The Boys Presents: Diabolical reveals what The Deep has been up to since The Boys season 2 ended... and teases even rougher tides for the hero in season 3. The Deep endures a miserable time across The Boys seasons 1 and 2, and were he not completely deserving of such misfortune, audiences might actually feel sorry for him. An established member of Vought's Seven when The Boys begins, Deep's downward spiral starts when he accidentally involves a dolphin in a traffic accident, and gets outed as a sex offender by Starlight. Booted from the Seven, Deep spends The Boys season 2 trying to worm his way back to prominence through the Church of the Collective. It doesn't work, and Vought's wettest supe ends season 2 still reeking of shrimp and desperation.
Voiced by his live-action actor, Chace Crawford, The Deep's next appearance comes in "BFFs" - an episode of animated anthology spinoff, The Boys: Diabolical. The story stars Sky (voiced by Awkwafina), who finds a stolen sample of Compound-V and gives herself superpowers. Because a regular kid like Sky knows what Compound-V is and what it does, "BFFs" must take place sometime after The Boys season 2, which is when the blue goo went public.
That means The Boys: Diabolical is our first glimpse of The Deep post-Church of the Collective after season 2's finale - and, happily for viewers, his run of bad karma isn't ending anytime soon. "BFFs" reveals Deep is still swimming upstream seeking a route back into the Seven, but this time, he's tracking down Compound-V dealt by street-level drug dealers. Though not exactly the sharpest tool in Vought's box, there's no faulting Deep's logic here. Stan Edgar will be apoplectic knowing his precious Compound-V is freely available from local weed merchants, and if The Deep could stem the flow of that supply, he'd certainly earn a few points within Vought HQ.
Does The Deep's newfound mission to clean up the streets prove Chace Crawford's superhero character is turning over a new leaf in The Boys? Not quite... The Boys: Diabolical's "BFFs" shows an almost manic Deep, relentlessly pursuing the illicit Compound-V as if the ocean itself depended on it. After apprehending and interrogating Sky's dealer, he allows the man to be brutally ripped to shreds by an angry shark, yelling how he's "pretty F**KING MOTIVATED RIGHT NOW." Killing a drug dealer may not be completely out of the ordinary for a Vought supe but, later in the episode, Deep corners Sky herself. Intimidating and threatening an unarmed child out of pure desperation to get his Seven gig back is pretty dark - especially compared to the deluded, "trying to be a better man" Deep we followed through The Boys season 2.
The Deep's cameo in The Boys Presents: Diabolical teases an unhinged, volatile, unpredictable return for the character in The Boys season 3. Any pretense of trying to mend PR damage caused by his history of sexual abuse has been dropped, and now Deep will stop at nothing to achieve his dream of a Seven comeback. Even if a darker turn does occur, don't expect The Deep to lose his "most pathetic character" crown in The Boys season 3. For all his wide-eyed rage and trout-themed threats, "BFFs" sees Deep get beaten by a child's army of turds, suggesting Eric Kripke hasn't run out of ways to humiliate the hero just yet.