Dominique McElligott in “The Boys” Season 2.
Prime Video
The Boys creator Erik Kripke says he attempted to get Queen Maeve actress Dominique McElligott back for the fifth and final season of the Prime Video superhero satire, but she respectfully declined.
Queen Maeve was a member of the Vought Corporation’s The Seven when the series began in 2019, though her alliance with the corrupt superhero group was an uneasy one. McElligott wrapped up her role as Queen Maeve in The Boys Season 3 finale in July 2022, where she sacrificed all her powers to prevent Soldier Boy from deploying a catastrophic nuclear blast.
While Maeve, aka Maggie Shaw, survived the explosive confrontation, she never again appeared on the show. That’s not to say that Kripke didn’t want McElligott back for an appearance in Season 5. Kripke told TV Line in an interview published Wednesday that he and McElligott exchange emails “a couple of times every six to eight months or so, and she checked in on me after the Palisades fires.”
In one of the emails, Kripke told TV Line, he asked McElligott if she’d be open to coming back to the production for a day and gave her some prospective dates. He noted for the publication that McElligott’s response to the proposal was “pleasant and respectful,” but she said, “I’ve kind of retired from acting. [I’m not] really acting anymore, and I’m busy those dates anyway.”
Erik Kripke Still Found A Way To Honor Queen Maeve In ‘The Boys’ Finale
While Dominique McElligott declined Erik Kripke’s invite to return to The Boys Season 5, the series creator still wanted to find a way to honor her contributions as Queen Maeve during the series finale.
As such, the series finale’s recap clips included a pivotal exchange between Maeve and Starlight/Annie January (Erin Moriarty) from Season 1. In addition, Starlight refers to Maeve during a scene with Gen V character Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), who appeared in the final two episodes of The Boys.
“We wanted to pay homage to her; she’s an important character, and so she shows up in the recap and in a way to show that Maeve passed the torch to [Erin Moriarty’s] Annie [also known as Starlight], and now Annie is passing the torch to Marie, and that there’s this lineage of strong women that started with Maeve,” Kripke told TV Line. “We wanted to bring up Maeve’s spirit if we couldn’t actually bring her up in person.”
HOLLYWOOD, CA – JULY 27: Dominique McElligott arrives at the Premiere Of Amazon Studios’ “The Last Tycoon” at the Harmony Gold Preview House and Theater on July 27, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Joshua Blanchard/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
McElligott began her screen career in 2001 in the sports drama On Home Ground in her native country of Ireland. Her breakthrough in the U.S. came in 2011 in the AMC Western Hell on Wheels, where she starred as Lily Bell in 20 episodes in the first and second seasons of the series through 2012.
McElligott’s other screen credits include a starring role in the ABC drama The Astronaut Wives Club in 2015, a recurring role in the Netflix political drama House of Cards from 2016 to 2017 and a starring role in the Prime Video showbiz drama The Last Tycoon, which ran for one season from 2016 to 2017.
The Boys is McElligott’s last screen credit. She starred in all 24 episodes of Seasons 1-3 of the series from 2019 to 2022. She also voiced Maeve in an episode of The Boys’ animated mini-series Diabolical in 2022.
All five seasons of The Boys are streaming on Prime Video.