Warning: The following contains full spoilers for The Boys' third season!
The Boys’ third season has come to an explosive end and the finale capped off a season we called one of the best we’ve seen in years. As the brutal wait for Season 4 begins, we thought it’d be the perfect time to sit down with The Boys’ showrunner Eric Kripke to talk about the biggest moments from this last episode and what they reveal about the future of the series.
From Homelander’s continuing rise to power to that smirk on Ryan’s face to Victoria Neuman becoming Vice President to the future of The Seven, Kripke was more than willing to talk about “The Instant White-Hot” and what’s to come for The Boys.
It’s Homelander’s World and We’re Just Living In It
The Boys’ Season 3 finale is perhaps the show at its most hopeful and its most dark, and what’s to come very well may be decided by Homelander and, perhaps even more so, his son, Ryan.
We see Ryan with a little smirk on his face when his father kills a protester in the finale, and that small smile has unimaginable potential consequences for not only our heroes, but the world as a whole. What happens if Homelander is allowed to continue to raise him? Will the best parts of him come out now that he is a parent to save Ryan from going down a dark road? Kripke, in no uncertain terms, doesn’t think so.
“No, Homelander's a piece of shit, even if he cares for his son,” Kripke said. “If allowed to raise Ryan, he will raise Ryan to be a second Homelander, which will have apocalyptic stakes. If he stays in that environment, he's on his way to becoming another Homelander. And so I think it's a hint at what one of the major conflicts in season four will be, which is Butcher and Homelander having this battle over Ryan.”
Speaking of Butcher, he has to deal with his terminal diagnosis due to his usage of V24 alongside using the time he has left to get Ryan away from Homelander.
“[Butcher] has a serious problem,” Kripke said. “He has a very loudly-ticking clock. He needs to get Ryan out of there, he's hoping to still be able to destroy Homelander, and they've got the Neuman problem. I mean, it's still early days in the Season 4 room, but so far what's just really been interesting is when you're really facing your own mortality and you're really on the way out the door, you start really thinking about what's important to you, and what do you want to do with the time you have left?
“So, he's going to have to prioritize. He's going to have to decide which of those goals are the most important to him and go after them, whether or not it's what the CIA wants him to do or the other Boys want him to do. He has to focus on what's important before he dies.”
The Reign of Victoria Neuman and the State of Vought International and The Seven
Victoria Neuman has been playing her own game throughout this story and her main focus this season has been looking out for herself and her daughter. Now, having set up her path to become the Vice President of the United States, she has more power than ever. How will this impact the USA and our protagonists?
“Look, she is Stan Edgar's daughter in many ways, and by that I mean she has a sort of raw, unchecked ambition,” Kripke said. “I think she tells herself she wants to make the world a better place for her daughter, I think she tells herself that she probably has a reasonably liberal agenda, but she's just ruthlessly climbing as high as she can, because I don't even know if she could totally define why to herself. It's just her nature and how she was raised.
“She's a character who is always trying to play all sides depending on the situation she's in. The problem is now she's sort of in league with Homelander, who is the opposite of trying to play all sides. He's becoming more and more radicalized actually. And so figuring out how she can manage his madness while still protecting her options to maneuver is going to be a challenge.
“She doesn't immediately come in as like a shill for Vought doing whatever Vought wants. She's trying to figure out all the angles, but it's hard with all the pressure that Homelander's continually putting on her.”
Speaking of Vought, the company is in quite a predicament as The Seven is in shambles and needs rebuilding. However, now that Homelander is more in control, a comeback may just be in order. Alongside Kripke joking that The Seven has never really been The Seven since Episode 2 of Season 1, the showrunner gave a tease of the fate of Vought International.
“[Vought] has a lot of rebuilding to do physically and literally with the tower itself, but also with bringing in new members of The Seven,” Kripke said. “Without spoiling anything, I'll say that Homelander was like a big kid smashing a toy once they let him be in control, or once he got to be in control of Vought, but he's a really smart character, and I think he's really smart about learning from his mistakes and figuring out how to redirection Vought into a way that will be advantageous to him. Focusing more on the kind of guys who wear giant buffalo hats, for instance. So he's got a lot more tricks up his sleeve.”
For more on The Boys, be sure to check out our review of “The Instant White-Hot Wild” and stay tuned to IGN for our explainer of the season’s ending and our full Season 3 review.
Francesca Rivera is Video Producer at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @fbrivera.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.