THE BOYS Casts Jack Quaid as Wee Hughie

Not Simon Pegg?  Come on...

Deadline has word that the upcoming Amazon series The Boys, based on the Dynamite Entertainment comic series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, has cast Jack Quaid as Wee Hughie.  He joins Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk and Erin Moriarty as Starlight.

According to the article, Wee Hughie is described as "After the death of his girlfriend by fast-moving Superhero A-Train (Jessie Usher), Hughie is approached by a mysterious 'government agent' named Billy Butcher, who drags Hughie into a covert war against a group of superheroes who are not what everyone thinks they are."

In a world where superheroes embrace the darker side of their massive celebrity and fame, The Boys revolves around a group of vigilantes known informally as 'the Boys,' who set out to take down corrupt superheroes with no more than blue-collar grit and a willingness to fight dirty.

Quaid, 25, is the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, and probably best known as Marvel in the film The Hunger Games.  His other movies include The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Rampage, Logan Lucky, Tragedy Girls, and Just Before I Go.

Created in 2006 by Ennis and Robertson, Wee Hughie first appeared in The Boys #1 as Hugh Campbell, an adopted child who grew up in rural Scotland.  He had a rather bizarre childhood, including a period of trauma from exposure to a giant tapeworm, the shock of being present when an airline pilot suddenly had a mental breakdown mid-flight, and a childhood friend called Det with an unnaturally powerful stench.

While attending a carnival with his girlfriend, Robin, they admitted their love for another, but Robin was accidentally killed during a superhero brawl between A-Train (a member of the premier superhero team the Seven) and a supervillain, while A-Train was traveling faster than the speed of sound.  Hughie, holding his dead girlfriend's arms, went into emotional shock because of the entire experience.  Due to this experience, Billy Butcher recruited him to take Gregory Mallory's vacated spot on the Boys, and later injected him with Compound V, without Hughie's permission.  

Hughie was an innocent to the Boys' world, which often resulted in him becoming hesitant in his actions.  Shortly after his first combat experience which resulted in his accidental killing of Blarney Cock, he became extremely worried about repeating the action, which nearly resulted in the escape of Swingwing in a subsequent operation.  He also became gradually disgusted with Butcher's easy willingness to torture their enemies and the others' apathy towards it.  As the series progressed, and the bloodshed gradually increased, Hughie grew angry with Butcher's dismissal of the constant violence ("big boys' rules") used in their operations.

Eventually, Hughie met Annie January, a.k.a. Starlight from the A-Train's superhero team The Seven.  The two happened to sit in the same park bench in Central Park, and Starlight was amused by Wee Hughie's thick Scottish accent.  The two strangers talked and they both experienced a positive lift in mood, although they chose not to tell the other about their real jobs.  The two soon began dating, with Annie believing her relationship with Hughie was "more precious than gold".  She intended to quit the Seven and move out, but was terrified Hughie would reject her if he found out what she did to get into the Seven.  This unfortunately proved to be true, with Hughie leaving their relationship after she revealed her true identity.  

During the events of the attempted coup of the US Government by the Seven's leader, the Homelander, Butcher captured A-Train with the hopes of getting Hughie to finally understand what it meant to be one of The Boys.  He made Hughie listen to recorded conversations of them discussing Robin, hoping to convince him to murder A-Train.  Hughie couldn't bring himself to kill the captured superhuman, so Butcher started playing further conversations of the Seven, a tactic Hughie saw through and refused to be provoked. However, when the tape reached the Seven's plan to hire Starlight so they could degrade her, Hughie finally snapped and kicked A-Train's head completely off.

In the aftermath of the fight with The Seven, Butcher told The Boys that Hughie was going to be second in command, which infuriated his teammates, due to Butcher's revelation that Hughie sought out the position, a deliberate act by Butcher.  It soon became clear that Butcher had been trying to get the team out of the way so he could carry out a mass murder of superhumans, even though the act would also likely kill those who only have trace amounts of Compound V in their system from simple interaction, which would mean the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people.  Realizing that Butcher needed to be stopped, Hughie prepared by going to Mother's Milk's home and drinking his mother's breast milk, which allowed him to match the far stronger and older Butcher.  The two then fought one another other, ultimately ending with Hughie's victory.

By the end of the series, Annie left New York and Hughie behind, due in part to Hughie's continued discomfort around her.  She returned in the final issue, with the characters once again together, having decided to give their relationship another chance after both the Boys and the Seven were ended.

The Boys is expected to debut on Amazon sometime in 2019.