The new installment in this series starring a group of rebels seeking to end deified and fascist superheroes kicks off this Friday on Prime Video
“The Boys” is arguably the most successful series on Prime Video and, of course, the most talked-about in all the years the Amazon service has been running. Ruthless, original, sour, different, destructive, violent, disturbing, brave… There are many adjectives that come to mind when you dive into this fiction, based on the comics published by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, writer and cartoonist between 2006 and 2012. ‘The Boys’ depicts a universe where superheroes, characters with huge egos and deified, not only do not always do good, but are committed to living a good life and growing their current bills thanks to income from advertising and merchandising around them.
They are all run by a mega-corporation called Vought, something like an influencers agency, a company that not only has a team dedicated to crime search to fight, but also takes care of running their social networks, for generating interest in the public and creating all kinds of products -events close to the religious, reality shows and even movies, in a direct pullita to the Marvel universe-, in addition, be careful, selling the services of these titans to different cities in the United States. Marketing the work of superheroes, something often described as altruistic, is groundbreaking enough for the viewer to raise at least one eyebrow and pay attention to what’s happening on screen, but moreover, superheroes function as a brand and been treated like ‘celebrities’, signing autographs and having selfies taken… Vought has more than 200 of them spread across the United States, but they’re the ones who make up the group of The Seven -something like the League of Justice-, the most important of the company.
At the beginning of the fiction, they belong to this group of Black Noir, a dexterous killer who does not utter a word; Deep (Chace Crawford), a stubborn man who can breathe underwater and interact with marine life; Translucent, a pervert who makes himself invisible; Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), an Amazon of enormous strength; A-train (Jessie T. Usher), the fastest man on Earth; Starlight (Erin Moriarty), a naive young woman from Ohio who just passed the casting – she’s been competing in children’s superheroine contests since she was little, mind you – and Patriota (Anthony Starr), a kind of Superman – she has exaggerated strength, he can fly and fires lightning bolts from his eyes – even stickier than the DC Comics character, because he wears a cape with the stars and stripes of the American flag.
If this is the case, where is the conflict? The fiction, and beware the spoilers start here, revolves around a team of people looking to expose this group. Hughie (Jack Quaid), the nerdy clerk at a consumer electronics store, enters at the beginning of the first season when his girlfriend is literally blown up by a heavily modified A-train, even though Vought promised him $45,000. confidentiality agreement. There he begins to understand that the superheroes, who seem to do so much for the citizens, do not play by the same rules and that they can do and undo whatever they want. Just then, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) appears on the scene, a former CIA agent who hates superheroes, who he blames for the disappearance of his wife. This one will propose to take revenge with his group of colleagues. Little by little, not only Hughie but also Starlight will discover that behind that professional smile, the ridiculous suits and costumes, the visits to the adolescent with cancer in the hospital, the compadre with the citizens – “You really are the heroes”, Patriota repeats always like a mantra, faithful to the script written for him – and from the apparent goodwill deeply deified, selfish, ruthless and unscrupulous creatures hide. Patriota and his men ignore it, acting as judges and executioners, murdering in cold blood and even falsifying evidence. Fascism of good, and without super villains.
But there’s also criticism of the way many big companies operate — remember, “The Boys” is only available on Prime Video — and their development plans at all costs, an expansion where ethics and morals don’t seem to have their place. Let’s go for a detailed recap of the first two seasons. Watch out, spoilers are coming.
It is in the first season, Madelyn Stillwell, is brought to life by a spectacular and disturbing Elisabeth Shue, who embodies the aggravated capitalism that places the series in such a prominent place. Madelyn tries to get the government to give her an exaggerated amount of money so that the military can use superheroes as they see fit. At the same time, it affects the unhealthy relationship she has with Patriota: being a kind of mother and sexual partner.
Starlight’s arrival on the Seven team doesn’t start off well when the Deep asks for sexual favors. This, coupled with the superhero presenting evidence of a crime committed by Patriot, eventually causes him to be demoted from the group and sent to Ohio. Meanwhile, Hughie and Starlight begin a relationship that ends with her joining the group led by Butcher, who doesn’t trust the superhero at all. Together they manage to kidnap Translucent, who they try to convince to tell what’s going on inside the company, but things don’t go well and they explode him, chased by Patriot, who, unable to control his emotions, becomes increasingly becomes more and more. angry. The group meanwhile discover that the problem with A-Tren is that he is addicted to a substance called Compound V. Then it will be revealed that the substance was developed by Vought and that, contrary to popular belief, they are superheroes. not born but are made by injecting the compound into babies. Come on, the company’s actions were anything but ethical. Makes sense, because superheroes are still a reflection of the company: Patriot and Queen Maeve even crashed a plane full of passengers in the middle of a terrorist attack so that public opinion would decide in favor of the need to have superheroes. Little joke.
Patriota’s misdeeds don’t stop there, as he confesses to Madelyn that he injected the compound into some jihadists to make their work even more necessary. He then discovers that Madelyn kept the whereabouts of her son and the woman who fathered him a secret. The story makes him so mad that he wraps it in explosives. The final battle between Butcher and Patriot is soon over, when Patriot blows up the house with Madelyn in it. Butcher wakes up thousands of miles away with a smiling patriot, a child and a woman who turns out to be his wife, who he thought was dead.
The second season opens with Butcher’s entourage being pursued by the law as he considers himself the culprit in Madelyn’s death; meanwhile, The Seven finish off the terrorists they created themselves. Despite continuing to do their jobs from the outside, the group of superheroes is deeply moved by the death of Translucido, A-tren’s cardiac arrest and the resignation of Profundo, for whom they are seeking a replacement. Patriota wants to lead that casting, but it’s Vought’s president, Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), who casts Stormfront (Aya Cash), an electric-powered heroine with an influencer’s soul and plenty of arrogance, who starts off very badly. to fall into the group. Butcher will become obsessed with finding his wife, as well as maintaining leadership in an entourage that is increasingly taking a closer look at Hughie’s ideas and using Starlight to try to take the company down from within.
Starlight blackmails a Vought worker who finally gets him evidence about Compound V. When he has it, he sends it to the TV networks and manages to blow the whistle on the artificial nature of superheroes, shocking many of them in a negative way. Not in Patriot, who spends quality time with his son, who he goes to great lengths to bring out his powers. Stormfront for its part takes the initiative to take down an immigrant superhero related to the group led by Butcher. He kills him, but on the way with hundreds of civilians. Despite this, they manage to sell the idea that Stormfront saved the civilians. Patriot, increasingly jealous, fires A-train, is about to finish Starlight and then Stormfront, but they finally begin a relationship.
In turn, the group of rebels is now divided. Hughie and Starlight discover that a mysterious missing hero named Liberty is actually Stormfront. It doesn’t seem like the years are passing for her. Butcher tries to save Becca instead, but Becca doesn’t want to abandon her son. Also, the team enters a building where they experiment with the powers of the superheroes and in a scuffle they are all eventually released. The CIA has cornered Vought, but when the megacorporation trial begins, the heads of those in attendance begin to burst. Hoping for legal action, the group reunites to take action against Patriota, who has already taken his son, and his family. The fired A-tren shows up with documents showing that Vought developed the compound in Nazi Germany and that Stormfront was his first client. Footage of her with Hitler turns public opinion against the superhero, as the renegades hatch a plan to save Becca’s son. Starlight and Queen Maeve, who had been attacked by Patriot for being a lesbian, appease Stormfront’s anger and cause the little boy to go to his mother, but Stormfront stands in their way again and the little boy burns her with his powers, as well as his mother, whom he accidentally kills. Butcher leaves with the boy and Patriot has no intention of letting them escape, but Queen Maeve tells him that if he doesn’t leave them alone, she will release the video of them crashing a plane full of passengers. So everyone goes their own way. What happens in the third season is another mystery to be solved on Friday.
The third season of ‘The Boys’ will air on Prime Video on June 3.
Source: La Verdad
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