HEROES?: “The Boys” plays with politics, power
It’s the penultimate episode of the new season of “The Boys,” Amazon’s superhero action series, and it’s time for a costumed champion named Starlight to give one of those rousing speeches that inspires listeners to ignore insurmountable odds and get motivated for the journey ahead.
Her eyes brimming with tears, Starlight says, “I gave my whole life to nothing,” then adds: “The good guys don’t win. The bad guys don’t get punished. What we do means nothing. It’s just all for money.”
It’s not exactly an “I am Iron Man” moment. But then again, “The Boys” was never trying to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“The Boys,” which begins its second season on Sept. 4, is in many ways the moral inverse of a typical comic- book adaptation. It is populated with superhuman adventurers ( known as “supes”) who are often narcissistic, vainglorious and unconcerned with human life. Fighting to bring them down is a small band of mercenaries — the Boys of the show’s title — regarded as terrorists by the general public.
Though “The Boys” was not quite a critical darling or an awards magnet like HBO’s prophetic “Watchmen,” “The Boys” was one of Amazon’s mostwatched shows in its first season, according to the streaming service ( though it has not released exact numbers).
Now “The Boys” has a chance at achieving a deeper cultural resonance. It is arriving in a year when many other would- be comicbook blockbusters have been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and when its spirit of frustration, mistrust and paranoia
Anthony Starr, left, and Erin Moriarty in a scene from “The Boys,” premiering its second season on Sept. 4. is especially of the moment.
With a torrent of crude language and over- the- top violence — it waited all of two episodes to depict a miscreant being dispatched by a bomb lodged in his anus — “The Boys” can be seen as a brutal and wildly irreverent sendup of the superhero genre.
But beneath its depraved surface, the show is also challenging viewers to wrestle with more complex ideas about the intertwining of politics and power and asking them to consider the profound danger of holding anyone up as a hero.
As its star Karl Urban, who plays the Boys’ ruthless leader, Billy Butcher, explained, “The show supposes a world where superheroes are deeply flawed celebrities with secret, nefarious habits — where you can’t trust what a politician or a corporation
says, and victory isn’t guaranteed for the good guys.”
“To me,” he added wryly, “it’s a no- brainer why people are gravitating toward this.”
“The Boys” takes its inspiration from Garth Ennis and
Darick Robertson’s comic series of the same title, an unapologetically profane pushback against post- 9/ 11 politics and storytelling standards, rife with naughty words and naked bodies.
Eric Kripke, who developed “The Boys” for television, said that the source material was likely too outrageous to be translated directly to the screen.
But Kripke, the creator of the long- running demon- hunting drama “Supernatural,” shared the authors’ intentions to “shock people out of the complacency of superhero comics,” he said, and aimed to emulate creative
idols like Rod Serling and Chris Carter by using the story’s fantastical elements to address realworld issues.
“I realized what a perfect metaphor this was for the exact second we’re living in,” he said. “For this world where authoritarianism and celebrity are combined and fascism is packaged through social media.”
The series retains many of the characters and plot points from the comic books, revolving around a Justice League- like superteam called the Seven. The group is gallant in appearance but deeply corrupt in practice, and led by Homelander, a brutal, omnipotent crime fighter who wears a cape modeled after the American flag.
Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, said his performance is based in part on the star- spangled, jingoistic characters who provided the foundations of American comic books and have since been exported worldwide.
In the opposing corner sit the Boys, including the veteran teammates Butcher and Mother’s Milk ( Laz Alonso), the physically enhanced fugitive Kimiko ( Karen Fukuhara) and the naïve newcomer Hughie Campbell ( Jack Quaid), whose girlfriend was accidentally killed by a member of the Seven.
Though each of the Boys has a justifiable reason for hating the superheroes, their personal vendettas are gradually overtaken by a thirst for revenge for its own sake, and viewers are asked to question just how much they should identify with these characters and their choices.
“It’s a dance between morality and justice, and sometimes that line tends to blur,” Alonso said. “How much personal morality are you willing to sacrifice to achieve justice? Are you a part of the Boys, or are you a part of the supes?”
In its first season, “The Boys” dealt with ideas of oppression and freedom, collateral damage and post- traumatic stress disorder. It also included a storyline, adapted from the comics, in which Starlight is sexually assaulted by one of her teammates on the Seven.
Kripke and his writing staff were already working on the scripts for Season 2 of “The Boys” while Season 1 was being filmed in mid- 2018.
As they looked out into the real world, Kripke said, “things were happening like the travel ban, the threat of caravans coming over the border and killing us all. So we wanted to tell a story about white nationalism, xenophobia and racism, and how powerful people use those things to further their own interests.”