The Boys season 3's rewritten Soldier Boy origin gives Jensen Ackles' supe a deeper significance his comic counterpart was never afforded. A flock of new despicable Vought heroes are swooping into The Boys season 3, including Laurie Holden's Crimson Countess, Wolverine parody Ground Hawk, and Starlight's "Supersonic" ex-boyfriend. The most intriguing addition, however, is Soldier Boy, portrayed by Supernatural's Jensen Ackles. Riffing on Marvel's Captain America, The Boys' Soldier Boy is an uber-patriotic super-soldier, and one of Vought's earliest Compound-V creations.
Several heroes operate under the "Soldier Boy" mantle in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys comic books. The original led Payback - a team of heroes similar to the Seven - during World War II, but was woefully inept and killed dishonorably in battle. In the modern day, a different Soldier Boy (pretending to be a WWII hero to his adoring public) proves even more useless than his predecessor. Making a case as the most naive supe on Vought's payroll, Soldier Boy's overarching goal is landing a gig in the Seven, despite his pant-wetting cowardice.
For The Boys season 3, Eric Kripke (showrunner) is rejigging Soldier Boy's backstory. Based on the scant few details Kripke and Ackles have revealed during interviews - as well as snippets revealed in past seasons - we know Amazon's live-action Soldier Boy is a Vought legend from World War II, but rather than getting Payback killed through his incompetence, Soldier Boy became a star. He knew Stormfront during her "Liberty" days, and starred in movies right up until the 1980s. Payback was a prototype for the Seven, and that makes Soldier Boy something of a Proto-Homelander. Jensen Ackles has hinted toward Soldier Boy being kept imprisoned for several decades (likely when he was replaced by Homelander), before finally resurfacing in The Boys season 3.
This new origin story completely flips Soldier Boy's raison d'etre in The Boys. Rather than a bumbling idiot only concerned about his next promotion, Ackles' Soldier Boy cuts the figure of a genuine wartime hero who spent years on top of the Vought pile. Rather than sucking up to Homelander, he was Homelander, once upon a time. Ennis and Robertson's original comics used Soldier Boy to highlight the depravity of Homelander (i.e. the Herogasm "initiation" test), and to demonstrate how the superhero industry chews up those who enter naively. After two seasons of carnage, corruption and collateral damage, The Boys' TV adaptation has made both of those points perfectly clear by now. We don't need Soldier Boy to see Homelander is a terrible human being, while Starlight's storyline already exposed Vought's exploitation in no uncertain terms.
Instead, Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy can be a gateway into Vought's past. Thanks to Stormfront, the company's Nazi origins are now public knowledge, but there's an awfully big gap between World War II and The Boys' present day. Soldier Boy was in the thick of the action for much of that blank period, and can connect the dots between past and present in a way no other supe can - apart from maybe Stormfront. Soldier Boy is the antithesis of Vought's Nazi weather witch, and the dynamic between these two veterans adds a new shade to Payback's history in the comic books.
The most exciting change to Soldier Boy's character, however, is his unpredictable morality. Perhaps Ackles' character will be desperate to relive former glories, and want back into the superhero game so badly he forgives everything Vought did to him. On the other hand, being replaced by Homelander and held captive for several decades might've soured Soldier Boy's perspective on Vought, setting him up as a potential ally to Butcher's Boys. That kind of ambiguity was absent in the comics, but thanks to a new-fangled backstory, no one knows which side Soldier Boy will be serving in The Boys season 3.