What does a superhero do when he has tried so hard to “keep fighting” and still loses everything in the end?
This is not a reference to Starlight, Butcher, or Hughie, who are inarguably not heroes or all that effective as crime fighters, for that matter.
Rather, it’s all about Jared Padalecki, the penultimate superhero-in-his-own-mind, who is as buffed up as Aquaman but has all the chivalrous restraint of Liberal Superman.
(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Jared Padalecki on The CW
Despite his best efforts to create a hit show for The CW Network (Walker, a fascinating centrist pamphlet), Jared was abandoned and left without a home planet to return to.
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Now, as he ponders his future, one can only wonder what his next big role will be — and, more importantly — will he remain as stoic as Cordell Walker would, or will he let the Devil take over and go full supervillain?
One has only to glance at The Boys, Eric Kripke’s soulless and edge-lord parody of superhero movies, to realize that the latter is inevitable.
(Hallmark Channel/Screenshot)
Jared Padalecki On The Boys
After all, in Kripke’s world, there are no heroes. Superheroes are either narcissistic or greedy.
Anti-superhero groups are inept and ultimately powerless to change the world.
Politicians and CEOs are corrupt, and even the victims of superhero crimes are not as innocent as they look.
Jensen Ackles, the proverbial tough-guy-with-a-heart actor, finally lost his soul when he was reincarnated into the Kripkeverse.
He went from the rough but admirable Dean Winchester into the morally vacant Soldier Boy, an idealistic patriot corrupted by old-world toxic masculinity.
(Amazon Studios)
Yes, it does seem as if everyone in The Boys has jumped over to the dark side, even Jim Beaver, who reincarnated from the crotchety-but-lovable Bobby Singer into, well, Robert Singer, corrupt U.S. President.
Predictably, Jared Padalecki will follow Jensen’s path and develop a supervillain of devilish proportions for his confirmed role in Season 5 of The Boys.
Surely, one of Hollywood’s most rambunctious actors would have every reason to shock us and outperform the worst deeds done by Homelander, The Deep, Stormfront, Firecracker, and other dastardly villains.
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After all, Eric Kripke’s vision of Garth Ennis’ pitstain comic book has very few boundaries.
And if any Hollywood network star has a reason to be bitter (and develop a supervillain persona to air his grievance), it would be Jared Padalecki!
(Rebecca Brenneman/The CW)
Jared Padalecki Likes to Plays the Hero
But what if that was not in the cards?
Call me crazy, but I have always found a pattern among Jared Padalecki’s long list of leading man roles. Wholesome, effusive, and perhaps naive to a fault.
His puppy-dog eyes and sad-boy frown are incomparable.
Even when Jared is playing the Devil himself (Supernatural), he embodies the role with such longing and empathy for his adversary that he still comes across as a hero.
He’s the type of guy who breaks down into tears while method-acting with Peter O’Toole in Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage because he is so plagued with cathartic altruism.
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Maybe this is the quality Eric Kripke saw in Jared so many years ago.
He’s the type of soothsayer who could talk you into fulfilling a world-ending prophecy and smile at you in thanks as the world burns.
That’s how brilliantly Jared plays “Good.”
(Prime Video (Youtube Screenshot))
Yes, it’s easy to imagine Jared as a supervillain in the final season of The Boys, especially since we can only presume things will get rockier before Homelander’s downfall.
You Need More Heroes to Take Down Homelander
But am I crazy to think that if Jared Padelecki goes against the current of the nihilistic Kripkeverse and finds a truly heroic character to play amid moral degeneration, it would be a stroke of brilliance that no one sees coming?
It was a novelty to see Jensen Ackles go bad.
It has been bizarre and trainwreck-captivating to see our precious superhero institutions destroyed.
But we’ve already seen Jared Padelecki try to go evil, and the man just seems incapable of breaking hearts.
He’s the kind of guy who can stare at you while pounding your best friend into the ground and beg you for forgiveness with tears in his eyes.
He seems to have too big of a golden heart to play one-dimensional villainy.
And even if he were to knock one out of the park, in terms of dastardly deeds and atrocious levels of gore, it would ultimately be pointless in the world Kripke has built.
(Prime Video/Screenshot)
Kripke has spent over four years hyping Homelander as the epitome of evil. To out-evil Homelander now would detract from the point of it all: that good ultimately outlasts evil.
To be yet another one of Homelander’s cronies seems beneath Jared.
To make yet another weird cameo appearance in the show (Seriously, Rob Benedict, why?) seems too crass for a leading man who has given back so much and yet lost so much because of people he trusted.
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The only way to make Jared’s appearance in The Boys Season 5 memorable would be for him to stick to his principles of only playing good or redeemable characters.
And since people are already talking about Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki’sSupernaturalreunion breaking the internet?
(Cristian Cretu/The CW)
Jared Padalecki’s Next Great Role: Good or Evil
My advice to Jared is that if you really want to impress your old buddy Jensen with your ribbing machismo, play a good guy in The Boys Season 5.
It would be in stark contrast to Jensen’s Soldier Boy.
He was a hero who ultimately succumbed to the world and its evil men.
But Walker Cordell survived the storm and never compromised his morals.
Maybe that kind of Stan Lee-esque philosophy is lost on Eric Kripke, who, like most D.C. fans, only sees the darkness at the end of the tunnel.
But a comic fanboy is still allowed to believe in heroes, right?
Hit the comments section to share your thoughts!
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