Soldier Boy

Name(s) : (Soldier Boy, Ben, Benjamin) GENDER Male SPECIES Supe Human (Formerly) HAIR Brown AGE 26 ("The Instant White-Hot Wild", Recording) 65 ("Barbary Coast", Flashback) 103 ("The Only Man in the Sky") 105 ("Season Four Finale") ALIASES Ben Soldier Boy America's Son (by public) B.C.L. RED (by Russians) Hero of Heroes (by Homelander) Traitor (by public) OCCUPATION Former Soldier of the U.S. Armed Forces Former Superhero Former Leader of Payback Former Actor Former Associate of The Boys Supe-Terrorist (slandered by Vought International) FAMILY (Unnamed) - Father † John - Genetic Son Ryan Butcher - Genetic Grandson ETHNICITY Caucasian-American Benjamin, better known as Soldier Boy, is one of the two overarching antagonists (alongside Stan Edgar) of the Amazon series The Boys, where he served as one of two main antagonists (alongside Homelander) of Season 3 and the overarching antagonist of Season 4.

He was America's first and greatest superhero before Homelander and the former leader of the superhero team Payback. As a young man, Soldier Boy helped good triumph over evil in World War II. However, it is not made clear how much of that is true, as The Legend claimed that his participation in the war was Vought propaganda whereas Stan Edgar actually claims the opposite by stating that he killed Germans by the dozens. With his superhero team Payback by his side, he was said to have fought for liberty and justice for all until his disappearance during a botched military operation in Nicaragua, with the cover story being that he heroically sacrificed his own life to save America from a nuclear power plant meltdown in 1984. In reality Soldier Boy was betrayed by his team for his aggressive behavior towards them and (with Vought’s approval) was sold out to the Russians, who would later conduct dozens of agonizing experiments on him over the next 3 decades. Much like Homelander, Soldier Boy was esteemed by the public but due to the news, Starlight's recent exposé about his recent actions and Vought’s slanderous lies, his fame and reputation crumbled. In his cover story and in the eyes of the public, Soldier Boy is a patriotic hero who represents the values of bravery, diligence, sacrifice and American exceptionalism, showing humility when congratulated for his feats in WW2. In truth however, he is an arrogant, pompous and macho individual but he still had some level of humility in his early days since he turned a holiday based on himself into a holiday that pays respect to every superhero. In other words he began as a man with noble intentions to protect and serve his country but later descended into villainy because of power.

In his childhood and youth, Soldier Boy, whose real name is Benjamin was a troubled child, with an extremely wealthy but neglectful father, who paid little attention to his son. Disorganized, undisciplined and irresponsible, he was sent to boarding school but was kicked out due to being a self-confessed 'fuck-up.' In response, his uncaring father labelled him a disappointment and deemed him unworthy to carry the family name. This treatment caused Benjamin to become insecure and desperate to make his father proud and so, to prove himself; he went as far as to contact his father’s connections with the military to get enlisted into Compound V trials run by Frederick Vought. The experiment was successful and it led to Ben becoming the strongest Supe alive. After being named Soldier Boy and returning with a hero’s welcome after WW2, his father showed disgust at Ben using Compound V to become strong, and that a 'real man' wouldn't have cheated and taken an easy route. The weight of those words etched a profound mark on Ben's personality, leaving him insecure in himself and bitter at his father's neglect. In order to spite his father and invalidate his words, Soldier Boy strived to become the strongest and most loved celebrity in the world, however this slowly turned him into an individual characterized by arrogance, callousness and recklessness, projecting an air of unwarranted superiority stemming from his insecurities and inner conflict. His understanding of masculinity became distorted, embracing a toxic sense of machismo that further alienated him from genuine human connections as this upbringing made grow to hate affection, showing weakness and vulnerability. Like his father, Ben placed a high importance on traditional masculinity and "being a man", belittling and sometimes abusing those who failed to meet or opposed his views and standards of masculinity; something he said, in his words, was to "toughen them up". He retained his attitudes even after The Boys freed him from Russian captivity, nearly forty years after he was first captured.

As the leader of Payback, he was at times abusive and petty, willing to hurt those who disagreed with him and sabotage whatever attempts to further their own careers and had no qualms with using his status and power to intimidate and manipulate others for his own ends, using Black Noir and Gunpowder as his primary punching bags, which makes him a child abuser since gunpowder was a pre-teenager at the time. This is seen when he used his contacts to make sure Noir wouldn't land a role in Beverly Hills Cop for not being “good enough”, seeing Noir’s ambition as an attempt to usurp and outshine him, all to remain in the spotlight and prove his father wrong. However this behaviour caused his team to despise and harbour a deep-seated resentment towards him.

As claimed by Grace Mallory during her recounting of the Nicaragua incident, Soldier Boy had a celebrity-like persona and was not used to people looking down on him, which led him to insult and belittle her when she refused his advances. He was also quite rash, as he nearly fired a rocket launcher without realizing he was aiming at an ammunitions dump that could obliterate half the camp and draw the attention of any enemy military forces operating nearby. He was a womanizer. According to Grace, Ben lacked the ability to "read the room", in that he always assumed that women were charmed by his machismo when they actually despised him for it. Soldier Boy also assumed he had a few kids out there in the world within the 40 years he was in the Russian’s captivity. This indicates he was a massive playboy, and often cheated on Crimson Countess with several girls.

In spite of his hyper-masculine persona, Soldier Boy was capable of showing respect. He gave Grace a small gesture of appreciation when she killed an enemy soldier who was about to fire on him from behind. Furthermore, despite his arrogance and machismo, Soldier Boy was the only Supe during the Nicaragua incident seen to be fighting effectively and maintaining total composure in combat against the enemy, which was seen again when he fought Homelander for the first time at Herogasm. This shows that he possesses much greater discipline and skill in wielding his powers in actual combat, in marked contrast to the general lack of tactical capability, panicking and cowardice associated with most Supes, which could possibly be from his time as a soldier during WWII before he became Soldier Boy. Even when enraged, Ben's discipline showed as he fought effectively against Butcher and the Boys when they tried to stop him in Vought tower. Before Butcher turned on him for attacking Ryan, Soldier Boy appeared to get on well with Butcher, even opening up to him about his true childhood and abusive father, something he had likely never done prior in order to maintain his fabricated image.

After returning home to the USA, fresh from captivity, Soldier Boy has become very bitter and vengeful, immediately targeting his former teammates for death on a revenge rampage. For all his apparent homicidal tendencies, he does not seem to exhibit psychopathic behavior like Homelander and after he leaves Russia, he is shown actively avoiding taking civilian lives if he can help it (although he does avoid taking responsibility when he causes casualties). He did however show remorse for the lives lost when he had unleashed his radiation blast, quietly admitting to Hughie that he wasn't a bad guy and he didn't mean to hurt them, though based off his later actions it is unknown if he was being genuine. He later killed a priest and nun that he was sure Mindstorm had brainwashed before even finding out if the priest had been brainwashed, as well as being prepared to detonate and destroy Vought tower, despite the civilians present, showing that he sometimes considers human lives a cost that can be paid. Soldier Boy also showed a lack of care for the casualties caused after his explosion at Herogasm, simply shrugging it off.

When he finds out that Homelander was his biological son, Soldier Boy was shocked, realizing that Vought had given the go-ahead for Payback to turn on him because they intended to replace him with another Supe made from his own DNA, a Supe that was designed specifically to be another version of him. This, along with realizing that he had missed out on all the years he could have spent raising his son deeply saddened Soldier Boy as he felt that he had failed as a father, and his own father's words labelling him a 'disappointment' came back to haunt him. Soldier Boy had strived to have children in the hope that he could raise them better than his father did, and failing at that made him question whether he had proved his father right or wrong. This came to a head when he confronted Homelander again at the Vought Tower, where Homelander desperately proposed an alliance due to technically being family and that regular humans were beneath them, even revealing his own son Ryan to prove his point. In this moment, Soldier Boy saw his younger self in Homelander, an erratic, privileged person with unrivaled power, craving his father's approval and being desperate for love and attention. He then understood how his own father saw him and how true his words were, and when Homelander desperately claims that the two of them were the same, Soldier Boy tearfully echoes his father's words, calling Homelander 'a fucking disappointment,' due to finally realizing why his father viewed him as a weak, spoilt brat who didn't deserve his success.

In his younger days, he was not considerate of collateral damage and death and was sometimes quite negligent at handling problems, as seen when a group of kids stealing a Mercedes Benz resulted in Soldier Boy hurling said car through an apartment building and killing Mother's Milk's family in the process. While the deaths were an accident, they were directly caused by Soldier Boy's recklessness. He was not held accountable for the deaths. When Milk confronted Soldier Boy about the death of his family, Soldier Boy was nonchalant, implying that he's killed many families over the years.

He can be civilized and polite with those he doesn't despise or perceive as enemies, as displayed when he went to The Legend's apartment to retrieve his super suit and asked him where he could find Crimson Countess, as well as his interactions with Hughie while resting at a motel. Though this also seemed to be a bit of a facade, as he later showed very little patience with Hughie when they were hunting down Mindstorm, but this could have been attributed to the fact that he felt Hughie's attitude was holding them back from the mission.

Soldier Boy's idea of family is directly connected to his general "alpha male" demeanor, as seen when he finally meets his son Homelander face to face. Ben's disappointment in Homelander, regarding him as "weak, sniveling pussy" and "starved for attention", leads him to decide to kill his own son, uncaring of his newly discovered grandson Ryan and attacking him out of annoyance at the boy defiantly attacking him.

As the Supe who first started Herogasm, Soldier Boy has probably been exposed to and indulged in all manner of sexual activities, which may have made him more tolerant towards homosexuality, although there is not much evidence of this. When he returned to the USA and passed a gay couple being affectionate in public, his expression was one of disbelief, and it is unknown if he approved or not. He also frequently boasts about the many famous and beautiful women he has slept with, and he appeared to have a preference for older women as well, commenting on them aging like fine wine to Hughie.

While he doesn't hold any outright or at least overt prejudice against black people (as he believed that the icon of the perfect and ideal American dad was Bill Cosby, his treatment of Black Noir was not racially motivated, and he respected Stan Edgar), Soldier Boy did crack down on Civil Rights protests during the 1960s and was complacent in an attempt by the U.S. federal government to help funnel drugs into black communities. It is possible he was made to do the former by Vought or the government, and it is confirmed that he was made do the latter by the government. He did not, however, question his orders, and is responsible for what happened. When he brutalized Black Noir after being confronted over having him barred from auditioning for Beverly Hills Cop after slandering his character, which ended with a threat to kill him should he try to "move on up" (a reference to The Jeffersons and a clear jab at Black Noir's ethnicity) on Soldier Boy's celebrity status. Also, when Marvin Milk confronted Soldier Boy at Herogasm and accused him of murdering his family, Ben responded with dismissively indifferently, saying “Which one?”.

Soldier Boy is deeply proud of his involvement in raising publicity for the Afghan Mujaheddin in their resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. His fond recollections of the Mujaheddin as "the good guys" reflect his lack of understanding of the complex geopolitics at play during the War on Terror. This also demonstrates his absence of the anti-Arab and Muslim prejudice that many Americans developed and exhibited in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Gulf Wars, and America's ongoing military commitments in the Middle East.

For all of Soldier Boy's flaws, he is a notably honorable person and always keeps his word, primarily shown through him keeping his part of the deal that he made with Butcher and Hughie to help them kill Homelander, even when the latter eventually overpowered him in combat. His sense of honor goes so far that he was even willing to continue the mission even after discovering that Homelander was his biological son, choosing to keep his word to Butcher and Hughie. He was also outraged when Butcher let feelings get the better of him & went back on their agreement, solely because of his attack on Ryan. His sense of honor does not excuse some of his actions though, as when Mindstorm trapped Butcher in his nightmares, he was willing to leave Butcher to die and assured Hughie he would keep his word about killing Homelander, believing that Butcher wouldn't mind giving his life for that.

Though shown to be quite courageous, Soldier Boy's time as a Russian lab rat had left him with a fear and hatred of being locked away again. When The Boys attempted to use a dose of Novichok to knock him out during their brawl at Vought Tower, he expressed fear and anger at the thought of being locked away, and this determination caused him to charge his most destructive blast of radiation yet to try and kill them all.

Soldier Boy also shows some naivety, truly believing that Crimson Countess loved him and she would go and rescue him, never realizing she always hated him. He loved Countess and hoped that that she would come and save him during his imprisonment. As such, he seemed genuinely shocked and hurt to find that she had never loved him and had abandoned him to the Russians for seemingly no reason beyond pure hatred. He also thought that she with his former teammates were paid by the Russians to betray and give him to them so they could use him as a laboratory rat in experiments and was greatly surprised that not only that they weren't paid but also did it out of spite. His naivety was also shown when, despite being repeatedly told that Noir had led the attack on him, he refused to believe it due to the fact he had beaten down Noir more than once. Soldier Boy's time as a lab rat has also left him unaware of modern technology and terms that most people know, as when Hughie questioned if he knew what the internet or GPS was, he tried to claim that Hughie made those words up.

Soldier Boy was a user of drugs. He frequently used marijuana, despite arresting people for it, and was a user of hard drugs such as cocaine. He was also quite pleased when using amphetamines, proceeding to claim it was how D-Day had been won (even though it’s unknown if he was present). He felt like a "jackass" when he was made to do a PSA video for Vought on not taking drugs and even commented on his hypocrisy for advocating drug avoidance. Powers/abilities Superhuman Strength: Superhuman durability Toxin immunity Radiation immunity Psychic Immunity (Tentative) Superhuman Speed and Reflexes Superhuman Agility Superhuman Hearing Superhuman Stamina Superhuman Endurance Regenerative Healing Factor Radiation Generation Longevity Radioactive Aura Radiation-Infused Energy Blasts Self-Detonation Disempowerment Master Combatant Proficient Boxer Shield Proficiency: Soldier Boy is well skilled in wielding his near-indestructible shield. While it can be a source of defense, Ben also incorporates his shield as a blunt weapon to bash opponents with. Such is the strength and skill with which he wields it, that Soldier Boy can cripple even highly durable Supes with his shield, having used it to shatter Black Noir’s skull. Even Homelander, the most powerful Supe in all of existence, was shown to be stunned briefly when he was struck with the shield and Soldier Boy's strength. Knife Proficiency Expert Marksman Singer Acting Intimidation Indomitable Will

Hughie is 25 and a 6’3 tall, skinny white male with messy, brown hair and loves Billy Joel and is helping butcher try and kill homelander. Butcher is 45 and 6’5, he has lightly tanned skin, he has a British accent as well. He wears his signature trench coat with a Hawaiian shirt underneath. He has short, black hair and a scruffy lightly shaved down beard