The Boys
In this age of targeted advertising, I don’t think I have ever been owned by an algorithm as hard as whatever told Amazon to try to and get me to watch The Boys. YouTube ads, sponsored hashtags, Facebook feed spots, I literally could not escape ads for the superhero show, and it was like Amazon was only stopping short of having someone physically shake me and yell “This is a show for you!” in my face.
Well, the algorithm was right.
I really, really loved The Boys, which clocks in at a tight eight episodes for its first season, which automatically wins it some points off the bat. The show follows a group of humans trying to take down a faux-Justice League of corporate-backed superheroes that are all smiles for the cameras, but behind the scenes, truly depraved and horrifying.
This will be a review that’s as spoiler-free as possible.
The Boys is far from the first superhero story to wonder what it might be like if superheroes were less than heroic, or downright evil, but it is the best representation I’ve seen of the concept onscreen to date, as usually this kind of thing is relegated to Clark Kent going rogue with red Kryptonite in an episode of Smallville or two. We have truly never seen something like The Boys to date.
The Boys
The show is shocking, jaw-droppingly so in some instances, and it starts right away as the central event of the series kicks off when Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) girlfriend is accidentally killed in a grotesque fashion by speedster A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), one of the famed Seven. This event leads Hughie to link up with Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) a man looking for revenge on all “Supes,” but Superman-equivalent Homelander (Antony Starr) in particular for some unspecified past trauma.
On the other side of the curtain, we get to see behind the scenes when Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is recruited as the newest member of the Seven, fulfilling her childhood dream, only to have that dream shattered instantly when she’s propositioned by Seven member The Deep (Chace Crawford) within minutes of her arrival to HQ.
All of this sounds really ugly and awful and while it is, I think it should be said that The Boys is about more than just pure shock value, as the series would not work if it was only hyper-focused on its most shocking moments. Those are impactful, sure, and there are a few I will never be able to scrub out of my brain, but the reason The Boys works is because it has just so many fantastic characters.
The Boys
In a great ensemble, I have to say the standout is Antony Starr’s Homelander. I didn’t even recognize Starr at first with his clean-shaved, blond makeover, but he played Lucas Hood on the criminally underrated Banshee, and this is a star-making turn for him here. Homelander is deeply unsettling every moment he’s onscreen, and by the end, easily one of the best TV villains currently on the air. He’s the ultimate “what if Superman went bad?” case study, but he’s executing the concept better than the DCEU ever could.
I like Erin Moriarty’s Starlight as well, a character who, by the end, you realize is essentially the only truly morally good character in the series, as her motivations are never underhanded, she never partakes in the depravity of the other heroes and is a counter to Billy Butcher’s philosophy that all Supes are bad, no matter what.
Butcher, meanwhile, I think was one of the weaker aspects of the series, despite being the most known actor on set in the form of Karl Urban. I found his gruff Britishness rather distracting and odd, and between his accent and trenchcoat I was constantly never thinking of anyone but John Constantine every time he was onscreen. He just feels like a character from a different series. In the end, Butcher’s story with Homelander is indeed probably the most interesting reveal of the season, but I do think Butcher himself isn’t quite as engaging as most of the other characters.
I am hoping to see more of Queen Maeve next season, as she has a truly phenomenal sequence with Homelander that takes place during the rescue of a hijacked airliner. I even like idiot loser The Deep, who serves as effective comic relief in a series that desperately needs it (his dolphin rescue is a highlight of the season), even if he is an enormous creep when the show begins. Perhaps he becomes a reformed creep eventually, but Crawford is doing good work with the character.
The Boys
In many ways The Boys reads like a direct JLA parody with equivalents of Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, and sort-of Batman on the roster. But it’s more effective than anything else DC has put out recently, certainly more so than the last several seasons of most of the Arrowverse shows. And while Marvel has never stopped kicking ass and taking names at the box office, the brutal, R-rated insanity of The Boys is a welcome breath of fresh air from Marvel’s non-stop quips and toy-selling efforts, as good as its end products may be.
I would highly recommend The Boys to anyone with a stomach strong enough to handle it. It’s a fantastic series and I cannot wait to see what I hope is many more years of it to come.
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