How 'The Walking Dead' dashed Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s cameo hopes for 'The Boys' Season 3

Back in 2020, just as The Boys was escalating the hype for its juiced-up second season, fans turned their laser eyes toward Twitter, where a fun exchange between Jeffrey Dean Morgan and showrunner Eric Kripke was unfolding. Morgan, a self-confessed fan of the show, teased he’d love for Kripke (a fellow Supernatural alum) to find a place for him in a future season of the Amazon series. And Kripke, a self-confessed Morgan fan (because who isn’t?), was more than ready to oblige.

“I'll make you a deal,” Kripke tweeted: “Season 3. I'll write it, and if you're avail, come shoot it!” Morgan, known to fans of The Walking Dead as the deliciously devious antihero Negan, didn’t have to be asked twice. “In a heartbeat!” he replied. The exchange must have touched off Kripke’s creative flow, too: Only a few months later, he confided that he had a specific role on The Boys in mind for Morgan… if, that is, he could get him away from The Walking Dead long enough to make it work.

"There’s one role we’re already talking about. We have to like coordinate. Because you know, he’s on The Walking Dead, so he has another home,” Kripke told Collider. “…But we are, just this past week we were literally texting back and forth about trying to figure out how to get him on the show. I don’t think it’s a done deal yet, but the will is there, and we’re both talking about it.”

Welp, The Boys’ Season 3 premiere is now mere days away, and it looks like the zombies have thwarted yet another of humanity’s best-laid plans — at least for the time being. Speaking recently with Entertainment Weekly, Kripke said Morgan’s role in Isle of the Dead, AMC’s upcoming TWD spinoff, has shambled his Amazon crossover hopes to a standstill.

“Sad for me, happy for him: He's currently the lead, along with Lauren Cohan, on the Walking Dead spinoff,” Kripke explained. “So, schedule-wise, I don't know. We might still remain star-crossed, unfortunately, because I did ask. We had a role come up, and my first question was, 'Well, is Jeffrey available?’” The answer, at least until Amazon green-lights more episodes of The Boys (we hope) with a Season 4 renewal, appears to be “not right now.”

That’s not to say Kripke and others on the Amazon side of things aren’t still trying. “I'd love to invite him into this fold because it's nutty,” confessed Jensen Ackles to EW. Ackles, Morgan’s former Supernatural costar, is himself a newcomer to The Boys’ Season 3 cast, bringing long-lived Compound V pioneer Soldier Boy out of his WWII-era past and into Vought’s present-day superhero lineup.

Morgan’s fan passion for The Boys looks like it’s still smoldering, which could be a hopeful sign if the team tries to bring him aboard for a possible fourth season. Just like a nosy kid on Christmas Eve, he’s reportedly been trying to persuade Ackles to sneak him a peek at the Season 3 plot. “He kept texting me for updates [while I was] on set,” Ackles joked to EW. “He was like, ‘Give me spoilers.’ And I was like, ‘No, stop it.’ He's very convincing.”

Season 3 of The Boys is counting down fast toward its June 3 premiere at Amazon.

Looking for more sci-fi TV? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock. Looking ahead, SYFY has new series The Ark in the works from original Stargate film writer/producer Dean Devlin, as well as Stargate SG-1 producer Jonathan Glassner.