“That would be a horror movie,” says “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke about the prospect of superheroes existing in our real world. “The worst thing we could possibly do as people is invent superheroes for real.” We talked with Kripke as part of our “Meet the Experts” showrunners panel. Watch our interview with him above.
Based on a comic book series that ran from 2006 to 2012, “The Boys” imagines a world full of superheroes, like a lot of other prominent movie and TV franchises right now. But grafted onto our existing media, political, and economic systems, superheroes wouldn’t be a wish-fulfillment fantasy like they are in a lot of other entertainment. “It’s the most popular genre in the world right now. It’s sort of taken over the world, and yes, we’re puncturing that, but I think we’re also making the point that you don’t want authoritarians with that much power. It would be really, really bad for humanity and the world.”
That point was underlined in season two when the already dangerously narcissistic Homelander (Antony Starr) teamed up with a new hero, Stormfront (Aya Cash), who (SPOILER ALERT) turned out to be a Nazi. It’s not hard to see the real-world parallels, and that idea of superheroes in a recognizable real-world context even extends to the violence they inflict, which is depicted with visual effects in “the most ruthlessly realistic version” the show can achieve. So while superheroes as a concept can be “inherently absurd,” taking them to their logical conclusion “usually pushes us to a pretty absurd and sometimes horrifying place.”
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