The Boys (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Boys is an American satirical superhero series that Hollywood spent years refusing to make. Director Adam McKay carried the idea to every studio and financing house in town, along with a pre-visualization reel of superheroes doing cocaine. The answer kept coming back as no, and executives lazily asked whether it was just Watchmen. In time, the story reached the screen on Amazon Prime Video, adapted by showrunner Eric Kripke from the comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It ran from 2019 to 2026. How did a pitch that studios hated become a long-running hit? Why does a show about corrupt celebrity heroes keep landing so close to real politics? And how does a creator who admits he cannot predict a show's length end it on his own terms?

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• 2. Development Hell

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  In 2008, The Boys was meant to be a trilogy of feature films at Columbia Pictures, with Adam McKay directing on a budget of $100 million. The first film reached a finished screenplay and demo animatics of its scenes. Even so, creative differences between the studio and McKay ended the project. Paramount Pictures secured the rights in August 2012 and revived the production. In April 2016, the film was cancelled, and reports said Cinemax would develop a television series instead. Darick Robertson, the comic's co-creator and illustrator, put it plainly: "It just came down to it being 2008, not 2018."

  Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were recruited next. They were then working on Preacher, another series based on a comic by Ennis, and they became executive producers and directors of the pilot. Eric Kripke, a longtime fan of Ennis's work, was hired as showrunner and head writer.

  On the 8th of November 2017, Amazon Studios acquired the television adaptation after Cinemax chose not to move forward. Sharon Tal Yguado, hired that year to supervise future franchises at Amazon, hoped for a different take on the superhero genre. Hollywood was saturated with superhero shows at the time. The same day, Amazon greenlit a first season of eight episodes, each with an estimated budget of $11.2 million. It also committed to at least five seasons, in line with Kripke's plans. The hope was to repeat the success of Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and The Walking Dead.

  On the 30th of April 2018, it was reported that Dan Trachtenberg would direct the first episode. He replaced Rogen and Goldberg, who dropped out because of scheduling conflicts. The pair stayed on as executive producers, and production was set to begin in Toronto in May 2018.

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• 3. Heroes as Brands

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  Vought International is the company that makes its superpowered employees look like heroes. In the series these people are called Supes, and the public adores them. Away from the cameras, most are corrupt and self-serving. Some cause reckless collateral damage, and others commit atrocities that the public never learns about.

  The show treats this as a deconstruction of the superhero genre, set against the idealism associated with Marvel and DC. Many Supes are direct parodies of popular heroes from those two publishers, reimagined as more depraved and more realistic. Each season introduces a new Supe derived from a famous character. The writers also imagined heroes woven into modern culture as political figures, over-worshipped celebrities, and profitable marketing tools.

  Kripke wanted to stay faithful to the comics while keeping the story realistic. He judged some concepts and characters too fantastic for television and set rules for the writers about which ideas were allowed. The comic appeared in the 2000s and the series in the late 2010s, and that gap forced further changes.

  Two groups drive the conflict. The Seven is Vought's premier superhero team, led by the power-hungry Homelander. The Boys are black ops agents, first sponsored by the CIA and later independent, who want to bring Vought down.

  In season one, A-Train of The Seven accidentally kills the girlfriend of Hughie Campbell, an electronics clerk. Hughie meets Billy Butcher, a former SAS and CIA operative who despises all superpowered beings. He joins The Boys hoping to avenge her. Meanwhile, Annie January, who performs as Starlight, joins The Seven and must face the truth about the heroes she admires.

  Season two finds The Boys hiding from the law, with Butcher nowhere to be found. Homelander's grip on The Seven is threatened by Stormfront, a social media-savvy new Supe with an agenda and a secret past. Season three begins one year after the Stormfront scandal, with The Boys working for Victoria Neuman's Bureau of Superhero Affairs. A mysterious anti-Supe weapon then sends them chasing the legend of Soldier Boy.

  In season four, six months after Soldier Boy's defeat, The Boys work with the CIA to assassinate Neuman. She is secretly under Homelander's control, and he is helped by Sister Sage, a Supe known as the smartest person in the world. Butcher has only months to live and has lost both Becca's son Ryan and his leadership of the team. Season five opens one year after Homelander seized power in the United States. The Boys hold a virus capable of killing every Supe. Homelander, however, has found V1, the first version of Compound V, which threatens to make him immortal and immune to that virus.

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• 4. Cast and Craft

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  Erin Moriarty was the first lead to be cast, taking the role of Annie January in December 2017. By January 2018, Antony Starr, Dominique McElligott, Chace Crawford, Jessie T. Usher, and Nathan Mitchell had joined the main cast. Karl Urban was cast as Billy Butcher in April 2018. At New York Comic Con in October 2018, Simon Pegg was announced as Hughie's father. Robertson says he drew Hughie in the comics to resemble Pegg after seeing him in the sitcom Spaced. Pegg, for his part, thought he was too old to play Hughie.

  Jensen Ackles joined for season three as Soldier Boy, a character who differs from the comics. Kripke described him as the Homelander before Homelander. Ackles called him a jackass, a curmudgeon and a grandpa who fought in World War II. Mitchell's Black Noir died in the season three finale, yet Mitchell returned in season four as Black Noir II, a new entity. In June 2024, Jared Padalecki confirmed he would appear in the final season. Kripke had joked about wanting him: "I feel like I have to complete my game of Supernatural Pokémon." Daveed Diggs was cast in September 2024, and in March 2026 his role was revealed as Oh-Father.

  The story is set in New York City, as in the comics, but the series was filmed mainly in Toronto. Season one began shooting on the 22nd of May 2018 and wrapped on the 11th of October 2018. Locations included Roy Thomson Hall, Yonge-Dundas Square, now Sankofa Square, Lower Bay Station, and Sherbourne Common. Some were altered digitally to resemble New York or to build fictional places such as Seven Tower. Even the interiors of several buildings received this treatment.

  For season two, the Toronto City Council relocated filming at Mel Lastman Square. The site was close to where the Toronto van attack occurred on the 23rd of April 2018. The fifth season began filming on the 25th of November 2024 and wrapped on the 21st of June 2025. Kripke marked the end on Instagram: "This is the last time I'll ever be on this set. It'll be torn down soon. It's bittersweet, but my primary feeling is gratitude."

  Stephan Fleet is the visual effects supervisor, working with visual effects producer Sean Tompkins. The effects combine computer-generated imagery, green screen, and digi-doubles. Fleet describes Tompkins as a managerial partner who handles finance and scheduling. Season one alone drew on eleven effects studios, and the roster changed every season. Industrial Light and Magic appears on the lists for seasons two and four.

  Christopher Lennertz composes the score, having worked with Kripke on Supernatural and Revolution. Matt Bowen became co-composer from season three and co-composed every episode of season four. Lennertz told the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con that this was the craziest thing he had done, after working with Rogen on Sausage Party. Moriarty sang her own vocals on "Never Truly Vanish" in season two, and the song earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

  Season four brought "Let's Put the Christ Back in Christmas", written for a fictional troupe of figure skaters called Vought on Ice. To prepare, Lennertz watched a marathon of ice shows. He recalled: "I knew sleigh bells were essential and the tempo had to be lively." The production also built an official website for Vought on Ice.

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• 5. Politics and Satire

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  Promotional materials for the fourth season carried the lines "Make America Super Again" and "Supe Lives Matter". They parody the slogans "Make America Great Again" and "Black Lives Matter". Some producers have said such analogies are intentional and meant to carry a political message.

  The series takes on systemic racism, white nationalism, white supremacy, and xenophobia. It also references corporate corruption, homophobia, police brutality, and sexual harassment. Many viewers read it as a critique of conservatism and far-right politics. Others compare it to the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements, and some compare Homelander to Donald Trump.

  Stormfront shows the approach most clearly. She is a racist superhero who believes in Nazism, and in the comics the character is male. Kripke made her a woman in the series, aiming for "Homelander's worst nightmare that would be a strong woman who wasn't afraid of him and proceeded to steal his spotlight". Aya Cash was announced in the role in July 2019.

  When the show was pitched in 2016, Kripke says, the idea was a realistic superhero show where heroes are celebrities behaving badly. After Trump's election, he saw it "suddenly" telling a story about celebrity and authoritarianism, and about how social media and entertainment sell fascism. He felt an obligation to run in that direction as far as the team could. Viewers who find the show too "woke", he said, should go watch something else. He was also surprised that some viewers see Homelander as the hero: "Subtle isn't one of them."

  In July 2024, Kripke grew uneasy about how closely season four tracked reality. He pointed to throwaway dialogue about billionaires stacking the Supreme Court and said: "I'm not happy being Satan's writers room." Garth Ennis, discussing right-wing fans, said both ends of the political spectrum can claim to be the Jedi and the other side the Sith. He added that "people are choosing what to believe".

  Real events intruded on the release. Five days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the season four finale was retitled from "Assassination Run" to "Season Four Finale". A viewer discretion warning was added, and the producers said any similarities to those events were coincidental. The finale is dedicated to Larry Kripke, Eric Kripke's father, who died on the 13th of February 2024.

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• 6. Pacing the Ending

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  The pilot, "The Name of the Game", had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on the 29th of April 2019. Three months later, all eight first-season episodes reached Prime Video a few hours ahead of the official date of the 26th of July 2019. Season two changed the pattern. It opened with three episodes on the 4th of September 2020, and the rest arrived weekly until the finale on the 9th of October. Kripke and the producers had convinced Amazon to do this, hoping to keep the series in conversation for longer. Season three followed on the 3rd of June 2022 with the same weekly pattern, ending on the 8th of July.

  On the 14th of May 2024, ahead of the fourth season premiere, Amazon announced a fifth season. On the 11th of June 2024, Kripke revealed on Twitter that it would be the last: "Season 5 will be the Final Season". Vernon Sanders, a senior Amazon MGM Studios executive, said the finale was always planned. He credited the series' success to Kripke's vision and execution.

  Kripke explained his reasoning to Entertainment Weekly. Three and five, he said, are the big magical numbers of writing, from movie acts to the rhythm of jokes. "Five just seems like a good round number", he added. He had once planned five seasons of Supernatural, and that show continued for 10 more seasons without him as showrunner. After the success of the spin-off Gen V, he even reconsidered and said that the main series might run beyond five seasons. He joked that no one in history is worse at predicting how many seasons a show will last.

  The season four finale settled the question. Kripke compared the five-season arc to a film's structure and said that point was the end of the second act, where everyone hits their low point. Now The Boys needed to come together and save the world. He also acknowledged the risk: "so many series finale suck. It's really hard to land the plane." The final season premiered with two episodes on the 8th of April 2026, with weekly releases until the last episode on the 20th of May 2026.

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• 7. Reception and Awards

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  In October 2019, Nielsen began tracking viewership of Prime Video originals and confirmed that The Boys had drawn 8 million total viewers in its first 10 days. For season two, the opening weekend share of streams was 7.2% among the top 100 most-watched series on Reelgood. That beat Stranger Things season three at 5.8% and The Mandalorian at 4.4%. The audience had grown 89% compared with season one. The Boys became the first non-Netflix series on Nielsen's Top 10 Streaming Shows list. In 2022, it was the most-watched superhero series, ahead of every Disney+ MCU series, with 10.6 billion minutes viewed.

  Season four reached more than 55 million viewers globally in 39 days, according to Amazon. That made it the fourth most-viewed television season in Prime Video history, behind The Rings of Power season one, Fallout season one, and Reacher season one. It was the third consecutive season of global growth. After its two-episode premiere, the final season ranked second on Nielsen's streaming chart for the week of the 6th of April 2026, with 899 million minutes, behind only HBO's The Pitt.

  Critics have been warm. The series holds 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 76 on Metacritic. Season three is the highest rated, at 98% from 153 reviews, and season one the lowest, at 85% from 106 reviews. Season four, at 92%, was called the most polarizing and darkest yet, though its finale was widely praised. Many critics rank Antony Starr's Homelander among the best performances on television.

  At the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in 2021, the second season was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. It was the first comic book television adaptation ever nominated in that category. Overall, the series has won four awards from 12 Primetime Emmy nominations, plus seven Critics' Choice Super Awards and six Astra TV Awards. In 2022, PETA gave the season three episode "Barbary Coast" its "Tech, Not Terror" Award for using a CGI octopus.

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• 8. A Shared Universe

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  Starting on the 7th of July 2021, the series released Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman, a fake current affairs show on the Vought News Network. The network parodies CNN and Fox News, and anchor Cameron Coleman parodies Tucker Carlson. A new segment arrived on the seventh of each month for seven months, ending on the 7th of January 2022. Each teased upcoming episodes and introduced new cast members. Matthew Edison, who plays the anchor, also appears in the third and fourth seasons of the main series.

  In-universe marketing spread widely. Songs were released as Voughtify music videos, including A-Train's "Faster" and Crimson Countess's "Chimps Don't Cry". Soldier Boy's fictional appearance on Solid Gold passed 20 million views on YouTube, because his version of "Rapture" by Blondie became a viral TikTok audio. On the 7th of October 2021, the canned water brand Liquid Death began a cross-promotion with The Deep as its "Chief Sustainability Associate". The brand repeatedly removed him after his promotional videos pushed unhealthy habits, and eventually parted ways with him. After the penultimate episode, Ashley Barrett became the brand's ambassador for a sparkling energy drink.

  The characters also entered other media. On the 8th of June 2022, an Audible Original called The Boys: Deeper and Deeper presented an in-universe interview about The Deep's memoir. On the 10th of July 2023, Activision added Black Noir, Homelander, and Starlight as playable characters in Call of Duty. Homelander followed in Mortal Kombat 1 on the 21st of July 2023, modeled after Starr. In the second episode of season five, the Teenage Kix wear a QR code that leads to a promotional short.

  Formal spin-offs grew from the main series. The animated anthology The Boys Presents: Diabolical received an eight-episode order on the 5th of December 2021 and premiered on the 4th of March 2022. Gen V was fast-tracked on the 24th of September 2020, described as part college show and part Hunger Games. It is set at a college for young adult superheroes run by Vought. It premiered on the 29th of September 2023, and its second season premiered on the 17th of September 2025. The Boys: Mexico was announced on the 28th of November 2023, created by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer with Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal producing. Vought Rising, announced on the 26th of July 2024, is set in the 1950s with Ackles and Cash returning as Soldier Boy and Stormfront. It is set to premiere in 2027.

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