Stormfront will be in line for a superhero spanking at the hands of Butcher and the gang in The Boys season 2 - here's what we know about the character from the comic books and the showrunner of the Amazon series. The Boys season 1 proved to be a huge success on Amazon Prime Video, subverting the superhero genre in gloriously tasteless fashion and providing a refreshingly cynical take on what the world might look like if superpowers actually existed. In its debut season, The Boys laid the framework for an ongoing battle between Billy Butcher's band of anti-supe recruits and Vought American's Seven world-renowned heroes led by the morally-bankrupt Homelander.
Unsurprisingly, The Boys was quickly green-lit for a second season and production is currently underway. Not much is currently known about what Eric Kripke and co. have in store for The Boys season 2, but a few details have come to light - an episode that features Butcher and his beloved pet dog from the comics, Terror, for example. Kripke has also confirmed that Stormfront, a popular, albeit particularly nasty, villain from the comic books will make their debut in season 2 as a recurring antagonist.
The original Garth Ennis comic Stormfront is a horrific superhero that gives even Homelander a run for his money in the bad guy stakes. Raised in Nazi Germany, Stormfront was a member of the Hitler Youth before becoming a test subject for the Compound V experiments and evolving into the world's first superhuman. Hitler wanted the creation destroyed, but Stormfront was smuggled to the U.S.A. instead. Obviously, this origin story is a PR nightmare, so Vought provide Stormfront the cover story of a reincarnated Viking with powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability and electricity manipulation. In this sense, the closest DC and Marvel parallels would be Shazam and Thor, respectively.
In the modern world, Stormfront is one of Vought's top employees and the leader of the Payback super-group, which he rules with an iron fist. The new addition could also herald the arrival of the rest of the Payback gang in The Boys season 2, which might include the likes of Tek-Knight and Soldier Boy. Due to his origins, Stormfront's attitudes are predictably grim, dominated by racist, pro-Aryan views and a steady diet of Nazi propaganda, which he makes little effort to hide while carrying out assignments from Vought. Despite running close to Homelander in terms of strength, the Boys eventually get the better of Stormfront, with Mother's Milk even managing to crush the Nazi's testicles in one particularly grisly scene.
The version of Stormfront that will be seen in Amazon Prime's live-action adaptation of The Boys is going to be fairly different compared to the original. For a start, the character will be a female, and Aya Cash is the woman taking on the role. Furthermore, Kripke has suggested in interviews that Stormfront won't be a literal Nazi from 1940s Germany. Instead, the showrunner claimed that their interpretation of Stormfront would be inspired by the modern day rise of white nationalism and racism that is playing out on news channels and on social media across the world, adding a more modern slant to the character.
This reimagining will not only sit better with a television audience, but will perhaps also resonate more with contemporary viewers by dealing with issues that are more current and socially relevant in nature. Naturally, this could take The Boys season 2 into considerably darker and more political territory but, then again, Butcher is hardly a stranger to controversy.
The Boys season 2 is currently without a release date. More news as it arrives.