The Boys Season 5 Easter Egg Continues Soldier Boy's Captain America Parody

Spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 5, "One-Shots" follow.

Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) on "The Boys" is a blatant parody of Marvel's Captain America; a shield-wielding super-soldier created during World War 2, who then spent decades in a Rip Van Winkle sleep before waking up in the present. He even led a team called Payback, a vengeance-themed name riffing on "The Avengers." 

"One-Shots" continues the parody by giving us a glimpse at Soldier Boy's licensed comic books. In this episode, he and Homelander (Antony Starr) — the unhappiest father-son duo around — fly out to Los Angeles to meet superhero Mr. Marathon (Ackles' old "Supernatural" co-star Jared Padalecki). Marathon has a collection of Vought International memorabilia, and Homelander thinks this could have clues to locating the V-One formula. 

In Marathon's collection are some vintage comic books, sealed in protective plastic casing. We get a close-up of "Soldier Boy" issue #45, which (if we can trust this book by its cover) is about Soldier Boy fighting hippies and Vietnam War protesters. The cover image shows Soldier Boy holding two guns, a rifle in his right arm and a pistol in his left, and shouting "Get a haircut!" at a crowd of protestors demanding lawlessness and drugs on opposite sides of him. The caption underneath the image? "Thou doth protest too much." 

The issue's text font looks just like a '60s Marvel comic. The depiction of Soldier Boy resembles the art of Captain America by Marvel Universe co-creator Jack Kirby, and the Shakespeare paraphrasing caption is the sort of flowery touch that Stan Lee would use in Marvel comics. Next to the corner box listing the issue number is a smaller drawing of Soldier Boy in the same pose as Cap on Kirby's cover for "Captain America" #109.

This comic lines up with what we learned about Soldier Boy's history back in "The Boys" Season 3. 

He named names of "suspected communists" to the U.S. government during the 1950s. "The Legend" (Paul Rieser) also told Hughie (Jack Quaid) that Soldier Boy "sprayed a fire hose in Birmingham" (referencing police attacks on civil rights protestors in the 1960s), did "some target practice at Kent State," and that "there were rumors about Dealey Plaza" (implying Soldier Boy may have assassinated President John F. Kennedy). In "One-Shots," when Marathon mentions the "Thou Doth Protest Too Much" issue was pulled after the Kent State shooting, Soldier Boy just grins: "Good times."

The fictional comic cover tying Soldier Boy to the real politics of the '60s-'70s adds layers to the Captain America parody. He's called Captain America after all; he's an innately political character. While "The Boys" uses Soldier Boy to satirize right-wingers, "Captain America" has typically been written by liberals who believe in the American Dream but may be dissatisfied by the reality. Cap actually does stand for truth, justice, and liberty for all people, and "Captain America" writers use him to explore the dissonance between those ideals and where America falls short of them.

Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's "Captain America Comics" #1 in 1940 depicted Cap slugging Adolf Hitler, a year before America entered World War 2. It's one of the most famous comic covers ever, and a bold tone-setter. In 1974, during the contemporary Watergate scandal, Steve Englehart wrote a "Captain America" storyline that concluded by revealing its masked villain was the U.S. President. The equivalent "Soldier Boy" story would probably have Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as the villains instead.

Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy is pointedly different from in the original "The Boys" comic, which offered a different flavor of Captain America parody. "The Boys" comic writer Garth Ennis isn't fond of superheroes in general, but he really hates Captain America, calling the character offensive to the real soldiers who fought in WW2. That hatred comes out in "The Boys."

In the comic, Soldier Boy is not a single character, but a title passed down. The original Soldier Boy fought in World War 2 ... and got himself killed by walking into a Nazi ambush through sheer incompetence. The modern Soldier Boy is a pathetic loser and total square, who sucks up to Homelander in hopes he'll be invited to join the Seven. ("The Boys" TV show totally flipped Soldier Boy and Homelander's relationship; since Soldier Boy is his dad, Homelander is desperate for his approval.) 

In the show, Soldier Boy is still hardly a hero, but he's got a lot more dignity. The premise of his character is not "how to make Captain America look as uncool and stupid as possible" like in the comics, but rather in twisting the patriotic image of Cap and the stoic machismo of the greatest generation. It's not the first story to do so, either.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's 2002 "The Ultimates" rebooted the Avengers with a satirical twist, delivering more cynical heroes for a more cynical decade. Captain America in "The Ultimates" wasn't a purehearted paragon, but a more realistic depiction of a soldier from 1940s America: a believer that might makes right, casually sexist and racist, etc. Ackles' Soldier Boy offers the same twist on Captain America as "The Ultimates," except he's even worse.

"The Boys" is streaming on Prime Video.