Happily, we already know season 4 is on the cards<\/a> \u2013 and with The Boys welcoming a new member, one supe apparently retiring from the game and Homelander in the ascendant, there\u2019s plenty of intriguing threads for the show to pick up when it returns.<\/p>\n But where do we leave the characters as season 3 wraps up? We break down the season finale ending below. Watch out for spoilers<\/strong>!<\/p> First, the background. This season saw Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) team up with long-lost superhero Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), a long-presumed-dead figure who agreed to kill Homelander for them if they helped him take revenge on his old team Payback.<\/p>\n The other Boys disagreed with the plan, but Butcher and Hughie went along with it anyway, coaxed along by a regular helping of \u201cTemp V\u201d, which gives them superpowers for 24 hours. Another spanner was thrown in the works when Soldier Boy realised Homelander was actually his son, created from his genetic material.<\/p>\n In the end, Soldier Boy came along with Butcher and Maeve (Dominique McElligott) to take on his son\u2026 and the final clash began.<\/p>\n In an about-face, Soldier Boy decided he was disgusted by his newfound son\u2019s \u201cweakness\u201d and began preparing to kill Homelander \u2013 but when Homelander\u2019s own son Ryan tried to fight Soldier Boy off, the scuffle left Ryan injured and in his grandad\u2019s sights.<\/p>\n To honour his promise to dead wife Becca, Butcher turns on Soldier Boy to protect Ryan \u2013 but Maeve didn\u2019t want to abandon the plan, fighting Homelander hand-to-hand in an increasingly brutal clash (with some success).<\/p>\n Butcher had less luck with Soldier Boy after a while, but the arrival of Starlight (Erin Moriarty), MM (Laz Alonso) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) levelled the playing field. Thanks to Hughie raising the lights of the studio they were fighting in, Starlight was able to access a new level of power and knock Soldier Boy down, and the others restrained him and started to dose him with the nerve agent needed to knock him out.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t enough. Soldier Boy began to activate his nuclear ability, risking death to everyone \u2013 which finally inspired Maeve to give up on her campaign of revenge, leave an injured Homelander and tackle Soldier Boy out of the window of Vought Tower, saving the lives of her allies.<\/p>\n Was this the end of Queen Maeve? Well, yes and no\u2026<\/p>\n As it turns out, Maeve survived the fall \u2013 but like other heroes zapped by Soldier Boy\u2019s power, her own strength has now gone. With the world believing her dead (and Vought quietly deleting the evidence that she survived) she can finally try to live a normal life.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Butcher learns that he\u2019s terminally ill after abusing Temp V for too long, and has just a few months to live. Back at the Boys\u2019 headquarters, Starlight\/Annie becomes an official member of the team, while Soldier Boy is put back into a regulated coma and locked away.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s Homelander who really has the last laugh. After the battle, Ryan convinced him to walk away from Butcher, while finally starting to see things from his dad\u2019s point of view. And in season 3\u2019s final scene, he accompanies his dad to meet a few fans\u2026 and something different happens.<\/p>\n After a protestor throws something at Ryan, Homelander finally snaps and kills the \u201cattacker\u201d in public \u2013 but rather than be horrified, his fans cheer him on. Homelander realises that after years of censoring his homicidal impulses, he doesn\u2019t have to any more \u2013 his fans love him regardless.<\/p>\n As they cheer him on, Ryan watches with a faintly troubled expression that gradually turns into a smile. While not stated outright, it\u2019s implied he\u2019s starting to see the advantages of being a powerful being in a world of humans.<\/p>\n There were a few casualties in the finale, most notably longtime Seven member Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) who was killed by Homelander after revealing he\u2019d known the truth about his parentage all along. Maeve was depowered, Soldier Boy was put in storage \u2013 going forward, it could be that the series is without a few key cast members.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible Maeve could return in her depowered state for season 4, but it certainly feels like the character has been given a gracious exit. Likewise Soldier Boy \u2013 technically Ackles could return, but it wouldn\u2019t put anyone\u2019s noses out of joint if the show turned to focus on a new threat instead.<\/p>\n Black Noir is the only character properly killed off\u2026 though who knows? Given his secretive identity, it\u2019s possible Vought could just replace him with someone else in the suit, leaving the rest of the world none the wiser. Or maybe he survived his disembowelling? He survived a pretty traumatic head injury in the \u201980s, so he\u2019s clearly a durable chap.<\/p>\n Of the remaining members of the Seven, the Deep (Chace Crawford) is mourning his failed marriage and a new scandal, while A-Train is ostracised by his family even as he regains his ability to run via heart transplant. Homelander is in the best shape of them all \u2013 Ryan has finally come to his side, and he appears to have realised he can be his authentic (terrible!) self without alienating his core fans.<\/p>\n Clearly the team will need some new members with Starlight gone too \u2013 so maybe we\u2019ll see a new collection of supes joining the fray. Or maybe Homelander will decide he doesn\u2019t need more teammates after all \u2013 we\u2019ll just have to wait to see what direction the show goes in.<\/p>\n Starlight officially joining The Boys just as Butcher gets a terminal diagnosis (so he now really has nothing to lose) definitely opens up some intriguing new conflicts on the other side, and it could be that we\u2019ll see yet more friction within their ranks come season 4.<\/p>\n Superpowered politician Victoria Neuman\u2019s (Claudia Doumit) nomination for Vice-President also offers some interesting storytelling opportunities, while tying in closer to the comics where the male \u201cVic the Veep\u201d is a pro-supe mole working within the US Government.<\/p>\n Altogether, then, there\u2019s absolutely loads of places The Boys could go in season 4. Ryan\u2019s heel-turn, Butcher\u2019s deterioration, Homelander\u2019s new perspective and Annie\u2019s role on the team open up lots of possibilities, and we\u2019re sure there\u2019ll also be plenty of surprises and guest stars to get to know.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just a shame we have so long to wait until we see what comes next. The fans holding on for season 4? Truly, we\u2019re the real heroes.<\/p>\n The Boys season three is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video \u2013 sign up for Prime Video here<\/a>. <\/strong>Check out more of our Sci-Fi<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> to see what\u2019s on tonight.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now \u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0and get the next 12 issues for only \u00a31. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a>\u00a0with Jane Garvey.<\/b><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Huw Fullerton Published: Friday, 08 July 2022 at 12:00 am After plenty of blood, gore, explosions and one shrinking scene that will never let us see Ant-Man in the same way again, The Boys season 3 has finally come to a close with our heroes (and villains) in a slightly altered set-up. Happily, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":18218,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/how-the-boys-season-3-ending-sets-up-season-4.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Huw Fullerton Published: Friday, 08 July 2022 at 12:00 am After plenty of blood, gore, explosions and one shrinking scene that will never let us see Ant-Man in the same way again, The Boys season 3 has finally come to a close with our heroes (and villains) in a slightly altered set-up. Happily, we…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/18217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Boys season 3 plot<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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