‘Supernatural’ Star Jensen Ackles Suits up as Soldier Boy for First Look at ‘The Boys’ Season 3

Jensen Ackles is joining the cast of The Boys Season 3, and we now have our first look at him in costume as “Soldier Boy.” Ackles is best known for playing Dean Winchester on The CW’s Supernatural up until last year. Now, he steps into Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of one of the darkest superhero comic books ever made.

Ackles is playing a new character in The Boys but by no means a new figure within the show’s fictional timeline. According to a report by Entertainment Weekly, the show will draw directly from the comic books, where the character Soldier Boy has been an active “hero” since the 1940s. He is the leader of a team called Payback — the premiere super team before The Seven were founded. He was created using the mysterious “Compound V” in the show for the express purpose of “killing Germans by the dozens” in World War II.

Ackles’ costume is in shades of dark green, dark red and dark blue with black accents. It is heavily armored and includes a curved shield. The Boys costume designer Laura Jean Shannon told EW: “Soldier Boy is the original badass. Our goal was to highlight a bygone era of overt masculinity and grit.”

“With that pedigree, we dove headfirst into baking in an all-American quality grounded in a military soldier’s practicality with a heavy dose of old school cowboy swagger,” she went on. “We knew that the actor had to have Steve McQueen looks and chops with a John Wayne attitude, luckily Jensen Ackles embodies all of that.”

Showrunner Eric Kripke joked that he is happy fans have finally seen this costume so they can “quit clogging” his “Twitter notifications with demands” for a first look. He went on: “When I cast Jensen as Soldier Boy, the first thing I said was, ‘I’m most excited for you, because of the amazing process you’ll go through with LJ, our Super Suit designer.’ It took six months but the experience surpassed Jensen’s expectations. LJ has made a work of art that tips its hat to the WWII Soldier Boy from the comics while taking it in a sleek new direction. And if you think the photos are cool, just wait till you see Jensen in action. It’s one of my very favorite suits.”

There are still some serious questions surrounding Ackles’ involvement in The Boys Season 3. Since he plays a young-looking version of the character, it’s not clear if he will be shown only in flashbacks, or if some side effect of Compound V will have preserved him or rejuvenated him in the modern timeline.

Fans will have to watch to find out. The first two seasons of The Boys are streaming now on Amazon Video. Season 3 is in production now, but no release date has been set yet.