 was announced by Amazon Prime before it even debuted on the streaming service. It proved a well-calculated move, too: it’s one of the best Amazon Prime shows around. Here’s what we know about The Boys season 2, including its release date, cast, and more.
The Boys season 2 release date has been announced
We’ve heard your fuckin’ whining and moaning about “when is Season 2” so here you go. See you on September 4th, mates. #TheBoysAreBack pic.twitter.com/Q6aS2NvKKkJune 26, 2020
The Boys season 2 release date is September 4, 2020. The date was revealed on June 26 in a livestream event hosted by Patton Oswalt. Kripke announced that, on September 4, the first three episodes will air all at once, and the the remaining five will go live each week on Amazon Prime Video to give “the audience the chance to just absorb and recover after every episode”. That means the finale will go out on October 9.
We were due to learn more about The Boys season 2 during the PaleyFest TV festival in March 2020, but the event was cancelled over the global pandemic. It’s possible that this is when Amazon planned on revealing a tentative release date for The Boys season 2.
Watch the first three minutes of The Boys season 2
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Above is the full virtual cast reunion, which signed off beautifully with the first moments of The Boys season 2. We’ve skipped the video above to this point so you can get your teeth into this first juicy slice of action as quickly as possible. You can also get a peek at Aya Cash as Stormfront a little earlier in the VOD (38:37).
In it – as if we expected anything different – we see the gore hasn’t gone anyway. By our count in three minutes Black Noir slits two throats, beheads one, and rips another’s face in half. We also see more from the mysterious Vought CEO, Giancarlo Esposito, who only made a cameo appearance in season 1.
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The Boys season 2 trailer released in December 2019 doesn’t reveal much about the plot, but it – predictably – has plenty of violence, and snapshots of the show’s characters.
It appears that The Boys season 2 will pick up right where the first left off, with the evil Superman stand-in Homelander (the magnificent Antony Starr) revealing a super-powered son, and Hughie (Jack Quaid) saving the life of speedster A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), despite running through his girlfriend at the start of the show. Ouch.
We also caught a shot of Terror, Billy Butcher’s dog from the comics which, given his special, err, talent, is one of the most exciting additions to the cast going in to season 2.
The Boys season 2 cast hints at the new story to come
With the first trailer and various other clips shown off since, we have a good idea of the official cast list now. Here are The Boys season 2 cast members we know will return:
- Billy Butcher: Karl Urban
- Hughie Campbell: Jack Quaid
- Homelander: Antony Starr
- Annie January: Erin Moriarty
- Jessie T. Usher: A-Train
- Laz Alonso: Mother’s Milk
- Chace Crawford: The Deep
- Karen Fukuhara: The Female
- Nathan Mitchell: Black Noir
- Colby Minifie: Ashley Barrett
- Tomer Kapon: Frenchie
- Giancarlo Esposito: Mr Edgar
- Dominique McElligott: Queen Maeve
- Aya Cash: Stormfront
- Patton Oswalt: ???
Giancarlo Esposito (best known as Breaking Bad’s Gus Fring and Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian) appeared in the first season’s finale, guest starring as enigmatic Vought CEO, Mr Edgar. Expect him to play a larger role in season 2, especially with Madelyn Stillwell (Shue) killed in the finale.
In terms of brand new faces, Patton Oswalt will join Aya Cash’s Stormfront, along with two other The Boys debutantes: Goran Visnjic and Claudia Doumit are also in for the grisly season 2 party, although this is yet to be officially confirmed. According to Deadline, Visnjic will play Alistair Adana, the cultish leader of a shadowy church, and Doumit an up-and-coming congresswoman. Hugh Campbell Snr. will not return, however, as Simon Pegg told Collider.
And then there’s Stormfront. Take a look at her design below:
Stormfront will be like a “hand grenade” thrown into the Seven, according to Cash. “I think she’s here to blow up Vought,” Cash told EW. “She’s here to try to get Vought back to the original idea behind creating superheroes… And she can be quite the feminist. There’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say misdirect, but she also is a very empowered woman.” This new supe even has enough power to fight The Seven.
Look at their faces, those smug pieces of–wait, who the fuck is that green guy? pic.twitter.com/QSPSFH5qsXApril 16, 2020
Will we see a return of the so-called “invisible c**t”? In Eric Kripke’s tweet above, we can see a “green guy” who looks an awful lot like Alex Hassell’s Translucent. The trouble is, Translucent was killed by Frenchie and his “ass bomb”, by, err, shoving explosive where the sun don’t shine. So we’re not sure how Hassell is returning, but we’re interested to see how it’s going to happen.
While nothing is confirmed, it looks like Jeffrey Dean Morgan (best known as the fiendish Negan in The Walking Dead) could have a place in The Boys season 2 cast. Following Eric Kripke’s tweet saying “I’ll make you a deal. Season 3. I’ll write it, and if you’re avail, come shoot it!”, Morgan replied, “in a heartbeat!”
What is confirmed is that the “terrifying” Black Noir is set to play a major role in the second season – you can see him in action in the first three minutes of season 2 above. Announced at C2E2 Expo, the mystery of the dark-suited masked vigilante will hang over season 2, and he’ll have no lines of dialogue or action scenes. We’ll never even see his face. “You’re going to love what’s coming up for Black Noir. It’s so good,” Karl Urban enthused at a panel.
The Boys season 2 episode titles hint at what’s to come
Episode titles for The Boys season 2 were revealed on the WGA website. They don’t reveal much, but hint just a little at what to expect from the coming year.
- Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker – written by Craig Rosenberg
- Nothing Like It In The World – written by Michael Saltzman
- Over The Hill With The Swords Of A Thousand Men – written by Craig Rosenberg
- Proper Preparation and Planning – written by Rebecca Sonnenshine
- The Big Ride – written by Eric Kripke
- The Bloody Doors Off – written by Anslem Richardson
- We Gotta Go Now – written by Ellie Monahan
- What I Know – written by Rebecca Sonnenshine
A few elements hang in the air from the season one finale. First, expect Compound V, the mysterious drug that gives superpowers to humans, to remain a recurring mystery. We see Mr Edgar discussing it in the first three minutes of season 2 shown off in June 2020.
“If it’s a secret, if it’s nothing the world knows about yet, then it [Compound V] becomes a secret that everyone will kill for, and it gives you an object that everybody wants, and it does all the great things a McGuffin does,” Kripke told Entertainment Weekly. Now Billy and Hughie know that secret, what happens next?
At the end of season one, Homelander dropped Billy Butcher on the lawn of his wife, Becca, who he presumed dead. Instead, she has a family with Homelander, including their superpowered son. It’s quite a predicament for poor Billy: how will he escape? And does this mean Billy and the rest of The Boys will struggle to function as an underground group, now Homelander has Billy in his laser sights?
The best superhero show on TV?
The Boys was one of the surprise hits of the year, with a strong ensemble cast and an original angle on the superheroes in a time almost saturated with them. Executive producer Seth Rogen’s words about the next set of episodes to Collider justify our optimism for the show’s future. “We just watched, actually, the first episode of the second season this week. It was a wonderful thing as producers. This is way better than I ever could’ve hoped it would be.”