Funny enough, the most popular anti-superhero superhero franchise in entertainment history is Amazon’s The Boys. The inventiveness and sense of humour of Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg give Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s contentious adult comics an equally dark, albeit far more grounded, makeover.
The show’s three seasons are jam-packed with incredible character and plot development, as well as career-defining performances from every single member. Give Antony Starr an Emmy already, please! While what we have seen is fantastic, you know what is even better? What was left over from the final product!
Though we do understand that time is money when it comes to cutting things like this, The Boys, like any other superhero franchise, has a number of removed moments that we would say would have improved the entire viewing experience. So, we decided to compile a list of the best of the best!
The Boys: Explored’s Top 14 Deleted Scenes are listed below. Oh, and we are going chronologically, so be sure to watch this video all the way through for those tasty Season 3 deleted moments. You will not be let down if you believe in us.
Season 1
Billy Butcher’s stash of fake IDs
When Billy Butcher first appears to us, he is unadorned with flowers or bells. He simply enters Hughie’s place of employment, fools him into believing he is with the FBI, and sets him on the same path of revenge as himself so he may finally confront Homelander.
Butcher’s introduction to the plot was not supposed to go in this manner, as it turns out. In a Season 1 early deleted scene, Butcher is seen sitting in his car and gazing at Hughie’s store. He pulls out a yellow box with the Harwick logo all on it and flips it open to see a sizable cache of bogus identifications and cash for emergencies. We were able to distinguish at least four different ID badges after some snooping: one from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, one from the Drug Enforcement Agency, one from the New York Police Department, and one from Homeland Security.
After looking over these four identification cards, Butcher concludes that none of them would be convincing enough for the scam he plans to pull on Hughie. He then chooses the FBI badge, takes his case file, closes the stash box, and gets out of the car. In the final few seconds of this deleted scene, Butcher says, “I’m going to get him this time,” obviously alluding to Homelander, and he also uses his favourite four-letter word that begins with a C.
It may have been included in the final cut because it is just under a minute long and would have given viewers a better sense of how Machiavellian Butcher is. It is already remarkable that he has access to ATF, DEA, and Homeland Security badges, but when you realise that he was a CIA Black Ops agent in the past, it makes you feel foolish for finding something so simple to be impressive.
And this clip’s finale provides all the background information we might have required in the first season to comprehend Butcher’s true motivations. And, not to mention, more Karl Urban on our screens is a very good thing all the time, so we’d have been okay with the pilot running a minute longer to give the non-comic fans some much-needed context, but we’re glad we waited till M.M. showed up.
A-Train meets Madelyn Stillwell
Another deleted scene that would’ve given us much-needed context for the first season is this one between A-Train and Madelyn Stillwell. Don’t you guys think it was rather humble of A-Train to apologize to Hughie when he turned up at Vought Tower? You guys saw just how big of a prick he was in that first season, right? So, why did A-Train apologize to Hughie when he could’ve just left it to Disaster Management and gone about his business as usual?
Well, the answer of course, is Madelyn Stillwell. In this deleted scene between the Vought Senior VP of Hero Management and one of her top-priority Supes, we see that A-Train actually refuses to apologize to Hughie at first. He throws the tantrum that we expect him to throw when Madelyn brings up the fact that Hughie won’t sign the NDA unless A-Train apologizes to him personally.
The Fastest Man on Earth says he’s not about to let some guy “blubber over him for 5 minutes” after he has killed that guy’s girlfriend. There are 2 things that make this scene so interesting. The first is Stillwell herself. As soon as she detects A-Train’s disobedience, she flicks her mommy switch on and immediately boxes him in by bringing up Shockwave’s recent track record.
She implies that him catching up to A-Train’s speed makes the latter quite dispensable and also brings up the fact that negative publicity, like Hughie beating the drum over his girlfriend being killed by a Supe, would severely damage his Nike collaboration rollout; and if there is one thing Vought doesn’t like to mess with, it’s their money supply. And just to take things a bit into the realm of creepiness, Madelyn also employs the same Oedipal tactic that she uses with Homelander on A-Train, though he does seem far less… interested in her than what she was offering for his career.
She even references Lamplighter, saying how A-Train doesn’t want to “end up like him” if he doesn’t play ball with her. So, he sucks it up and goes to meet Hughie to “apologize” to him, even though it would take 5 precious minutes out of his own day. And that is where the second interesting thing comes into play, because A-Train in this scene is completely clean, whereas when he meets Hughie, he is covered in Robin’s blood.
This discrepancy could have thrown a glaring spotlight on Hughie’s trauma, because, at first glance, it looks like A-Train showed up right after the robbery and apologized as he was expected to. But when you take this scene into account, it shows you just how fragile Hughie’s mental state was at the time, that all he could see was the blood on A-Train’s hands; and his face, and his suit, and all over his body, really.
Homelander talks to Queen Maeve in the bathroom
This scene is the reason why we demand more Dominique McElligott in Season 4, Mr. Kripke. You’ve taken out her best scenes, and Queen Maeve is one of those rare Supes we don’t mind seeing more of! Take this particular encounter between Maeve and Homelander, for instance.
It begins with Queen Maeve getting her make-up just right, but we know she’s doing it out of compulsion and not choice, as we see her hit a vape pen right after straightening her hair out. Homelander enters the washroom she is in and starts beating around the bush by bringing up their past relationship. I mean, he enters calling her babe and starts reminiscing about the time they were together, so naturally, Maeve’s defences go up.
Homelander recounts the story of one instance two years ago when they were receiving a Congressional Medal of Honour – America’s Highest Military Award – and she hesitated to take his hand. Maeve points out that she took it in the end and that’s what matters, but Homelander insists that their relationship falling apart the way it did felt rather suspicious to him. Maeve reminds him that she broke up with him because he couldn’t keep it in his pants – something we know is true thanks to Stillwell and THAT incident with Becca – but Homelander knows she is lying, because her heart rate elevates when she says that; a clear indication of dishonesty.
Maeve brushes it off and asks him to stop playing coy with her and tell her why he was really there, when he reveals that Translucent is dead. He warns her to stay sharp – clearly referring to her getting buzzed in the washroom – and ends the scene by walking off camera while saying that someone is killing Supes.
It’s a fairly short scene that packs in a lot of context; we find out that Maeve’s relationship with Homie was probably more coerced than consensual, we see Homie’s intimidation tactics in play for the first time chronologically speaking, and we also get to see the exceptionally nuanced performance that Dominique delivers here. She juggles at least 5 different emotions together with effortless grace, and continues to do so in the next scene on our list.
Homelander and Maeve at Translucent’s autopsy table
Now, this is a scene that made us laugh out loud in the most unintentionally hilarious fashion. So, right after Homelander tells Maeve Translucent is dead, they head over to his autopsy table to take a gander at the carnage and try to make some sense of the situation at hand. Maeve is very contemplative here. She recognizes the fact that killing a Supe is not easy because they are resistant to most things that could kill them.
She herself had wrecked a building and walked straight into gunfire earlier that day without getting so much as a scratch on her, but here was her teammate, a man with skin harder than diamond, lying deader than she would be if she actually told Homelander what she thought of him.
We can see that Maeve is fearing for her own life by the look on her face, but Homelander breaks her semi-vigil by saying he prefers Translucent the way he was now. Earlier in the scene, he is visibly disgusted by his former teammate’s exploded remains, and after interrupting Maeve, he tells her that when they find who killed Translucent, they would take a little extra time with them, and that that way, everyone would feel a lot better than they have been lately; clearly referring to his own foul mood.
Before their conversation can go any further, Madelyn Stillwell bursts into the room and declares that they have a situation on their hands, to which Homelander responds by chuckling at Translucent’s corpse and saying “No crap!” And the face he makes when Stillwell says “it’s much bigger than him” is absolutely priceless.
Obviously, this was meant to be the scene that would set up the airplane disaster seen in episode 4, and we can understand why it was cut, but still; including this scene would’ve been worth it just to see how sadistic Homelander was willing to get. And, it would also make his speech at Translucent’s funeral that much more disingenuous, thereby increasing the hilarity of the overall scenario in the darkest manner possible.
Frenchie and M.M. struggle in captivity
This 30-second clip of Frenchie and M.M. bonding over their mutual distrust of Butcher might be the most bromantic moment they shared in season 1. So after Homelander clandestinely creates Super-Terrorists – sorry, Super Villains – to give his team a real challenge to fight against and thereby ensuring that they get formally enlisted as military personnel, The Boys end up having to swallow a crap lasagne in under 3 seconds as they are all branded as wanted men.
CIA Deputy Director Susan Raynor can’t help but give the order to take them captive, and she does get her hands on Frenchie, M.M. and Kimiko, but Butcher and Hughie manage to make it to Grace Mallory and stay out of the CIA’s hands for a good while. In the show, we don’t see much of their confinement, we just see Hughie turn up with his dentures on and M.M. damn near knock him out to retrieve them, but this deleted scene adds an extra layer of hopelessness to their cause. It begins with Frenchie rattling his cage like a madman while demanding to see The Female.
Mother’s Milk reminds his former running mate that none of that would be effective in a CIA black site, and that they should just sit tight because Butcher was going to save them. This causes both of them to burst out laughing, because they know just how ridiculous the claim really was.
Butcher duped them into re-forming The Boys in the first place; he brought Translucent to Frenchie’s doorstep, giving him no choice but to join, and he told M.M. he hadn’t seen Frenchie in years in order to recruit him, when he had probably seen the guy mere hours ago. They know just who Butcher really is, and manage to calm themselves down and resign themselves to their respective fates.
In hindsight, this might have taken some of the impact of Hughie being the one to save them, because typically such scenes are meant to set up the inevitable escape, but after what Billy did to both Frenchie and M.M. in Season 3, this scene would make their stances on him a lot clearer. They’re not deluded enough to think Butcher gives a damn about them; just deluded enough to give a damn about him, and that too extends only so far as their safety.
Butcher visits Becca’s grave before seeing Madelyn Stillwell
Now this is the kind of character development we love to see. In season 1 episode 5, Butcher meets Becca’s sister, who informs him that their family has decided to finally put up a gravestone in remembrance of her. She tells him that they even put wife on the inscription, because although they don’t particularly approve of Butcher and his brash ways, they do acknowledge that Becca was the most important part of his life.
Butcher, as you might have guessed already, loses it at his sister-in-law and goes to destroy the gravestone, giving us that iconic line, “Cool your jets, guv. It’s not a hate crime.” But this deleted scene shows Butcher go back on his conviction to not speak to empty dirt right before he decides to go after Stillwell.
You can see that Butcher really doesn’t like the fact that he is also giving in to the same false comfort that Becca’s family is seeking from her presumed death, but it’s all he has before he goes to avenge her. He acknowledges the fact that he knows she wouldn’t like what he was planning, because he was effectively planning to commit an act of terrorism on US soil, but he says that he tried everything he could to do things the right way.
Becca went missing 8 years ago and in those 8 years Butcher gave it his all, but things just don’t seem to want to unravel “the right way”, so he has decided to do it his way, which we know is far more sinister. Just ask Dr. Vogelbaum. He says he hasn’t come here to ask her for her blessing because 1) he knows she would scream at him to not do it and 2) she wasn’t actually buried there, so what’s the point of asking an empty hole in the dirt for a blessing?
But he ends his speech instead by seeking Becca’s forgiveness for “doing this in your name”, which clearly implies that Butcher is the one who is seeking revenge and that Becca stopped being his driving motivation a long time ago. It beautifully portrays the tragic and terrible worldview of the guy we are supposed to be rooting for, and would have made the final revealing of Becca actually being alive much more impactful in our opinion.
He spoke to her grave, made a plea for forgiveness and tried to blow up a mother and her baby, all for a woman who was still alive and didn’t actually want to see him as much as he thought. These are all the deleted scenes that stole our hearts from season 1. Let’s go on to Season 2.
Season 2
Alternate Homelander Season Ending
So, this is a bit of a meta entry because the ending that Amazon execs approved for Homelander in Season 2 was actually a scene they made Eric Kripke cut from Season 1. That would be the infamous “pleasure” scene where Homelander gets himself off on top of the Chrysler Building whilst maniacally chanting he can do whatever the eff he wants.
It was actually a great scene that fit the tone of his character arc throughout the season, which saw him completely unravel mentally, physically and sexually. But the ending that they would’ve given him otherwise was no less intriguing and ominous. Originally, the show-runners were going to have Homelander fly into outer space and look down on Earth with a deranged look on his face.
This scene would have mirrored another scene from earlier in the season, where Homelander hallucinates massacring protestors in Vought Square when he fails to win them over with his usual charm; only this time, he’s actually considering doing the thing to the entire planet instead. Eric Kripke said that the scene itself was “awesome” and that Antony Starr really conveyed the sense of doom he was looking for exceptionally well, but Amazon higher-ups wanted something a bit more grounded in-character, so they chose to go with the ending that aired.
They did make a reference to this alternate ending when Homelander confronts Stan Edgar after forcing him out of power, saying that the view from space was even better, but we think that they should have worked this into the story somehow. Because Homelander is supposed to be the worst mirror one can hold up to Superman, and it is not entirely inconceivable that he could just blow up the Earth by destabilising its core with his laser eyes; which we believe to have been the intention behind the scene. Instead, they opted to explore his character conflicts, which worked out in their favour thanks to what transpired in Season 3. Still, we think they might use this scene somehow next season, so keep your eyes peeled!
A-Train meets his Financial Advisor and learns he is broke
I think Jessie T. Usher is the actor who can convey frustration the best out of the entire cast, and this deleted scene is living proof of that. It’s understandable why it was cut from the original episode – finding out how Supes spend their money isn’t that important to the plot, after all – but it does explain why A-Train agrees to align himself with the Church of the Collective.
Presumably, right after he was removed from The Seven, A-Train visits his financial advisor to explore new avenues for earning money and finds out that he’s actually very broke in comparison to his $40 million annual income; and it’s all thanks to the reckless life that he lives. His advisor reveals that after taking care of everyone on A-Train’s payroll, and paying for his ridiculous purchases – like buying an island he has never visited and getting a celebrity’s ashes shot into space – A-Train has about a quarter million left to his name.
And when A-Train says he’ll go off on his own and use his brand to earn money independently, the advisor reminds him that Vought owns the A-Train brand, and that screwing with their money would leave him in a worse spot financially than he already is.
This scene explains how Alastair Adana learnt about A-Train’s financial issues, as it is very likely that he got that information from the financial advisor we see in the scene. But since it wasn’t that important to the overall progression of the show, they opted to have Adana bring up his debt over lunch instead, and while we can’t fault that decision, we do wish they’d have kept this in just so we could get more of that sweet A-Train redemption arc going.
Love Sausage’s Love Sausage would’ve been mangled
One of Mother’s Milk’s most iconic and personally traumatic life experiences is getting assaulted and nearly choked to death by Russian Supe Love Sausage’s Love Sausage. When Kimiko, Frenchie and M.M. break into the Sage Grove Centre in season 2, they inadvertently start a facility-wide break-out, after the latter 2 realise that their former archenemy Lamplighter was somehow still alive. Cindy leads this breach, but Love Sausage instantly becomes its highlight when his 10-foot-long appendage breaks the glass of the room that they were hiding in and wraps itself around M.M.’s throat.
What ends up happening in the show is that Kimiko knocks out Love Sausage with her brass knuckles and his appendage just sort of crawls back into his pants. M.M. realises what he was being choked with, and Frenchie asks him to keep an open mind. Well, originally, Frenchie was going to be the one who would have to keep an open mind, as he was going to literally bite Love Sausage’s appendage off to save M.M. Tomer Capone admitted as much in an interview that you should go find.
This would’ve been significantly more disturbing and gruesome than what transpired, but it would have also robbed us of the Love Sausage cameo we got in the Herogasm episode, so we’re okay with this scene having been cut. Regardless, we want to see the outtakes, because that would be the definition of insanity. Put it on the Blue Ray, you cowards!
Butcher Short Film
Okay, this is going to feel like a bit of a cop-out because, you know, you can still see this short film on Amazon Prime as “bonus content”, but if you haven’t seen it, then you’ve missed some peak Butcher material, mates. Because this 5-minute short film not only shows you what happened to Butcher following the Season 1 finale, it also sets up his reunion with The Boys. After saving Billy from the explosion that killed Stillwell and taking him to see his wife for a brief moment, Homelander summarily dumps him at Tony Cicero’s and flies back to his “family”.
Butcher wakes up, panics, asks the receptionist where he is, and frantically notes down the details of the surroundings near Becca’s black site home. The receptionist notices Butcher’s picture being broadcast on the news, because at this point in the story the Boys are wanted criminals, so he runs off and meets an old buddy of his. And we mean real old, like, back from his S.A.S. days. Butcher turns up at Jock’s house looking for asylum and a means to track down Becca.
The two seem to be having a rather civil negotiation, but Jock gives Billy pushback, saying if Becca has gone this deep, then maybe she doesn’t want to be found. But Billy just reiterates his request and goes off to take a shower. By the time he emerges wearing the same tracksuit Frenchie had been referencing the whole season, he discovers that his supposed mate has wasted no time in betraying him to the authorities.
Jock instantly buys the Vought propaganda regarding Billy because, well, it fits his reputation perfectly, and he even goes so far as to say that maybe he is looking to off his own wife. This makes Butcher snap and he chokes the life out of his former friend, literally speaking. He then sets Jock’s house on fire and escapes, making it to the safe house that Frenchie had set up for them temporarily and announcing that he’s back.
Go out of your way to watch this on Prime Video because it is excellent and serves as a prelude to Gunpowder’s fate in Season 3 in terms of the sheer violence. Karl Urban debuts his maniacal resting kill face, and it is enough to scare us witless. The Butcher Short Film is an exclusion that we actually appreciate because the short film format gives it this aura of disconnected connectedness, and we dig that kind of oxymoronic storytelling.
Queen Maeve and Stormfront…bond?!
Well, not bonding, more like quiet manipulation on Stormfront’s end, but hey, up until this point in the story, she was the quirky Insta-savvy new chick, so give us a break, eh?! But having said that, including this scene in the show would have made the look Queen Maeve gave to Stormfront once the Nazi news broke make a lot more sense.
This deleted scene also addresses an info leak, but one that Vought still successfully managed to contain. We’re talking about the leaked existence of Compound V, of course, and the fact that Supes were made in infirmaries. Maeve is watching the whole thing play out on TV alongside Stormfront when she asks the latter if she knew about this; this being Compound V, the fact that Vought had been injecting babies with the formula for years, and that she herself was one of those babies; and as far as she knew, so was Stormfront.
Stormfront categorically denies this, of course, but uses the tactic of seeding doubt in people’s minds by asking Maeve if she was really surprised that this was true. She then goes into a bit of a rant, really, when she says that the decision to monetize Compound V subjects was likely the result of a board meeting, and we think she is specifically talking about Stan Edgar here because after Stan took over, Vought, they stopped injecting adults with Compound V; as was the case for most of the members of Payback.
The look Maeve gives her is one of compassion, weirdly enough, because, as we have mentioned already, no one knew just how crazy and evil Stormfront was up to this point. If this scene was added to Season 2, it would have given us a lot more clarity behind the reason Maeve decided to help out Starlight beyond the simple reason of getting Frenchie to say, “Girls do get it done!”
And once again, it’s criminal that most of Dominique McElligott’s best scenes were left on the cutting room floor, because this is some utterly compelling stuff we’re missing out on here. We understand that Maeve is not the primary focus of the show, but can we please get a short film that includes all of these amazing scenes so we can appreciate the actor’s performance the way we want to? That’d be amazing, Amazon.
M.M.’s Dollhouse
Short, OCD, and way off what it was originally meant to represent; this scene is Mother’s Milk watered down to 30 seconds of Laz Alonso-flavoured perfection. So in the first half of season 2, M.M. is holding his own sanity together by building a dollhouse. Yep, you heard us; a dollhouse. Now, this shouldn’t be surprising considering Marvin is a very doting father who wants to set a great example for his daughter Janine. But what is surprising is what he ends up doing with the dollhouse. See, M.M. constructs the dollhouse knowing that he was probably never going to see his daughter again.
In his mind, he just had to keep going, because if he stopped, then that nagging feeling in the back of his head would manifest itself in ugly ways. So, he keeps working on it, and this deleted scene sees him actually complete the entire thing. But while he’s putting his finishing touches on it, he realises that there was literally no point in him having made this dollhouse, because how will he even get it to Janine in the first place?
He was a wanted criminal, don’t forget, and on the run from literally every major law enforcement agency in the United States; and Vought. So, what he does instead, is he gifts the dollhouse to another person who was working with Frenchie at their season 2 hideout.
This person also happens to have a daughter who is about Janine’s age, so Marvin makes his peace with the fact that he at least put a smile on someone’s face with his efforts, and that he’d have to accept himself if he ever wanted his daughter to do the same, which is exactly what he does in the penultimate episode of Season 3. And speaking of Season 3…
Season 3
Crimson Countess Death Scene was a LOT longer
How much longer? We couldn’t tell you. But what we can tell you is what we got wasn’t what was originally planned. Jensen Ackles revealed in an interview that the original confrontation between Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess was supposed to go down very differently.
Their face-off would have lasted longer, and would have seen Soldier Boy display a lot more emotion than he does in the actual episode itself. The way Jensen described the deleted scene, it looks like rather than piecing together the betrayal and his emotional response to it over multiple episodes, Soldier Boy was going to have a full-blown break down right there in front of his ex.
When he discovered that his team had betrayed him for no reason simply other than human hatred, he became a shell of himself and blew up the Countess’ trailer home in a nuclear blast of grief, rage and despair. Now contrast this with what happened in Season 3 Episode 5 and you’ll notice just how different the scene we just described was meant to be. In the confrontation that aired, Soldier Boy skipped all the formalities and arrived straight at the question he really wanted to know the answer to; which was how much did the Russians pay Payback to betray him?
We’re honestly glad they went with this version of the scene, because seeing Ackles’ Soldier Boy get emotional whilst killing his ex-lover would have taken away from some of that ruthlessness he exhibited in the finale episode; but watching him give us, Supernatural fans, a glimpse of Dean Winchester’s trove of emotions would’ve been a very pleasant surprise, to say the least. And now, going from pleasant surprises to unpleasant and frankly uncalled for jump-scares, we have our final entry of this list, and that is…
Herogasm
If you did not see this coming, pun NOT intended, then we can’t help you; did you really expect them to bring that kind of adult content to what is supposed to be a family-friendly platform? Let us know in the comments, but to us, it was not a question of if things will be cut from Herogasm, but how many. And turns out there were a lot of things that ended up being left out of the original idea that Eric Kripke and his team had for the superhero orgy.
In an interview with TV Line, he revealed that while none of the content was removed due to ethical complications, they were removed due to budgetary and time-related constraints. The Herogasm episode runs for a full hour, and that is including all the nudity they had already shown, so it wouldn’t really make sense for the cameras to linger on acts that didn’t directly further the plot.
Deleted scenes include an encounter a fish-like Supe has with a young lady underwater, and several shots of bodily fluids being hurled around the TNT Twins’ mansion like someone left a fire hose open. One of these “flourishes” was supposed to drench Jack Quaid’s Hugh Campbell as well, and when we found this out, our mind immediately went to the scene where Hughie punched A-Train and imagined him getting drenched right after that; we’re sorry we’re so graphic, okay?!
But these cuts make a lot of sense because footage that explains the story further getting cut can be quite annoying, but extra footage getting cut makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. Instead of making the body fluid ejaculation a running gag, they compiled it all into one moment that saw show-runner Eric Kripke himself yell out “Shootin’ ropes!” before poor Mother’s Milk gets slammed by the said ropes. So, in summation, nothing integral to the narrative was removed, though it would’ve been great to see The Boys actually not take itself too seriously for a precious few moments.
Marvelous Verdict
And that’s it for this video! Some of these deleted scenes, we wanted to see included for their storyline potential, because it does get kind of difficult to get into The Boys, especially in the first season, but others were just plain pointless and better left on the cutting room floor.
That doesn’t mean all of these scenes aren’t amazing themselves, though. Each one of them added a new layer of depth and meaning to the characters and the overall interplay between them. Had they been added, we would’ve gladly spent an extra few minutes to admire the artistic prowess of the people who created the show; but since they haven’t, all we can give you is this list. We hope you enjoyed it, and would like to know your favourite deleted scene, in the comments below.