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For Eric Kripke, ‘The Boys’ Was Always About Trumpism

As the showrunner grows his darkly comic satire into a franchise — and spoofs a certain trial and presidential election in the new season — he says he’s fine losing the viewers who just figured out his social agenda: “Go watch something else.”

But it was a cheap, genre show on an unsexy network, The CW, so even an ensuing string of doubles ( Revolution, Timeless) did little to move his needle. But Kripke crafted a scathing satire of 21st century America where Homelander, the chiseled superhero in the American flag cape, is an authoritarian proxy for Donald Trump. Critics immediately took a shine, but its commercial success — the most recent season earned more eyeballs than The Rings of Power, with 106 billion minutes viewed in 2022 — made Kripke a priority at the streamer.

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