Giancarlo Esposito has hinted his character Stan Edgar may return to The Boys.
Nobody plays a cold, calculating villain quite like Giancarlo Esposito. Since he portrayed Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, the actor has appeared in a number of different high-profile shows, including The Mandalorian and The Boys. And fans hoping to see more of the actor may be in luck, as TVLine reports that Giancarlo Esposito said “I find The Boys to be a very creepy, interesting, edgy, and sick show — in the best way possible” and that “I won’t string it out anymore: I think there is a great chance” of returning to the show.
If you somehow haven’t tuned into The Boys yet, Giancarlo Esposito plays Stan Edgar, the CEO of Vought International, a company that essentially manages superheroes and can make or break their careers. In many ways, Edgar is the polar opposite of Homelander, an increasingly-unhinged hero who has Superman-level powers and seemingly can’t be stopped if he ever goes on an absolute rampage. Compared to Homelander’s tantrums, Esposito’s Edgar is always the portrait of cool, calculating calm.
Some fans were understandably nervous that the next season of The Boys might not have any appearances by Giancarlo Esposito due to how things shook out with his character last season. Homelander ends up taking over Vought and Stan Edgar gets the boot, with all of his former supporters (including Victoria Neuman, a kind of surrogate daughter) turning their backs on him. Despite this major career setback, though, Edgar is still alive and well, and he now has a very personal stake in helping to bring Homelander down for good.
This puts him in a unique position to team up with the titular boys and use some of his insider info to help take down Homelander and other superheroes who may get in their way. This is easier said than done, though, as The Boys has frequently shown Giancarlo Esposito’s character lamenting the difficulty of containing the threat posed by Homelander. Butcher, Hughie, and the rest of the team know all too well how difficult fighting Homelander can be, with the characters resorting to taking dangerous drugs to give themselves superpowers and even freeing Soldier Boy (a kind of psychopathic Captain America character) in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Homelander.
Another reason The Boys might see the return of Giancarlo Esposito is that his character could be the difference between life and death for Karl Urban’s character Butcher. At the end of the last season, a doctor informed Butcher that, due to his use of “temp-V” (a drug that gave him temporary superpowers), he is going to die within 12-18 months. Narratively, this could be setting up a kind of suicide run for Butcher against Homelander and his allies, but it’s possible that Stan Edgar (who knows more about V than almost anyone else) might be able to cure what ails Butcher.
Ultimately, there is no way of knowing what The Boys will do with Giancarlo Esposito once he returns, and that’s part of the fun. In a world of cookie-cutter superhero content, the show has always delighted in giving us the unexpected. And we’re confident that the veteran actor’s return to The Boys will be just as explosive and unexpectedly insane as his exit from Breaking Bad.
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