Amazon renews The Boys for Season 3 & adds Season 2 aftershow hosted by Aisha Tyler

The Boys are headed back to town this September, but even before the Season 2 premiere for the subversive superhero series, Amazon has hit the ground running with news that the show will be back for a Season 3. Announced today at Amazon’s online panel during Comic-Con@Home 2020, co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg revealed that the comic book-based band of small-screen sociopaths will be taking a third trip around the streaming dial.

Season 1 of The Boys ended on a supercharged high-stakes note all around, with the good guys on the run, Billy learning a stunning secret about his wife and son, Homelander revealing new strengths and a potentially crippling weakness, and Starlight making a fateful break from Vought’s cabal of corrupt, vain, and downright selfish superheroes. Rogen and co-creator / executive producer Eric Kripke have already hinted that Season 2 promises to be even bloodier, lewder, and cruder — and if you're already a fan, then you know that's setting the bar pretty high. Presumably Season 3 won't be holding back after that. 

Amazon also revealed that it’s adding an aftershow to The Boys’ content lineup for the upcoming second season, giving fans an episode-by-episode breakdown so they can follow along and put their best fan theories about Billy Butcher’s good-guy mean streak to the test.

Hosted by Emmy winner Aisha Tyler (who’s no stranger to the aftershow format, having shown up on several episodes of Talking Dead as well as SYFY’s own The Great Debate), the bonus series will go behind the scenes of a second season that Amazon’s already teased as bigger, juicier, and even larger in scope and budget than The Boys’ sensational debut outing. The suggestively-named Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys will arrive a week ahead of the Season 2 premiere, with each new episode landing alongside the main series as Season 2 unfolds.

New to Season 2 is Stormfront (Aya Cash), a superhero who promises to play a big role in Homelander’s life following his devastating (but oh-so-decisive) severing of all those creepy Oedipal ties with the late Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue — whose character doesn't appear to be part of the Season 2 lineup for deathly obvious reasons). 

Cash said her character might feel like a breath of fresh air when she first walks onscreen, but reveals some extremely dark motivations as the season rolls along. Even though she “violently” disagrees with Stormfront’s views of society, said Cash, “my job as an actor is to find the humanity and go to the ugly and gross parts in ourselves,” adding that Kripke has done “a beautiful job” of finding Stormfront’s humanity…even as he’s written a character arc that’ll also “punish” her misanthropy.

“We just really try to be very character-forward in the show,” added Kripke. “I really think that’s the compass of getting this tone right. …The thesis of the show is, superheroes with power are inherently [still] people, and so they are prone to the types of challenges and potential corruption that happens when you get so much power and access…I don’t want you to agree with what these superheroes do, but I do want you to understand it.”

One of Season 1's greatest strengths was the cast Amazon managed to assemble in adapting comics creators Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's characters for the small screen, and the upcoming seasons looks to expand on that winning formula. Expect the Season 2 return of familiar The Seven-ers led by Homelander (Antony Starr), A-Train (Jessie Usher), Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell), and The Deep (Chace Crawford). 

On the side of truth and justice (should Starlight be on this list instead?), we’ll welcome back Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capon), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Rebecca, Butcher’s super-complicated wife (Shantel VanSanten). There’s also a long list of new-for-Season 2 stars, including Giancarlo Esposito (as Vought head honcho Mr. Edgar), Colby Minifie (as Ashley Barrett, Starlight’s ex-publicist), along with Goran Visnjic, Claudia Doumit, Patton Oswalt, and Aya Cash as Stormfront. 

Created by Kripke, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg and co-produced with Amazon and Sony Pictures Television, The Boys is steaming toward its Sept. 4 Season 2 debut at Amazon, with the first three episodes set to premiere all at once. Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys will debut on Aug. 28 with a look back at Season 1, before hitting Amazon each week as new episodes of The Boys arrive. 

Click here for SYFY WIRE's full coverage of Comic-Con@Home 2020.