[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 3 of The Boys.]

From show creator Eric Kripke and based on the best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the Amazon Studios original series The Boys never fails to shock and awe in its irreverent take on superheroes corrupted by celebrity. With very little to stand in his way and no regard for the powerless, an increasingly unhinged Homelander (Antony Starr) is pushing Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) to go further than ever before in their attempts to stop him.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Urban talked about how much he knew about Season 3 going into the shoot, what he thought of his character’s personal journey, whether Butcher or Homelander is less suited to be a parent, exploring the flashbacks, what he feels is the most outrageous thing the show has done, the Herogasm episode, what Jensen Ackles and Soldier Boy brought to the season, the tension between Butcher and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and how he’s excited to see what could be next for Butcher in Season 4.

Collider: In keeping with the first two seasons, there are a lot of crazy things that happen in Season 3 and there’s a lot to unpack with what is going on. How much did you know about what Butcher’s arc would be? Did you know where he would end up, by the end of the season?

KARL URBAN: I had a fairly comprehensive overview of the journey of Butcher, going into Season 3. Our production had actually been stalled due to the pandemic, so unlike previous seasons, we actually got the majority of the scripts in advance, which actually happened to be a wonderful blessing. You could really plot the trajectory and course, and link certain beats from the end of the season into the beginning of the season. It made it feel like you were working on an eight-hour movie.

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Image via Prime Video

Just when I think this show can’t push boundaries any further, it seems to somehow find a way to push those boundaries so far into the rearview mirror that you can’t see them anymore. When you read these scripts, do you still have moments that surprise you? Do you still find yourself going, “They want me to do what?,” or does it just feel like it’s all in a day’s work for The Boys?

URBAN: It’s a combination of the two. There’s always a moment when you read the script, when you stumble across a jaw-dropping moment of shock. That doesn’t change, but in the same way, you do get a little bit desensitized to it. Once you’ve rammed a speed boat into a whale, or ran a superhero through a girl on the street, or any number of other insane set pieces, you read those things and go, “Well, yeah, of course we’re gonna do that. It’s The Boys.”

How would you describe Butcher’s personal journey and struggles this season? How was that really most defined for you?

URBAN: I think Butcher’s journey this season is most defined by his choice to take temporary V. It’s a choice of, are you willing to turn yourself into the thing that you despise the most, in order to defeat that? For Butcher, there are a couple of aspects at play. There’s his responsibility to Ryan and finding himself in the role of a parent, which is a role that he is so ill-equipped for. He’s juggling that newfound responsibility with this pathological obsession to get revenge on Homelander. Having made the choice to cross that line and deal with the ramifications of that, not only personally, physically and mentally for Butcher, and also the ramifications for every other character that he interacts with, that one decision breaks alliances and creates new alliances, and it leads to really exciting and unexpected confrontations.

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Image via Prime Video

Who do you think is less suited to be a parent, Butcher or Homelander, or are they equally badly suited for that?

URBAN: It’s interesting, they’re pretty much both ill-equipped. I think one of the wonderful mechanisms built into the writing is that all Ryan wants is a parent – a father figure or mother figure. He hasn’t had a father and his mother has been ripped away from him, tragically. That’s all he wants. And when Butcher fails at that, it’s a wonderful irony that Homelander is able to turn up and give him exactly what he needs, when it’s so unlike Homelander to be able to do anything beyond his narcissistic self. The fun thing for me this season was exploring that territory of Butcher trying to be a father figure for Ryan, and then finding that he is so ill-equipped to do so, and then, through the course of the season, coming to understand with the flashbacks into Butcher’s childhood, why he is so inept. He never had someone in that kind of role, growing up.

What was it like to be able to explore those flashbacks and actually be a part of them?

URBAN: The flashbacks were fun to play. Ostensibly, Butcher is a passenger for the first part, until he comes across that tragic scene with Lenny, where he was never actually present. It delves into the nucleus of some of the deepest pain that Butcher feels. I really enjoyed playing the scene subsequent to that, where he’s dealing with that, or failing to deal with it.

Just on your own personal taste level, what do you consider the most outrageous thing the show has done? Whether it’s this season or one of the other seasons, what has been the craziest thing to you?

URBAN: There are so many. For me, personally, I love the ocean and I love sea life, so to be part of a sequence that drives a speedboat through a whale was pretty surreal. Even more surreal, actually, was that we got nominated for an Emmy for Best Show in Drama. They were calling out the nominations, with all of these prestigious shows, like The Crown, with Prince Charles delivering some great dialogue, and then you cut to The Boys and there’s a speedboat ramming into a whale. It was great. I was happy for everybody involved,to get that little nod. It was nice.

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Image via Prime Video

We need all kinds of entertainment. There should be a little bit of everything.

URBAN: Different strokes.

Has there been anything that you’ve found particularly outrageous, that involved somebody else, where you thought, “Oh, I’m glad that’s him and not me”?

URBAN: Oh, most definitely, yeah. The interactions that Laz [Alonso] has with Love Sausage are a prime example of that. He had a very in-your-face experience with that, this season, and he handles it beautifully.

Were you relieved not to have to be in the thick of the Herogasm episode, and instead came in, in the aftermath of it all?

URBAN: Yeah, I was definitely grateful for that. Jensen [Ackles] tells this funny story, where he came on set one day and walked up to one of the cameramen who was sitting on a box eating a sandwich. Jensen was like, “Hey, how’s it going?” And the cameraman looks up at him and goes, “Dude, I’ve seen some things.” I think that the Herogasm scenes, for the most part, traumatized the crew more than anybody else.

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Image via Prime Video

Is it always funny to see somebody new come in, like Jensen Ackles with Soldier Boy, and see how they react to the world that you’ve been living in for previous seasons?

URBAN: Yeah, with this show, you know you’re in the right place when you’re uncomfortable, and we certainly found that line for Jensen. When Jensen Ackles is making phone calls to Kripke going, “I don’t know if I can do this. This is way out there. I just don’t know,” that’s when you’re in the right place and you’re pushing the boundaries. This show seems to do that on a pretty consistent basis.

There is some real push-and-pull this season between who’s worse, Soldier Boy or Homelander? What do you think Soldier Boy adds to the journey that the characters take this season, and where does your character fall, as far as which one of them is really, truly worse?

URBAN: The addition of Soldier Boy was a game changer. It was not on the plotted course and trajectory, in terms of Butcher’s plan. Butcher’s plan was to get a weapon that might be able to destroy Homelander, but what he ends up with is Soldier Boy. But in true Butcher fashion, he manages to harness this new character and form an alliance with him and ultimately weaponize him. One of the fun aspects about playing Butcher is his ability to convince others to do what he wants them to do. But Soldier Boy is a bit of an unknown quantity because they never really know if he can be trusted. Is he as bad as Homelander? There’s a personal attachment that Butcher has when it comes to Homelander, which is obviously the tragedy that occurred with Becca. Homelander will always be the numero uno target for Butcher, and Butcher’s plan is that he’s gonna use Soldier Boy, and then once he’s finished with him, he’ll take him down too.

In the first episode, Butcher is after Termite, who literally finds himself in quite the situation. What was it like to be a part of the aftermath of that? What was that like to shoot? How much is actually there? How much are you dealing with things that aren’t there? What is a sequence like that to do?

URBAN: It’s much the same as any other sequence. When you’re working in the television and film industry, there are consistently elements that are not present. Sometimes it’s because you’re working with a child actor who has a limited amount of hours, so you shoot them out first, and then you get to do your stuff, reacting to a tennis ball. For the most part, this show really prides itself on building these sets and these environments for us to play in, and that was never more evident than when we actually shot the speedboat scene through a whale. We were out there in a speedboat, jumping waves, and they built this practical whale on the beach. It was very much not CG. To me, that adds a certain texture that really resonates.

When you do a scene like the one when Butcher vomits on Hughie, does that bond you, as actors?

URBAN: For sure. As far as shooting it, the technical aspect of it is really what you’re trying to get correct. You have an apparatus that is just out of camera view, so you’re just trying to coordinate it. That’s really what I’m focused on, when I’m shooting things like that. It’s just about delivering the performance.

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What was your own personal favorite moment to shoot for your character this season? Was there a moment that you had a lot of fun with?

URBAN: There are so many. What I really enjoyed this season was getting to work with Paul Reiser, who came in to play The Legend. I’ve had such a long-standing admiration and respect for Paul and his work, so for him to come in and be such a wonderful guy and deliver such a fun performance was a thrill, not only for me, but for all of the actors on set at the time. I certainly would love the opportunity to do more work with him.

There’s also a lot of tension between Butcher and Mother’s Milk this season. What was it like to explore that and to ramp that tension up, as the season goes on, and to have Laz Alonso as a scene partner in that?

URBAN: I love working with Laz. He’s a phenomenal actor. For us to get conflict with each other this season, and to have that conflict take the characters to a new place, was an exciting challenge. Some of my favorite scenes this season were with Laz. Those scenes really highlighted just how self-aware Butcher actually is. He knows what he’s doing is crossing the boundary and he knows M.M. is not down with it, and he takes the time and energy to prepare him for that and to imbue in M.M. a sense of responsibility, in terms of looking out for The Boys. As far as Butcher is concerned, he does not know where this path leads, and he has to prepare them for the fact that he might not make it.

What do you think about where things are left with Butcher and the news that he gets, by the end of the season? Do you think that will change anything about him, going forward? Do you think that will affect him, in any way, or is he just going to go about his business as usual, for as long as he can?

URBAN: Oh, I think that the place where Butcher ends up, at the end of Season 3, will undoubtedly affect him going forward. How can it not? The interesting thing is, what’s he gonna do about it? It’s not my area to gaze into the crystal ball and try to predict what that would be, but I have the utmost faith in (show creator) Eric Kripke and his writers, and I’m super excited to see how the journey unfolds for Butcher and the rest of the characters, from this point.

The Boys is available to stream at Prime Video.