The Boys season 2: New trailer, cast, plot and release date

The Boys on  Amazon Prime  focuses on a team of vigilantes who take self-serving superheroes down a peg or two. Star Trek star Karl Urban heads up the vigilantes, called The Boys. The superheroes, who are warped by fame and various vices, are called The Seven.

Warning: Possible spoilers ahead.

In the new full trailer of The Boys, posted by Amazon on Aug. 4, we see The Boys vigilante group, led by Karl Urban, striking back against the superheroes known as The Seven, who are abusing their powers. The trailer shows more about the secret agenda of The Seven to build an army of superheroes that'll do their bidding.

The new trailer shows that season 2 will be bloodier, creepier and more interesting considering The Seven are using political propaganda techniques about terrorists to scare everyone into supporting their violent behavior.

In another teaser trailer, posted by Amazon on July 8, we see The Boys -- who are in hiding from The Seven -- in a dark living room watching a TV news report that says their leader Billy Butcher and their entire gang are wanted by the police for various crimes. 

We also see The Seven, led by The Homelander (Antony Starr), saying the world still needs superheroes. There's plenty of footage in the trailer of The Boys battling The Seven complete with fisticuffs, explosions, bloody deaths and the superheroes showing off their impressive powers. And yes, the new trailer has plenty of moments of Karl Urban being snarky.

Amazon posted an earlier teaser for The Boys season 2 that introduces a new female superhero named Stormfront, played by Aya Cash (You're the Worst), joining the team.

Amazon posted (then pulled) a teaser trailer for season 2 on Dec. 5, 2019. The footage showed a slow-motion shot of Homelander (Antony Starr) floating downward with some sort of gory substance streaming down his face. 

There's also a short glimpse of Terror the dog, a character from The Boys comic book series the show's based on. 

The Boys plot (season 1 recap)

In season 1, The Seven cause a young man named Hughie (Jack Quaid) to seek revenge when they accidentally kill his girlfriend. Hughie hooks up with the anti-cape vigilantes The Boys. 

The team consists of charismatic leader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), along with Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), Female (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon).

But there's strife within The Seven when newcomer Annie January/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) joins. She wrestles with everything from the perils of fame to dealing with a #MeToo nightmare. Through her eyes, we see everything that's wrong with The Seven. 

At the end of season 1, The Seven's lineup is forever changed. Aquaman-esque superhero The Deep (Chace Crawford) is relocated out of the spotlight after sexually assaulting fellow superhero Starlight in an incident that ended in a #MeToo scandal. 

Superhero A-Train (Jessie Usher) is outed as a drug addict who uses a superhero-level steroid to run even faster, with deadly results. 

The Seven's handler, Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), is murdered by superhero-gone-bad The Homelander (Antony Starr) during a shocking revelation that she kept secret from him (he's secretly fathered a super baby). The twist being that the mother is Billy Butcher's wife, who he thought was dead. 

The Boys plot (season 2)

Season 2 will have to address all these plot points, as well as bring in a new handler and perhaps a few more superheroes. 

With The Homelander going off the rails, it may be up to superheroes Starlight and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) to restore The Seven to real superheroes who actually care about protecting humanity more than their own superhero image.

New cast members include Timeless actors Goran Visnjic and Claudia Doumit. Visnjic plays Alistair Adana, the charismatic leader of a mysterious church. Doumit will play Victoria Neuman, a young wunderkind congresswoman. Aya Cash plays a superpowered neo-Nazi called Stormfront. 

"I think Stormfront is like a nuclear bomb that goes off in the Seven," Cash told Entertainment Weekly in March. "She's here to try to get Vought back to the original idea behind creating superheroes, and she can be quite the feminist."

The Boys series recap show

Amazon announced during Comic-Con at Home July 23 that the series will get its own recap show called Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys, with actor/comedian Aisha Tyler (Archer) as the host. The Boys after-show begins on Aug. 28 with a recap of season 1.

Who's making it?

Supernatural and Timeless creator Eric Kripke is behind The Boys.

The series is produced by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. It's based on the extremely dark comic by Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson, which ran for 72 issues from 2008 to 2012.

When's the release date?

Filming for season 2 started in Toronto in the summer of 2019. Urban posted on his Instagram on Nov. 6 that filming on The Boys season 2 had wrapped. 

The Boys season 2 will premiere the first three episodes on Amazon Prime on Sept 4. New episodes will be available each Friday, culminating in a season finale on Oct. 9. There are eight episodes in total.

The Boys series has also been renewed by Amazon for season 3, which was announced during the show's Comic-Con at Home panel on July 23. No release date has been set, but production on season 3 will begin in early 2021.

Meet the cast 

Karl Urban as Billy Butcher

Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight

Antony Starr as The Homelander

Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve

Jessie Usher as A-Train

Chace Crawford as The Deep

Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir

Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk

Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell

Aya Cash as Stormfront

Simon Pegg as Hughie's father

Shantel VanSanten as Becca Butcher

Karen Fukuhara as The Female

Malcolm Barrett as Seth Reed

Goran Visnjic as Alistair Adana

Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman

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