From Vought Tower to A-Train’s stadium race, some of the most memorable locations in the first season of The Boys are actually places you can find around Toronto and Southern Ontario.
If you live in Toronto, watching the first season of The Boys can become a game of wait… I know that place.
The series may take place in New York, but Season 1 was filmed primarily in Toronto, with additional filming around the GTA and Southern Ontario. Production began in May 2018 and wrapped that October, using real concert halls, parks, churches, subway infrastructure, streets and estates to create the world of Vought International. (Wikipedia)
And in many cases, the production didn’t try to completely erase Toronto.
Instead, it found locations with the right architecture and scale, dressed them for the story and then used visual effects to finish the illusion.
Here are some of the standout filming locations from Season 1 of The Boys.
1. Roy Thomson Hall — Vought International Headquarters
60 Simcoe Street, Toronto
The most recognizable Toronto location in The Boys is also one of the most important locations in the entire series.
Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall becomes the base of Vought International’s Seven Tower, the corporate headquarters of Homelander, Starlight and the rest of the Seven.
The real building is, of course, nowhere near as tall as Vought Tower.
Production used Roy Thomson Hall’s curved glass structure as the lower portion of the fictional skyscraper and digitally extended the building high above the Toronto skyline. The location appears throughout Season 1, including the premiere, Episode 7 and the finale. (MovieMaps)
It’s one of the best examples in the series of how location scouting and visual effects work together.
The production didn’t need to find a 100-storey futuristic headquarters.
It needed to find the right first 50 feet.
Roy Thomson Hall already offered the dramatic glass façade, unusual geometry, spacious entrance and corporate scale. VFX could create everything above it.
The Scene Scout perspective
For property owners, this is an important lesson: your location doesn’t necessarily need to look exactly like the finished scene.
Filmmakers are often looking for the architectural foundation they can build upon.
A distinctive entrance, staircase, hallway, façade or view may be enough to make an otherwise ordinary property extremely useful.
2. David Pecaut Square — The World Outside Vought
215 King Street West, Toronto
Immediately beside Roy Thomson Hall is David Pecaut Square, which also appears as part of the world surrounding Vought headquarters.
The square appears in Season 1’s Episode 6, functioning as the park outside Vought Tower. (MovieMaps)
Using Roy Thomson Hall and the neighbouring square together gives the fictional Vought complex something that’s difficult to manufacture on a soundstage: scale.
The camera can move from the imposing corporate building into a genuine downtown public space surrounded by skyscrapers.
To an audience, it feels like one enormous fictional corporate campus.
To a Toronto resident, it’s King Street.
The Scene Scout perspective
Sometimes the value of a filming location isn’t just the property itself.
Productions also look at what surrounds it.
Neighbouring architecture, parking areas, courtyards, parks, streets, loading zones and sightlines can dramatically increase the number of shots a production can achieve from one base location.
3. Lower Bay Station — Penn Station
Hidden underneath Toronto’s Bay subway station is one of the city’s most famous filming locations.
Lower Bay Station is a disused TTC platform underneath the active station. In Season 1, Episode 4, “The Female of the Species,” it was used to represent a Penn Station subway environment. (MovieMaps)
For a production, a decommissioned subway platform is incredibly useful.
It already has the architecture of a real transit system — platforms, tracks, stairs and tiled walls — but production can have far more control than it could inside a busy station filled with commuters.
Change the signs.
Change the advertisements.
Change the lighting.
Choose the right camera angles.
Toronto suddenly becomes New York.
The Scene Scout perspective
This demonstrates something productions value almost as much as appearance:
control.
A location that allows a production to control access, lighting, sound, background activity and set decoration can be considerably more useful than a visually spectacular location that is difficult to film.
4. Tim Hortons Field — A-Train’s Race
Hamilton, Ontario
One of Season 1’s biggest public superhero spectacles takes place outside Toronto.
In Episode 3, “Get Some,” A-Train competes against Shockwave in a highly publicized race.
The fictional Hartsdale Stadium was actually Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton. (MovieMaps)
It’s a perfect location for the scene because Vought treats superheroes like a combination of professional athletes and corporate celebrities.
Using an actual sports stadium gives the sequence an authenticity that would be difficult to reproduce from scratch: real stands, real concourses and the visual scale of a major sporting event.
Production then dresses the environment with Vought branding to transform a Canadian football stadium into an American superhero spectacle.
The Scene Scout perspective
Large properties can often play something completely different from their everyday purpose.
A warehouse doesn’t necessarily have to play a warehouse.
A school doesn’t necessarily have to play a school.
And a Canadian football stadium can become the site of a corporate superhero race.
5. Sherbourne Common — The Flight 37 Memorial
Toronto Waterfront
One of the darker moments in Season 1 also uses a very recognizable piece of Toronto’s waterfront.
After the destruction of Transoceanic Flight 37, Vought stages a memorial for the victims while Homelander uses the tragedy to advance his political agenda.
The memorial sequence in Episode 5, “Good for the Soul,” was filmed around the zinc-clad pavilion at Sherbourne Common on Toronto’s waterfront. (Wikipedia)
It’s a particularly effective choice.
Sherbourne Common’s modern architecture creates a clean, institutional-looking backdrop without overwhelming the actors or the large public gathering taking place in front of it.
The production can then add memorial elements, signage, crowds and Vought branding to completely change the purpose of the space.
6. Allan Gardens — A Quiet Character Moment
Not every memorable filming location needs explosions, crowds or visual effects.
In Episode 6, “The Innocents,” Butcher opens up to Hughie about his wife while the two sit in Allan Gardens in downtown Toronto. (Wikipedia)
This is a much simpler use of a location, but it’s just as important.
The green surroundings provide a visual break from Vought’s glass towers, subway stations and gritty industrial environments.
It also demonstrates the enormous range Toronto offers productions.
Within a relatively small area, a crew can move between dense city streets, modern corporate architecture, historic neighbourhoods and landscaped parkland.
7. St. Luke’s United Church — The Superhero Support Group
Season 1’s Episode 6 also uses St. Luke’s United Church in Toronto.
The church provides the location for the support group attended by people whose lives have been damaged by superheroes. (Wikipedia)
It’s a clever contrast.
The warm, communal environment of a church meeting room is completely removed from the polished corporate imagery Vought uses to sell superheroes to the public.
Location isn’t merely providing a backdrop here — it’s reinforcing the story.
The Scene Scout perspective
This is why productions search for more than impressive architecture.
A relatively modest room can be perfect if it communicates the right emotion.
A basement.
A kitchen.
A dated office.
A church hall.
A garage.
Sometimes the locations people overlook are exactly what a script requires.
8. Parkwood Estate — Dr. Vogelbaum’s Home
Oshawa, Ontario
One of Season 1’s most impressive residential locations appears in Episode 7, “The Self-Preservation Society.”
When Homelander visits Dr. Jonah Vogelbaum, the scientist responsible for raising him, the mansion and gardens are actually Parkwood Estate in Oshawa. (SCEEN IT)
The historic estate gives the scene an immediate sense of wealth and isolation.
It’s also an example of why large private estates are so attractive to productions. One property can provide multiple visual environments: exterior architecture, gardens, entrances, driveways and potentially several distinct interior looks.
It can essentially become several locations within a single production move.
9. The Cathedral Church of St. James — Hughie and Starlight
106 King Street East, Toronto
Toronto makes another unmistakable appearance in the Season 1 finale.
In Episode 8, “You Found Me,” Hughie approaches Annie and tries to convince her to help him. The sequence was filmed inside and around The Cathedral Church of St. James in downtown Toronto. (SCEEN IT)
The Gothic Revival church brings a completely different visual texture to the series: stone, stained glass and historic architecture rather than Vought’s glass-and-steel modernism.
And again, the production finds this radically different environment without leaving Toronto.
10. 21 Don Roadway — From Toronto Industrial Property to Syria
Perhaps one of the best examples of a location being transformed into somewhere completely different comes in the finale.
21 Don Roadway in Toronto was used for the Tal Rifaat factory, part of a storyline supposedly taking place in Syria. (MovieMaps)
That’s a significant transformation.
A Toronto industrial property doesn’t need to convince viewers that they’re looking at Toronto — it needs to provide the physical bones that production design, cinematography and visual effects can transform into somewhere on the other side of the world.
For The Scene Scout, this may be one of the most interesting locations of all.
It demonstrates just how much potential filmmakers can see in a property that most people would drive past without giving a second thought.
Toronto Doesn’t Play Toronto — and That’s the Point
Season 1 of The Boys is a great demonstration of why Toronto has become such an important production centre.
Roy Thomson Hall becomes a superhero headquarters.
A TTC platform becomes Penn Station.
A Hamilton football stadium becomes an American superhero sporting venue.
An Oshawa mansion becomes the secluded home of Homelander’s creator.
An industrial property on Don Roadway becomes a factory in Syria.
The common thread isn’t that these locations perfectly matched what was written in the script.
They gave the filmmakers something they could transform.
And that’s one of the most interesting parts of location scouting.
The production is rarely asking:
“Does this place already look exactly like our finished scene?”
They’re asking:
“What can we turn this place into?”
Could Your Property Be the Next Filming Location?
That’s the idea behind The Scene Scout.
We’re building a database of residential, commercial, industrial, rural, estate and unique properties available to film and television productions.
Property owners can submit their locations, while enhanced listings can include professional photography and detailed 3D scans that allow production teams to virtually explore a property, take measurements and begin planning before an in-person scout.
Because the next memorable filming location may not be a famous landmark.
It could be a house, warehouse, office, farm or unusual property that gives a production exactly what it needs.
Have a property that belongs on screen? Submit it to The Scene Scout.