If you’re familiar with Eric Kripke’s most successful and longest-running show SUPERNATURAL, know that his newest show – THE BOYS – is vastly different from the former. It’s darker, bleakier and far more violent. But, like SUPERNATURAL, it’s also full of hilarious quips. THE BOYS, based on a comic series, introduces fans to a world where superheroes are a business. A company called Vought (led by the deliciousy diabolical Elisabeth Shue) essentially sells out its home-grown supers to various cities, colllecting royalties and fees, putting them into films, and selling their heroic deeds to the highest bidder. The world loves supers, turning out in giant crowds and whorshipping them as celebrities.
But, of course, the spotlight and power has turned a core group of superheroes – known as The Seven – into a group of….well, jerks. Their leader, Homelander, has terrible emotional problems and his squeaky clean image is marred by the fact that he’s basically a psychopath. One member demands that his new female co-worker service him sexually, and another brutally kills a woman in the course of supposedly performing a heroic deed and simply gets away with murder. The worst thing is that no one seems to care, so long as the supers keep saving people and Vought continues to hide the worst of their bad deeds.
In fact, it’s through this murder that we meet Hughie, an ordinary guy who loses his girlfriend in an utterly tragic (and, frankly, disgusting) manner. He’s soon recruited by Billy Butcher (played by Karl Urban), who has a longstanding grudge against supers and wants to find whatever tools he can in order to rid the world of them. This will eventually put them on a collision course with The Seven and with Vought. And within Vought itself you have its newest recruit, Starlight, who realizes that the superhero life isn’t all its cracked up to be when you’re just another cog in the corporate machine.
THE BOYS isn’t for the sqeamish, because it’s full of both unlikable characters and violence. But it’s a clever subversion of the normal superhero drama. We’re not rooting for the supers here – there’s no Captain America or Iron Man to cheer for. The heroes are the villains and the guys who are trying to expose them aren’t that much better.
THE BOYS has already been renewed for a second season. Its first season will debut on Amazon on Friday, July 26.