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The Boys Is Point-and-Laugh Political Satire at Its Worst
Even an assassination-themed finale offered toothless commentary for our fanged-up times.
When Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s same-named graphic novels premiered in 2019, it changed its source material to amp up Vought International’s hold on the entertainment industry, drawing parallels to Marvel’s and DC’s vast cinematic universes. The key to mockery was making The Boys world seem real by blurring its lines with our own: Executive producer Seth Rogen (who starred in 2011’s odd-duck superhero comedy The Green Hornet) played himself in a couple cameos; there was a reference to former Marvel Cinematic Universe mastermind Joss Whedon working for Vought Studios. Unlike the series’s approach to mocking conservative politics — which in this fourth season leaned hard on copying contemporaneous scenarios, like a right-wing elected official blathering on about “legitimate rape” à la Todd Akin or a conspiracy theorist storming a building because he was convinced children were being sex-trafficked there — The Boys ’s scorn for the highest echelons of American capitalism doesn’t simply indulge its audience in what they might already believe.
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