The latest season of THE BOYS (Amazon Prime) continues to use the appearance of modern superheroes as the lens for brutal satire of today’s America. From this cutting satire to plenty of OMFG moments and crazy amounts of laugh-out-loud violence and gore, this was the best season yet.
In this season, the vice presidential candidate is secretly a superhero, the president is trying to have her assassinated by the Boys before she can do it to him after the election, and Homelander recruits new members of the Seven to realize his destiny–build a nation where common people are sheep ruled by superheroes for his son Ryan.
Of course, none of it turns out the way they think it will.
In past seasons, superheroes were used to both realistically evaluate what they’d look like in the real world while also skewering American culture and capitalism. In THE BOYS, superheroes aren’t paragons of virtue selflessly toiling to save people from catastrophe, they’re corporate products–carefully crafted celebrity personas designed to maximize revenues. With great power comes not great responsibility but a bigger propensity to screw up and hurt people, as these superpowers don’t make people better, they simply make them more of who they are, and unaccountable on top of it. As for the satire, it nails everything, with notable examples being corporations and celebrities acting performative on social issues.
In Season 4, the writers take on the willingness of certain people to worship strongmen, America’s innate fascist streak, the cynicism of big business towards average people, and how easy it is for the media to manipulate people to hate the “other” to the level of functioning as a cult, complete with its own reality, language, crazy logic, and fascist longings dressed up in star-spangled bullshit. If that sounds familiar to you in today’s gladiator-style politics, you can guess why this season made some people angry–certain they were in on the joke for three seasons but not happy when the joke was on them in the fourth.
The only downside to this season’s bold moves and smart writing was another season of Frenchie’s guilt–the character is a downer, they really need to find something else for him to do.
Overall, THE BOYS is brilliant TV, one of my favorite shows, and in my view honestly the most realistic depiction of what superheroes would actually look like in the real world.
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