We all knew it was a matter of time before the narrative backlash against the superhero genre was going to come. We’ve had shows about anti-heroes, sure, and about how superhero life can be messed up, but Amazon’s new show The Boys goes one step further by creating a team of normal people dedicated to taking down a team of beloved but awful supers:
Here’s the official synopsis from Amazon:
Supers have been committing atrocities, which keep getting swept under the rug because they are revered by the adoring public. Billy Butcher recruits The Boys who have all been wronged by The Seven, the world’s most notorious superheroes, to bring them down and stop the corruption. Based on the best-selling comics by Garth Ennis, The Boys is a revenge story where the nobodies take on the somebodies.
Karl Urban is made for this show, which is why is makes sense he’s cast as the team’s leader Billy Butcher. It’s also cool to see Karen Fukuhara as The Female after her turn as Katana in DC’s Suicide Squad, though it’s easy to see she’s playing yet another silent but deadly character. We’ve also got Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell, Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk, Jack Quaid as “Wee” Hughie Campbell, and Tomer Kapon as Frenchie as members of the team.
But the biggest thing we can take away from the trailer is the show’s irreverence, mixing machine guns and 1990s pop songs, and the gruesome death by speed-force of Hughie’s girlfriend with a shot of him holding her somehow still intact hands. This is definitely not going to be for the faint of heart, but it could be the perfect palette cleanser after a solid decade of superhero worship. At the very least, it’ll help set the tonally stage for HBO’s Watchmen coming out in the near future.
The Boys premieres on Amazon Prime on July 26, 2019.