Mild spoilers for The Boys will be found below.
I hear you. You’ve been hearing from friends who have told you that The Boys is an incredible show. They’ve been tossing out names like Homelander and The Deep and talking about something called Vought International, and Supes seem to be different than the superheroes that people have grown to love in Disney/Marvel Studios’ MCU and (in a very different way) the Warner Bros. DC movies. Well, that’s a correct assumption. You’ve never seen “heroes” like these, and yes, you should stream The Boys on Amazon. Let’s move through a brief lowdown of what you need to know before beginning this raunchy trip.
(Also very important: This is a weekly series when it airs, and that’s for the better. It’s best when it’s incrementally watched and digested, but also feel free to binge it hard.)
Source Material: Garth Ennis penned The Boys comic book series, which launched like a bullet in 2005 with a hyper-cynical look at superhero culture (with a hefty amount of political allegory in addition to entertainment value). Like the show, the comic was unapologetically shocking, mega-violent, and drenched in blood and other bodily fluids. Anyone who’s read Preacher or watched it on AMC (by the grace of executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who also have a heavy hand in The Boys with Rogen appearing onscreen multiple times throughout three seasons). The show’s largely faithful to the comic, and showrunner Eric Kripke does a fine job bringing the grossest moments from the page to the screen in a believable way.
The Supes: Although the show is named after that other group (who we will discuss), The Seven is filled with parody versions of characters that you’ve loved or loathed in the past. Homelander is a bit of Superman and Captain America (and the latter descriptor also goes for the eventual arrival of Soldier Boy, who’s a blast from the Payback past); the Deep is a super raunchy version of Aquaman who actually f*cks ocean dwelling animals; Queen Maeve is a play on Wonder Woman, and so on. Translucent is invisible, Black Noir never speaks, A-Train can’t control his speed. Let’s just say that they’re a mess, and Starlight is the new lady on the block who goes through some hell. She’s the one with one foot out the door at all times, even if all the Supes do work for Vought International’s PR machine. The less you initially know about that, the better.
The Boys: Enter the vigilante group who’s got more than a little bit of superhero burnout. They’re sick and tired of the Supes getting away with sh*t, and they’re led by Billy Butcher, who’s got a personal score to settle with Homelander. Hughie arrives all freshly un-doe-eyed by the trauma that he experiences very early on in the series. There’s Frenchie and Kimiko and Mother’s Milk (the grounded one), all of whom bring different strengths to the table as they all deal with their own respective ghosts and reasons for fighting against the Vought machine. As they peel back the layers of their targeted onion, they only find that things grow more rotten and corrupt as they dig into the core.
The Spinoffs: The flagship series arrived as such a juggernaut that Amazon couldn’t resist putting offshoots and spinoffs into production. The first new series, Diabolical, arrived in R-ish-rated animated form and serves to not only provide standalone stories (that involved Compound V but aren’t directly related to the main series) but also fill in some blanks, including Homelander’s backstory and how he first got involved in The Seven. This was a nice way to tide fans over during the wait between Seasons 2 and 3 of The Boys. The flagship series is currently filming Season 4, and we don’t know if more Diabolical is coming, but we do know that another spinoff is currently filming…
Gen V will be one to watch. We can expect this to arrive before The Boys Season 4, and Gen V is billed as a college-age version of the flagship series. This spinoff stars Patrick Schwarzenegger, and if you’re wondering if this show is as outrageous as the O.G. series, here’s a clue: when Patrick showed some set photos to his dad, Arnold, the Commando star asked, “What the f*ck are you filming?” That’s a ringing endorsement in and of itself, and yep, I cannot wait to see Gen V and much more of The Boys.
The Boys is currently streaming Seasons 1-3 on Amazon.