Stormfront strikes The Boys in exclusive season 2 first look

Image zoom James Minchin/Amazon; Jan Thijs/Amazon

As they say in just about every brooding superhero movie: A storm is coming. On The Boys, she has an apt name: Stormfront (You’re the Worst star Aya Cash), a new addition for season 2 of the Amazon Prime Video satire. And like any meteorological disaster, she’s hard to contain.

“She’s the grenade that gets thrown into Homelander’s world and the world of the Seven,” says Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, the sociopathic leader of the secretly corrupt superhero team, the Seven. "She really causes me so many problems."

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke and his cast — including Karl Urban (Billy), Jack Quaid (Hughie), Erin Moriarty (Starlight), and Chace Crawford (The Deep) — will assemble at PaleyFest for a panel in Los Angeles on March 15. Before that happens, EW can unveil the first photos of the newest supe coming to stir up the on-going war between the Boys and the "superheroes" of the Seven.

In the comics, Stormfront is male, a riff on Thor and Shazam! with a little Nazism thrown in. The nuance of how that translates to the show remains a spoiler, but Cash does reveal that her character comes with her own agenda. “I think Stormfront is like a nuclear bomb that goes off in the Seven," she says in between filming on the show's Toronto set. "Maybe nuclear bomb isn’t the right word. We’re in Chernobyl. There you go. It’s a Chernobyl thing.” Meaning, if everything feels at ease, it’s just ’cause we’re in the eye of the... well, you know.

"I think she’s here to blow up Vought," Cash continues. "She’s here to try to get Vought back to the original idea behind creating superheroes... And she can be quite the feminist. There’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say misdirect, but she also is a very empowered woman."

For Starr, this season of The Boys is “all about destabilization.” And Stormfront is here to disrupt the status quo. Starr says she isn’t into the “celebrity fanfare” that has come to define the Seven, but she’s modern, where her beliefs are old-fashioned. “She’s really social-media-savvy, where Homelander doesn’t really have anything to do with that. Someone else is always running his accounts. He’s almost like a Don Draper-era character and she’s very young and new and fresh, and that’s a massive challenge for him.”

Stormfront, with plasma bolt capabilities, also comes with enough power to slap back at Homelander when he goes full egomaniac. “[He’s] used to everyone being scared of him. She matches him,” Cash says. “That’s not to say she doesn’t understand his power and tiptoe around it sometimes, but she’s also willing to challenge him. Ultimately, I think the dynamic between the two is terrifying and will change who Homelander is.”

But what truly makes her a raging force of nature is “you start off this season thinking she’s one thing and then discover she’s another,” says Cash. “There are quite a few times where you’ll identify with her as an audience member or agree with what she says. I think [those] are the most dangerous people.”