As The Boys Season 5 heads towards the final curtain, we still have something to look forward to after things end. Starting now, the series has already started to lay the groundwork for Vought Rising, the upcoming prequel set in 1950s New York City at the dawn of the superhero age. And from everything we know so far, we there are a lot of connections between the two shows.
The big piece of connective tissue arrives in episode 3 of The Boys Season 5, Every One of You Sons of Bi**hes, where Dr. Sameer Shah and Sister Sage explain the origins of V1, the first and far more volatile iteration of Compound V. It is described as ten times more potent than the version used today, which is why the supes from that era simply do not age. The five survivors of those early V1 trials are exactly the characters Vought Rising is built around: Soldier Boy, Stormfront (then known as Clara Vought), Bombsight, Torpedo, and Private Angel. Seeing their origins framed this way in the mothership show does a lot of work in terms of making the prequel feel like a natural extension of the world rather than a cash grab spinoff.
The episode also introduces Fort Harmony, a now-abandoned army hospital where Frederick Vought, the Nazi founder of the corporation, conducted his early experiments. The government classified it and shut it down after World War II, but MM suspects it is where V1 testing first took place. It is exactly the kind of dark institutional history that a noir-flavored prequel set in the 1950s will want to dig into, which means we have some idea what we might get to see in Vought Rising after The Boys Season 5.
Vought Rising will continue the story after The Boys Season 5
Showrunner Eric Kripke has described Vought Rising as “L.A. Confidential with superheroes, maybe grimier,” and that framing tells us a lot. The show is built as a murder mystery with a pulpy, noir atmosphere, moving through heroin dens, bars, and the seedy underbelly of postwar America. Kripke called it “Pulp Fiction-y” with femme fatales and detectives thrown into a world where superheroes are just beginning to exist.
Jensen Ackles leads the prequel as Soldier Boy, with Aya Cash returning as Stormfront aka Clara Vought. They are joined by Mason Dye as Bombsight, Will Hochman as Torpedo, and Elizabeth Posey as Private Angel.
Filming on Season 1 of Vought Rising has already wrapped, though a premiere date has not yet been confirmed. Kripke has also teased the possibility of Ethan Slater returning as Thomas Godolkin, the mind-controlling founder of Godolkin University who first appeared in Gen V. Whether that happens or not, it is clear that Vought Rising is being positioned as the next major chapter of a universe that still has a lot of story left to tell.
The Boys Season 5 is now streaming on Prime Video.
Edited by Nibir Konwar