‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripke Promises ‘a Lot of Madness’ in Season 3

Eric Kripke and Karl Urban in The Boys
Q&A
Amazon Studios

This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Special Collector’s Issue, which is available for international pre-order online at SciFi2021.com and available nationwide on newsstands now.

We’re spilling all the bloody details on Prime Video’s edgy drama, The Boys, before Season 3 premieres. See what showrunner Eric Kripke is teasing, below.

Congratulations! Five Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama, is fantastic.

Eric Kripke: It’s surreal and amazing and I’m so grateful. I was hoping maybe one of our actors got noticed and that we’d do all right in the technical awards — which we did [Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, Sound Mixing, Special Visual Effects and Writing noms] — because the team is doing incredible work. But I definitely did not see a best drama nomination coming.

The Boys Season 1 cast Eric Kripke

(Credit: Amazon Studios)

Why end Season 2 with the Boys scattered?

I don’t think we had a very specific intent to fracture the Boys. It was more like, “OK, their mission is, for all intents and purposes, over for now.”

How would you describe the upcoming third season?

There’s definitely a lot of madness. It’s not a secret that we’re doing an episode about “Herogasm” from the comics [a six-issue limited series from comics writer Garth Ennis], which is a massive superhero orgy. And we’re doing something in the first episode that I think is definitely the craziest thing we’ve ever pulled off…and might be one of the craziest things anybody’s ever tried to pull off.

We’re afraid to ask, but Stormfront (Aya Cash)…dead or alive?

She has been relieved of her limbs and is kind of a charred mess, but she’s not dead.

And why kill Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore)?

We always had that plan of having him for a couple of episodes and then have his shocking suicide. But I will say that once I started seeing the dailies, I really regretted killing him off because Shawn is so good.

Three seasons in, your cast still looks like they’re having a blast together, which is usually not the case.

I’ve been around the block a few times and so I know how rare this situation is where they all love each other. But they’re all friends, they love the material and they are always pushing to make it better.

The Boys, Seasons 1-2, Streaming now, Prime Video