The Boys should be the crowbar that bludgeons to death the superhero genre as we currently know it

Vulture

Sure, the Amazon superhero series "walks on well-trod ground by depicting the spandex set as all-too-human perverts and sociopaths: countless edgy and 'edgy' comics have done that before, from Watchmen to Ultimates to the printed original version of The Boys, even back to MAD’s groundbreaking 1953 satire 'Superduperman," says Abraham Riesman. "It’s understandable that many comics geeks saw Amazon’s (frankly, awful) marketing campaigns for The Boys and assumed it was just more of the same. But I’m here to tell you: It really, truly isn’t. This is something new — and urgently needed. The thematic reversal is this: The Boys isn’t built on a hoary hypothetical about what real people would be like if they tried to become superheroes; instead, it demands we admit that superheroes have altered the way we look at real people." Riesman adds: "Everyone thinks they know the difference between right and wrong, and that they’ve done more of the former than the latter. Everyone thinks they’re free of bigotry, or at least that what others identify as bigotry is merely a rational response to real threats. Everyone thinks that they could make the world better if they only had the strength to do so. Everyone. That includes all the people you hate, the people who are ruining your country and world, the people who hold real power and cause real misery. We all think we’re superheroes, or at least that we would be, given the chance. Even more dangerous, we project those personality traits onto the bold-faced names that we adore, assuming that they know what’s best and can achieve it with their considerable powers. We’re all utterly and profoundly wrong...There are no superheroes in our world. There are no powerful people who do only good. There never were. Anytime we fall into the trap of thinking of people as flesh-and-blood incarnations of our best ideals, even ones with humanizing flaws, we’re proven humiliatingly wrong, and the consequences of our credulousness are potentially catastrophic."

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• Co-creator Eric Kripke hopes The Boys feels dated by the time it returns for Season 3: "Look, I hope that when season three airs we’ll be living in a much more sane America and my show will seem a little dated," says Kripke. "That’d be great. That would be it. That would be a cost that would be so happy to pay. But my feeling was that in season two we weren’t trying to predict anything, we were just writing what was happening at that exact moment. And it just happened to also be happening two years later. You just can’t predict those things. So, I only know how to continue what I’m doing, which is we’re writing season three right now to reflect everything that’s happening at this moment. And we’ll see how it lands when it airs, then hopefully when it does, it’ll just be a bad memory."
• In Season 2, Kripke wanted to set his target on white supremacy and how it intermingles with alt-right nationalism
• Season 2 ended with a frustrating false equivalency
• Kripke explains why The Boys wanted a completely different ending for Season 2
• Kripke previews Jensen Ackles' role in Season 3
• Aya Cash on going full-on Nazi: "The name is the one giveaway," she says. "I think if you actually know what Stormfront is, then it's kind of a glaringly obvious thing, but if you're not familiar, I think it was a real surprise. It was like the first contemporary Nazi website."