The Boys Season 4 Trailer Sets Up A Major Character Return … Sort Of
The Boys season 4 trailer features a character fakeout via Vought's own Rogers: The Musical.
Black Noir isn’t the only supe making a surprise reappearance in The Boys season 4.
The first official trailer for the upcoming season reveals not only Black Noir alive and well in The Seven after his death the end of season 3, but also someone who looks a lot like Queen Maeve. We know that Maeve (Dominique McElligott) is still alive, albeit totally powerless, after fighting Soldier Boy. She used the fight to fake her death so she could escape Vought once and for all. To them and the rest of the world, Queen Maeve is dead.
So who is the lookalike in the season 4 trailer? While there hasn’t been confirmation of this new Maeve’s role, it doesn’t seem like she’s a replacement for Maeve in The Seven like Black Noir’s is. Her outfit is more bejeweled than practical (though that hasn’t stopped Vought before), and she appears to be performing on a stage of some sort.
This Maeve doesn’t appear to be a replacement, but rather the star of Vought’s take on Rogers: the Musical. This fictional musical was created for the Disney+ series Hawkeye as an in-world tribute to Steve Rogers and the life he lived as Captain America. Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) even takes his kids to see the show on Broadway during the holidays. There have since been performances of the musical at Disney theme parks in the real-world as fans celebrate the legacy of the character that Chris Evans brought to life.
Would Vought do the same thing for one of their fallen heroes? Absolutely. Brave Maeve: the Musical has a nice ring to it and is definitely something that Vought would put together to earn an extra buck off of Maeve’s name and legacy. Because she’s technically dead, they can tell her story however they want and transform it to fit whatever narrative they’re currently trying to push.
Even if this Maeve is not from a renowned musical and is instead a part of some discount theme-park attraction at a Vought theme-park, Vought still makes their money – and their point. Gen V did a great job of showing how the next generation of supes feels about being created as a commodity, and poking fun at Marvel and our culture of superhero content again is certainly on brand for this universe.
I unironically love Rogers: the Musical as a concept, so I am all-in on any sort of stage production the show gives us as a tribute to Maeve. Especially if the real Maeve in all her eye-patched glory is sitting in on the show and heckling the hell out of its inaccuracies. We’ve seen glimpses of Vought’s film and TV portfolio, but this would be the first time seeing what caliber of talent and funding they bring to stage-productions. Whoever this new Maeve may just be there for the bit, especially if she’s just a regular actor and not a supe-actor, but it’s still an interesting bit of potential world-building to tease in the trailer.
Written by
Brynna Arens (she/her) is a freelance writer who studies movies, TV, and pop culture through an intersectional feminist lens. She'll watch almost anything tbh, but it's…