The Boys (Seasons 1&2)
Warning: The review contains spoilers for Seasons 1 & 2
In the late 1980’s DC comics published Watchmen (created by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons) and it became the most critically successful comic book of all time to the point where it’s often placed in best novels of all time lists alongside works of classic authors like Charles Dickens. It was about a group of costumed vigilantes who at their core were broken human beings, trying to solve the murder of one of their own as well as do their bit to prevent nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War. It allowed us to see superheroes (although only one of them had actual superpowers) in a different way than we normally saw them because they weren’t these ultimate paragons of justice, instead they were assholes that just so happened to be fighting for our team against what we perceived to be the enemy.
Skip forward to the modern day, and superheroes are big business. Superhero media dominates almost every mainstream source of visual entertainment, and it’s worth billions upon billions of dollars. So, what if a company like Disney had real superheroes instead of fictional ones? Mix in just a dash of Watchmen to that line of thought and you have basic concept of The Boys.
The Seven are a team of superheroes owned by Vought Industries, a conglomerate which started out as a pharmaceutical company but has since expanded into almost every sector it can thanks to its most profitable assets, its superheroes. The supers fight real life crime when they have the opportunity to do so, but the majority of their livelihood is spent as entertainers. They star in films, appear in front of the press, they need to maintain a strong social media presence, and they need to interact with their fans to keep themselves relevant.
Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) works in an electronics store and has a girlfriend named Robin (Jess Salgueiro), one day whilst the two of them are standing having a conversation in the street Robin is killed by a member of The Seven, A-Train (Jessie Usher), when he runs into her at close to the speed of sound. Suffering from severe trauma after her death, Hughie wants A-Train to admit his guilt to the world rather than have Vought handle the situation and pay Hughie off. This is where he meets Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a man who claims to have had problems with Vought superheroes in the past and also wants to expose them for the criminals they are and hold them accountable for their actions. Bily recruits Hughie to work alongside himself, and his two accomplices Mothers Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Kapon). However, when they capture Translucent (Axel Hassell), another member of The Seven, Hughie realises that Billy and the gang actually intend on killing the superheroes rather than exposing them as the frauds they are.
Meanwhile Annie January (Erin Moriarty), a young woman who has been training her whole life to be a part of The Seven, is brought into the fold at Vought as Starlight, their newest hero. Starlight quickly comes to realise that the superhero lifestyle is not at all what she thought, and that her colleagues are all terrible people who commit horrendous acts whenever they aren’t in front of the camera.
Skip forward to the modern day, and superheroes are big business. Superhero media dominates almost every mainstream source of visual entertainment, and it’s worth billions upon billions of dollars. So, what if a company like Disney had real superheroes instead of fictional ones? Mix in just a dash of Watchmen to that line of thought and you have basic concept of The Boys.
The Seven are a team of superheroes owned by Vought Industries, a conglomerate which started out as a pharmaceutical company but has since expanded into almost every sector it can thanks to its most profitable assets, its superheroes. The supers fight real life crime when they have the opportunity to do so, but the majority of their livelihood is spent as entertainers. They star in films, appear in front of the press, they need to maintain a strong social media presence, and they need to interact with their fans to keep themselves relevant.
Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) works in an electronics store and has a girlfriend named Robin (Jess Salgueiro), one day whilst the two of them are standing having a conversation in the street Robin is killed by a member of The Seven, A-Train (Jessie Usher), when he runs into her at close to the speed of sound. Suffering from severe trauma after her death, Hughie wants A-Train to admit his guilt to the world rather than have Vought handle the situation and pay Hughie off. This is where he meets Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a man who claims to have had problems with Vought superheroes in the past and also wants to expose them for the criminals they are and hold them accountable for their actions. Bily recruits Hughie to work alongside himself, and his two accomplices Mothers Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Kapon). However, when they capture Translucent (Axel Hassell), another member of The Seven, Hughie realises that Billy and the gang actually intend on killing the superheroes rather than exposing them as the frauds they are.
Meanwhile Annie January (Erin Moriarty), a young woman who has been training her whole life to be a part of The Seven, is brought into the fold at Vought as Starlight, their newest hero. Starlight quickly comes to realise that the superhero lifestyle is not at all what she thought, and that her colleagues are all terrible people who commit horrendous acts whenever they aren’t in front of the camera.
Now despite The Boys being a show about superheroes, it’s not really a show about superheroes. In fact, it’s more a scathing critique of humanity when it has too much greed and power, both in the form of people with superpowers, and conglomerates with far too much money. It works incredibly well, for the most part, because it grounds itself in a world we can understand. Anyone vaguely familiar with modern superheroes will see the similarities between The Seven and DC’s Justice League characters. Homelander (Antony Starr) is Superman if he were a sociopath with a God complex, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) is an alcoholic Wonder Woman, A-Train is a narcissistic Flash, and The Deep (Chace Crawford) is Aquaman but a rapist. There are other super’s in The Seven, but they are the main players that you’ll spend the most time with. They’re all really well written too. I’d argue Maeve is the only one that’s somewhat likeable, but it doesn’t mean the others aren’t good character’s they’re just excellent villains who fulfil the role of ‘hero’ in the public eye. The geeky side of me also loves how The Deep is a complete joke to the rest of his team members because his superpower is that he talks to fish, and it just screams how most comic book fans looked at Aquaman before Jason Momoa gave the hero some much needed sex appeal.
It also strikes a lot of fear into you with just how close these supers are to the ones we know and love, simply because we already know what they are capable of and are terrified of seeing what could happen if we piss one of them off. Homelander is an excellent example of this because this guy could kill everyone on the planet if he wanted to, and he considers it several times, so when you get to tense conversations you’re constantly on the edge of your seat because you never know whether these supers could fly off the handle and cause some major destruction.
The titular group of ‘The Boys’ though which consists of Hughie, Billy, MM, and Frenchie are definitely interesting, but I feel fail to really convey our feelings as the viewer. We’re not given an awful lot of reason to sympathise with them. Frenchie is a drug dealer and a crook. Billy is a psychopath. Hughie is often pretty pathetic. MM is perhaps the only character that you can really root for thanks to his level headedness and family commitments, but he’s often the butt of the joke because of his more sensitive nature in comparison to the others. Hughie and Starlight begin a relationship together and it’s ok, but there’s often not enough meat on the bones of that story to care all that much about it. It’s mainly just there so Hughie can get intel on The Seven and Vought to progress the plot.
Season 1 revolves around finding out why A-Train killed Robin. It’s revealed that he was high on a super drug called Compound-V, so the The Boys set about revealing this information to the public however possible. In doing so they kill Translucent, a member of The Seven who can turn invisible. They ultimately discover that Compound-V isn’t just a drug for superheroes, but that none of the supers have gained their powers naturally and instead were given Compound-V at birth and it altered their genes to give them these powers. Season 2 of the show primarily deals with a new addition to The Seven, Stormfront (Aya Cash), as well as the aftermath of Compound-V being revealed to the public. Homelander & Stormfront lead a Trump style rally to get the public onboard with Compound-V and encourage more superheroes to be created so they can fight newly emerging ‘super-terrorists’. The Boys are continuing to try and reveal Vought for who they really are, as well as realise that Stormfront is actually a rebranded former superhero who was married to the founder of the company. Meanwhile, The Deep joins ‘The Church of the Collective’ who promise him redemption and reacceptance into The Seven provided he subscribe to their rehabilitation process.
It also strikes a lot of fear into you with just how close these supers are to the ones we know and love, simply because we already know what they are capable of and are terrified of seeing what could happen if we piss one of them off. Homelander is an excellent example of this because this guy could kill everyone on the planet if he wanted to, and he considers it several times, so when you get to tense conversations you’re constantly on the edge of your seat because you never know whether these supers could fly off the handle and cause some major destruction.
The titular group of ‘The Boys’ though which consists of Hughie, Billy, MM, and Frenchie are definitely interesting, but I feel fail to really convey our feelings as the viewer. We’re not given an awful lot of reason to sympathise with them. Frenchie is a drug dealer and a crook. Billy is a psychopath. Hughie is often pretty pathetic. MM is perhaps the only character that you can really root for thanks to his level headedness and family commitments, but he’s often the butt of the joke because of his more sensitive nature in comparison to the others. Hughie and Starlight begin a relationship together and it’s ok, but there’s often not enough meat on the bones of that story to care all that much about it. It’s mainly just there so Hughie can get intel on The Seven and Vought to progress the plot.
Season 1 revolves around finding out why A-Train killed Robin. It’s revealed that he was high on a super drug called Compound-V, so the The Boys set about revealing this information to the public however possible. In doing so they kill Translucent, a member of The Seven who can turn invisible. They ultimately discover that Compound-V isn’t just a drug for superheroes, but that none of the supers have gained their powers naturally and instead were given Compound-V at birth and it altered their genes to give them these powers. Season 2 of the show primarily deals with a new addition to The Seven, Stormfront (Aya Cash), as well as the aftermath of Compound-V being revealed to the public. Homelander & Stormfront lead a Trump style rally to get the public onboard with Compound-V and encourage more superheroes to be created so they can fight newly emerging ‘super-terrorists’. The Boys are continuing to try and reveal Vought for who they really are, as well as realise that Stormfront is actually a rebranded former superhero who was married to the founder of the company. Meanwhile, The Deep joins ‘The Church of the Collective’ who promise him redemption and reacceptance into The Seven provided he subscribe to their rehabilitation process.
My biggest issue with The Boys is that it can sometimes be a little too over the top with its graphic violence and gore. This isn’t an issue so much in Season 1, but in Season 2 it feels like they jumped the shark a little and it just becomes off-putting and excessive. For example, we get a close up shot of Homelander crushing a man’s skull as he and Stormfront have sex for no reason other than why the hell not. There’s also an unresolved plot thread where people’s heads keep exploding, and the first couple of times it happens it’s surprising and works well, but come a particular scene late in the series where multiple people get explosively decapitated in a matter of seconds it just becomes a bit silly.
The Boys is a good show and definitely Amazon’s best original at this moment in time. But I have a feeling that the format of the show will quickly become stale if they don’t mix up the formula a little come Season 3. Also, whilst I’m an advocate for over the top gory violence, at least give it a context. The first season did that rather well, but Season 2 almost seemed like it wanted to be gorier with no real goal as to why, or how to do it effectively, so they just started exploding heads for shits and giggles.
The Boys is a good show and definitely Amazon’s best original at this moment in time. But I have a feeling that the format of the show will quickly become stale if they don’t mix up the formula a little come Season 3. Also, whilst I’m an advocate for over the top gory violence, at least give it a context. The first season did that rather well, but Season 2 almost seemed like it wanted to be gorier with no real goal as to why, or how to do it effectively, so they just started exploding heads for shits and giggles.