In an interview with USA Today, Ackles talked about how Dean is “fighting the good fight in the shadows”, while Soldier Boy “pretends to fight the good fight in the spotlight”. This is probably the most significant difference between the two characters, and it’s where Ackles really gets a chance to stretch his acting muscles in new ways after 15 years. Although Dean was constantly pretending to be happier and more confident than he really was, Soldier Boy show-boats in a way Dean Winchester never would, and he lives his life in the public gaze and under the spotlights of the media. When Soldier Boy and the rest of his ‘Payback’ team land in Nicaragua in a flashback in Episode 3 of Season 3, it’s clear that Ackles is having a ball playing a character who demands attention and who expects – and gets – awed stares from everyone around him as they watch.
Ackles played villains on Supernatural a few times, usually when one villain or another was possessing Dean Winchester’s body. The two most significant were Demon Dean in the first three episodes of Season 10 (and occasional flashbacks) and Alternate Universe Michael in Seasons 13 and 14. Michael was a cold and calculating Archangel – very different in nearly every way from Soldier Boy – in voice, manner, how he held himself and even how he walked. Demon Dean was actually Dean himself, transformed into a demon, and therefore carried over some of Dean’s traits, but without the conscience.
Demon Dean in particular may be an inspiration for elements of Soldier Boy. Although Soldier Boy is clearly an unhinged villain, Butcher reminds us in episode 5 of Season 3 that “all the V does is just pump up all that shit that’s already inside.” Some of Soldier Boy’s traits are exaggerations of traits he even shares with Dean, but blown up out of proportion to the point of villainy. We saw some of these in Demon Dean, who had just a little bit of Soldier Boy’s swagger in his sense of humor, his carefree attitude to violence, and his toying with others’ emotions. These are qualities that were buried deep inside Dean himself, and that being transformed into a demon allowed out into the open.
We can see this really clearly in the attitude of both Demon Dean and Soldier Boy to women. Dean Winchester, when not a demon, had a Captain Kirk-like love of flirting and a fondness for porn and for admiring attractive young women that was usually fairly harmless. In 2005 when the character was 26 years old this was an amusing character tic; by 2020, when the character was 43 (more or less, including two time jumps and not counting time spent in Hell) and the world had changed, this aspect of Dean’s character had been largely phased out because it was coming across a bit uncomfortably.
Demon Dean transformed regular Dean’s largely respectful love of women into sexism and creepiness, calling women he slept with “skank” and accusing dead women of being “dressed like a whore”. We can see similarities here with Soldier Boy’s treatment of women.
Soldier Boy combines attitudes rooted in his early twentieth century origins with simple unpleasantness. He spent time partying with Hugh Heffner and is shown in flashback leering at Grace Mallory, calling her “pretty” entirely inappropriately given the professional, military context, commenting on her figure in the middle of a mission, and telling her “you should smile more”. There’s a reason that line appears both here and in Captain Marvel – it’s a deeply patronizing request women have often heard from a certain type of man. The fact Soldier Boy was betrayed by Crimson Countess in the 1980s suggests he wasn’t great in a relationship either. Ackles himself described “toxic masculinity” as something Soldier Boy “embodies” – where Dean Winchester was sometimes hurt by his own expectations of what it meant to be “manly”, Soldier Boy revels in the worst type of sexism.
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