One of the stars of The Boys has revealed he walked off the set while filming a shocking scene in the upcoming season five.
The Amazon Prime Video superhero series is adapted from the comic books written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, and it follows the titular team of vigilantes as they combat superpowered enemies who abuse their powers.
Last year, showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed that the show would end with its fifth season, telling fans that he had always planned to finish the story at that stage and teasing that it would provide a “gory, epic, moist climax”.
That season was filmed earlier this year and is expected to be released in 2026, and during a convention appearance this week, Jensen Ackles, who plays Soldier Boy in the show, opened up about a shocking moment during filming that made him leave the set.
He detailed a scene in which he walked on set, turned a corner and was frozen in place by the appearance of something that he did not expect in the scene. “Oh my god,” Ackles recalled saying in that moment.
“That wasn’t my line, and I was supposed to stay there,” he continued. “But I hadn’t seen what was going on. We’d blocked it out, we rehearsed it. [But] things changed when the camera was rolling, and I hadn’t seen it. And I walked in and it was, ‘Dear god’, and I just walked back out.”
He did not explain exactly what was so shocking to him in the scene, but added that he apologised to the crew for cutting the take short. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t prepared for that’. And I don’t think anybody else will be either.”
After the season five shoot wrapped, Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, wrote an emotional tribute to his character, describing the show as “the highlight of my career”.
During season four, fans of the show shared their thoughts online after each episode, with the disturbingly graphic scenes in the sixth instalment being labelled “fucking diabolical”, and the seventh being described as “uncomfortable” and “gruesome”.
In a four-star review of the new season, NME wrote: “With season five already confirmed, the return of a few familiar faces and a lot of characters confronting their pasts, this season sometimes feels like the set up for an eventual endgame scenario. Fans will note that spin-off show Gen V recently introduced a potentially supe-killing biological weapon. Luckily, all that plot never slows down the pace in what is another urgent edition of TV’s best superhero show.”
It was later named as one of the best TV shows of 2024 by NME.
