The Boys Just Hinted At Queen Maeve Dying In Season 3

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Boys season 3, episode 4

The death flags are out for Queen Maeve in The Boys season 3. Before Starlight joined Vought's Seven superteam, Queen Maeve languished in a cycle of misery and excess, trapped by the corporate pressures of being a top hero and the green shadow of Homelander's ex-boyfriend envy. But watching the young and aspiring Annie January lit a fire under Maeve - a determination to spare Starlight from suffering the same fate. Since then, Maeve has blackmailed Homelander, attacked Black Noir with nuts, and teamed up with Billy Butcher... but she knows her problems will never truly vanish until Homelander is dead and buried.

The opening episodes of The Boys season 3 find Maeve and Butcher hatching a plan. After discovering secret files that suggest Soldier Boy was killed by a secret Russian weapon in the 1980s, Maeve tells Butcher to go fetch it, and her new partner is only too happy to oblige. While the Boys embark on their secret mission to Mother Russia, The Boys season 3, episode 4 ("Glorious Five Year Plan") shows Queen Maeve training hard in her quarters at Seven tower. The floor space is cleared, her sword is dusted off, and she even started false rumors about being "hungover, tits deep in some random f**k-pile" to avoid Homelander's suspicion.

The Wonder Woman parody tells Starlight that she doesn't expect to defeat her nemesis personally, but should manage to "buy Butcher a second or two to get a good shot." The prospect of Queen Maeve gearing up for battle sounds exciting at first, but this line secretly hints toward a major character death possibly incoming. Towards the end of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's original The Boys comic books, Homelander is growing more unstable by the page, and Queen Maeve finds Starlight attempting to flee the Seven. Homelander realizes this and chases her down, but Maeve stands in his way. She's easily defeated, but the sacrifice buys enough time for Starlight to escape. The whole scenario sounds suspiciously similar to what Dominique McElligott's live-action Maeve claims to be training for in The Boys season 3.

Even without knowing her comic history, Maeve's training looks bad for her future prospects in The Boys. The conversation with Starlight leaves no doubt that Maeve has already accepted death at Homelander's grubby hands. Her plan isn't to defeat him or escape - it's using her own life to ensure someone else can kill the man who spent so many years tormenting her. The situation must be bleak when even Queen Maeve has given up on Queen Maeve reaching The Boys season 4.

Losing Maeve would represent a major blow to The Boys. McElligott's character has become increasingly complex with each season, and her hatred for Homelander more and more obvious. And where other Seven veterans are all mostly irredeemable, Maeve alone demonstrates how a fundamentally good person can become worn down and jaded by life under Vought's thumb. Having said that, a heroic sacrifice would perfectly end Queen Maeve's The Boys storyline. "Fundamentally good" though she may be, Maeve spent years in silent complicity of Homelander's atrocities before Starlight's arrival, never speaking up or making a stand. It seems fitting that she'll eventually give her life to protect those who are willing to fight back against Homelander, whether that be in The Boys season 3 or further down the line.

If the final moments of The Boys season 3, episode 4 are anything to go by, Queen Maeve might not even get a chance to sacrifice herself. Billy Butcher went to Russia to find the weapon that killed Soldier Boy, but instead he finds a hairy Jensen Ackles, rendering Maeve's plan to sacrifice herself totally pointless. Unless, of course, Soldier Boy is the weapon...