Ever since Avengers Endgame, it feels as if Marvel has fallen off. People have gotten tired of Marvel’s formulaic approach to their movies, and the last few releases in particular have been quite controversial. Compared to Marvel’s lackluster past few years, The Boys is a breath of fresh air, bringing a unique spin on the concept of superheroes. To briefly summarize the basis of the show, it is a more realistic imagining of what superheroes would be like in the real world. Imagine the whole “with great power comes great responsibility” idea except that the heroes are humans that screw up their responsibilities. Add in a healthy dose of politicians, higher-ups, and big corporations trying to win over and control these heroes, and you’ve got an insanely interesting premise for a series.
The main character/villain in The Boys is Homelander, a Superman-like hero gone morally corrupt. Now, I don’t want to say that Homelander outright carries the show because almost all of the characters are very well-written and have great actors. Billy Butcher, the leader of a powerless vigilante group set on taking down corrupt superheroes, is by all means a standout character. But, Anthony Starr’s performance as Homelander is what makes The Boys as dynamic as it is. His encounters with the other characters range from unsettling at best to terrifying at worst. Remember that scene in the original Star Wars where Darth Vader boards a ship and starts tearing people down left and right? That’s sort of the feeling you get when Homelander’s on screen. There’s always the threat of him going berserk and losing it. Since he’s so much more powerful than the other heroes, he’s unstoppable, and can do whatever he wants. All of the other characters do their best to keep his temper at bay, but you never know when he might snap. After watching the show, I decided to look up some of the cast interviews. The top comment on almost every single interview was something along the lines of “I feel like Anthony Starr is about to laser down the rest of the room at any moment”.
Being as meta of a show as it is, The Boys also subtly pokes fun at real-world topics like politics and religion. The superheroes try to boost their ratings by appealing to certain groups of people. Their managers will tell them, “If you do this, you’ll have a 43% increase with suburban women” or “a ten-point increase with Latino viewers”. The main superhero corporation is constantly trying to appeal to Congress in order to get pro-superhero legislation passed. There’s a corrupt church that tries to scam people out of their money by getting them to buy their self-improvement advice. One superhero has a radical group of pro-nazi followers. With how tense things are politically in our country right now, I could foresee people claiming that the show has an agenda or is favoring a specific political party with some of its references. However, in my eyes the politics serve only to make the world of The Boys feel more accurate and realistic. The show isn’t trying to make some sort of political statement, it’s just providing an immersive, complex world.
With all that said, The Boys has issues. These don’t make-or-break the show, but they are enough to the point where the show gets brought down to more of a 8.5-9/10 rather than a 10/10.
While most of the main characters in the show are great, there are a few stinkers in there. A big problem is that sometimes, characters will be built up over the course of multiple episodes only for them to die abruptly without contributing anything to the plot. Similarly are also some characters that get tons of buildup even though they do virtually nothing for the story. The Deep is BY FAR the worst character in the show. He’s basically a trashy comic relief character, but he gets wayyy too much screentime. A-Train has also been pretty useless up to this point although I did like the way they fleshed out his character more in season three.
Another recurring issue with the show is that while the seasons themselves have great build-up, the endings have consistently…meh. They set up the following season well, but don’t provide a satisfying conclusion to the current one. Homelander being so overpowered has meant that the main characters haven’t been able to confront him head-on. Instead, most of the “conflict” has revolved around characters finding dirt on each other and threatening to release it to the public. In isolation I don’t mind this sort of blackmail, but it's overused and isn’t exactly season-finale-type material.
My last critique is that, unlike the Marvel movies, The Boys is rated M. In concept I can understand the rationale behind this decision. The blood, nudity, and rape serve to emphasise how messed-up these heroes are. Additionally, the ridiculousness of some of it adds a bit of comic relief and actually makes the show more lighthearted than it otherwise would be. However, sometimes the show takes things too far over the top. There are plotpoints that revolve around sex even though they have no reason to, and sometimes the show focuses on every gorey detail when the scene could have just cut to black or something.
Overall, The Boys is an entertaining, original take on the superhero genre. It has its flaws, but it more than makes up for them with its superb writing and characters. If you’ve been feeling starved for good superhero content lately, I highly recommend you give this one a shot.
