Highlights
- The Boys season 4 mirrors real-world events, attracting viewers but surprising showrunner Eric Kripke.
- Despite criticisms, show’s real-world connections have been consistent, with a disturbing track record.
- While politics stay relevant, redemption arcs shine in season 4, promising an impactful conclusion.
While the latest season of The Boys might be its most culturally significant to date, showrunner Eric Kripke isn’t quite as excited about his work’s ballooning reputation for mirroring reality as some fans of the show might expect.
While the graphic novel story it is based on came to a conclusion in 2012 with little mainstream appeal, The Boys has exceeded every expectation for a comic book adaptation. Widely regarded as improving on the source material at a time when skepticism and genre fatigue stood at an all-time high, the show managed to deliver a bloody, grimy mess of gratuitous gore that was still able to tell an engaging, thoughtful story in a way that the comics didn’t (and admittedly didn’t try to at all). After the unfortunate series of events that was 2023 for both Marvel and DC films, The Boys season 4 was heralded by some as the perfect antidote for superhero fatigue come 2024 and has been the talk of the town since it started in June.
While the show has always been a bit less than subtle about making fun of real-world events, such as when The Boys used Homelander to mock Donald Trump’s new sneakers, this has been taken to a whole other level with the advent of the latest season. In an interview with The Wrap, Kripke revealed that the show’s growing tendency to resemble current events in the eyes of the American audience was not something he necessarily relished, despite being something that attracts many viewers to the latest season of the series. The conversation surrounding this peaked after the premiere of episode 6, which featured a secret plot to undermine democracy carried out under cover during an alt-right gathering of powerful leaders, and released on the Fourth of July. Kripke also clarified that the release date for the episode has been a total coincidence.
“This show has an increasingly disturbing track record of reflecting reality one way or another. There’s some throwaway dialogue, for example, in that billionaires are talking about how they have to stack the Supreme Court to get the decisions that they need. I’m not happy being Satan’s writer’s room. I’m starting to get really troubled by it. But there does continue to be a certain eerie similarity between the show and the things that are happening in the real world.”
While there are some criticisms being leveled at the show, such as the fact that The Boys’ pivotal Joe Kessler reveal scene was more interesting than the actual twist written into the season as a major plot point and has been earmarked as a sign of fading quality, the way the show invokes real-world situations and tensions has been remarkably consistent. While it certainly does more for the show’s popularity than the negative reactions do to mar the show’s numbers, Kripke’s aversion can certainly be understood on a more human level. Being a beacon of foresight or being seen as a prophetic IP can be great, but not when the message is overly negative.
Even with the politics in the show staying narratively relevant to the very end, Kripke’s team has put in amazing effort elsewhere, such as with the redemption arc that has been the most interesting part of The Boys’ fourth season so far by a train’s length. Just how successful the show will end up being at separating itself from the grim complements of the real world remains to be seen, but fans are likely set for a great season conclusion regardless.
The Boys is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: The Wrap
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