“The Boys”: All Gas, Some Brakes

“The Boys” takes pride in its grittiness. With season one entering a superhero genre oversaturated with hyper-sanitized, kid-friendly adventures, the show stands out with a more mature, cynical take on the childhood staple. The series is surprisingly refreshing, in a market so long dominated by enjoyable but formulaic Marvel movies. More so, “The Boys” is a genuinely good television show, tackling relevant political themes alongside outstanding worldbuilding and character development. Its exaggerated aesthetic of over-the-top gore and explicit imagery, often the forefront of its appeal, enhances the more nuanced aspects of its script. While its pacing and storytelling lack the polish of season one, season two of “The Boys” is an excellent follow up, building on the world and story as it expands the scope and complexity of the show's themes and plot.

On the surface, the world of “The Boys” is identical to real world depictions in other superhero films. Through the numerous explosions, capes, and lasers, however, the show strategically lets just enough of reality pollute the story to satirize the real world while remaining fun and exciting. The antagonist of the show is not a singular person but a corporation by the name of Vought International, a media and pharmaceutical giant responsible for the management of America’s superheroes. The face of Vought is the Seven, a team of the world's most powerful heroes who, like celebrities, have their every word and action planned by a PR team to maximize their public approval and hide their overwhelming narcissism. Loosely based on the Justice League, the Seven are led by Homelander (Antony Star), a man with Superman powers, a god complex, and a complete disregard for human life. Other members include A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), the fastest man in the world who regularly takes performance-enhancing drugs in fear of being usurped, and the Deep (Chace Crawford), the Aquaman of the Seven and a serial perpetrator of sexual harassment.

Season one starts with Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), an unassuming and weak-spirited retail worker whose life is turned upside down when his girlfriend is killed after A-Train accidentally runs into her at superspeed. He’s contacted by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) to help him and his band of vigilantes (the titular Boys) take down Vought and the Seven. Butcher, who is convinced Homelander killed his wife, is morally ambiguous and violent, often pushing the boundaries of what Hughie and the audience deem acceptable. The rest of the Boys, creatively named Frenchie (Tomer Capon), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and the Female (Karen Fukuhara), while not nearly as questionable as Butcher, all have a propensity for crime and a loose ethical code; the fact that all these characters remain distinct and likable is a testament to the series’ writing. Season two raises the stakes, with the main gang becoming fugitives from the law and an immortal Nazi named Stormfront (Aya Cash) joining the Seven. Additionally, Homelander, who ended last season by killing his crush/mother figure (it’s complicated), spirals further out of control as he begins a romantic relationship with Stormfront and, with the deployment of superheroes alongside the U.S. Army to fight super terrorists, starts committing war crimes.

One noticeable detail of “The Boys” is that no one’s ever just killed. Characters are always exploded into giblets or burnt to a crisp or cut in half in horrific detail, leaving a graphic image in the viewer’s memory. Though this distinguishes it from Marvel’s brand of clean, bloodless media, the show’s neverending carnage is hardly unique within its genre. There have been dark, violent superhero stories going back to the ‘80s, when morally grey, obnoxiously edgy, grimdark aesthetics was the norm in comic books. Where “The Boys” differs is that it is capable of delivering a meaningful narrative behind its excessive brutality. These attempts at darker storytelling in comics often failed to include any depth, presenting a facade of maturity by doubling down on violence, sexual content, and nihilism without adding anything of substance.

Take, for example, the common storyline of Superman turning evil (or any alternative through cloning, multiple universes, etc.). The countless stories based around this pitch almost all stumble into the same pitfalls. Cripplingly aware of the stigma that comes with adapting content aimed at children (and specifically Superman, who's seen as simplistic and silly), every writer aiming to explore higher-minded concepts defaults to turning him into an angry, exaggerated supervillain to maximize the contrast with his typical boy scout persona. Homelander, who could be another iteration of “Superman but bad,” comes to represent so much more. In the context of the show, he’s a symbol for radical evangelical conservatism and the toxicity of American exceptionalism, with his public persona of a humble, sincere, Christian patriot flowing into familiar coded, xenophobic rhetoric. When Homelander is deployed as a tool of the U.S. military, his strategy almost mirrors the horror of a drone strike, with him landing in some remote village, killing his target along with a number of innocent civilians, and flying away without facing any consequences, perfectly encapsulating the callousness of the War on Terror. Homelander’s capacity for mindless gore is not only a shock tactic to emphasize how dangerous he is, but also a way for him to embody the real consequences of war and bloodshed.

This is where “The Boys” really shines: not through flashy violence or crazy action but through well-written characters and seamlessly incorporated political themes. Season one of “The Boys” was praised for the sensitivity with which it handled trauma and workplace sexual harassment, exploring the challenges of seeking justice in an environment focused on profit without defining its characters by their trauma. The newest season, while displaying a shift in focus, still hones in on a number of political issues.

Perhaps one of the less subtle ways politics is addressed in the show is with the introduction of Stormfront (Aya Cash), the newest member of the Seven and a character likable enough for the audience to be disappointed when it turns out she’s named after an alt-right website (Stormfront was the first major white supremacist website on the internet) and not her lightning powers. While a Nazi villain is far from novel, her intense characterization paves the way for more complex political commentary. Her growing romantic relationship with Homelander, the archetypal American patriot, serves as a controversial condemnation of the readiness with which religious conservatives associate with extremists and draws parallels between the two groups. Additionally, Vought’s willingness to overlook both of these heroes’ flawed ideologies to protect its reputation plays into one of the biggest themes throughout the show: the cynical nature through which corporations view politics.

One of the running jokes throughout season two of “The Boys” is “girls get it done,” the cliche, faux-feminist marketing slogan for Vought’s “Avengers”-style movie about the Seven. While it's a clever jab at Disney and the rest of Hollywood, who like to force poorly constructed, semi-progressive lines and scenes into their movies for no reason but to fake an enlightened world view, it shows an effort to explore identity in a new way. “The Boys” has plenty of representation across gender, race, and sexual orientation but remains critical of the kind of media that reduces such characters to two-dimensional figureheads of social stereotypes. The characters are diverse and have complex, well-developed personalities with ideas, hopes, and struggles beyond their most surface-level traits.

Despite how intense the story and action can be, “The Boys” handles all of its characters with a level of nuance that gives the whole world, not just the main cast, a real sense of depth. The central group of protagonists all have their own quirks and distinct identities, and entire subplots are given to side characters with little relevance to the main plot, just to give their lives realistic progression. The Deep is given an entire arc of him joining a Scientology-like cult in a desperate bid to redeem his public image after he’s exposed for sexual harassment; though he holds little importance to the rest of the plot, the level of thought put into all of his idiosyncrasies and repeated moral failings makes his story just as compelling as any other part of the show. Strangely, one of the least unique characters is Billy Butcher, arguably the most important figure in the series. Butcher falls into the archetype of a violent antihero with a heart of gold and would come off as predictable and boring if it weren’t for Karl Urban’s brilliant blend of humor and off-the-rails intensity.

Despite the show’s overall clean execution, season two seems to have a few deeper, structural issues not seen in the previous season. The plot of season two is almost disconnected from its pacing, with the most significant advancements holding seemingly little weight, and some of the most tense scenes holding little relevance. A great deal of the progression in the show happens through the main cast going to a place and completing an action without meeting any resistance, while high-intensity scenes are randomly inserted and rarely result in any shifts to the story. This makes some of the most important revelations and twists feel mundane and makes the more visually elaborate set pieces come across as meaningless. Nonetheless, the show manages to deliver exciting action and fascinating storytelling, and this issue never becomes major enough to disrupt the audience's experience.

“The Boys” is a show that aims high while staying fun. It combines elements of outstanding action-adventure with nuanced political commentary, complete with realistic and engaging character writing. Despite some minor structural issues in season two, it’s a series that can flow from humor and graphic violence to scathing criticisms of its own genre and intricately crafted political allegory. Though at first glance “The Boys” seems like a mindless murder-fest, behind its stylized brutality is an intelligent, contemplative story well incorporated into its more eccentric elements.