‘The Boys’ Creator Predicts A Homelander And Donald Trump Interaction

It’s the television show that consistently keeps its viewers well on their toes, as it is almost impossible to anticipate what graphically bizarre scenario the writers will think of next. As The Boys on Amazon Prime Video now heads into its fifth and final season, with production currently underway, its story continues to be celebrated by its loyal fans, as it has completely flipped the superhero genre on its head.

With fictional superhero leaders in The Boys like Homelander and his ever-changing team known as The Seven, consisting of gifted yet ruthlessly self-centered and quietly insecure individuals, acting to have the world’s best interests at heart, while a group of outcasts work together to try to take them down, The Boys remains wildly engaging and all-too-timely television today, with much of its story showing clear parallels to our own divisive real world and the leaders gaining power.

I sat down with The Boys creator, executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke back in December to reflect on the latest season and to tease what we all should expect in the upcoming farewell season.

Jeff Conway: Eric, I’m so excited to see what’s to come. I know you’re working hardcore right now, but if we can even go back to this past season four. A lot of shows that have multiple seasons sometimes get a lot of grief about the ongoing writing choices of where they take these established characters next. So, what was your main objective when you were assembling season four, to make sure that it was still engaging and shocking, like it was before, but also still a worthy story to tell?

Eric Kripke: We started with the characters and every season we have challenged ourselves to try to reveal new or deeper facets of who they are. We always say like – We try not to go bigger. We try to go deeper. After three seasons of digging, I think we kind of reached the conclusion that it was time to deal with whatever each character’s core existential trauma was, because we knew it was going to be the penultimate season and it almost feels like the end of Act Two of a movie, where it’s weird to say it because it’s so crazy, but it’s like a more introspective season.

It’s a little darker. Everyone is really dealing with their trauma. So, that was kind of what drove it, and then you start asking – Okay, what is every character’s core trauma? What makes them who they are? For Huey, it’s that his mother abandoned him. And for Homelander, it was the way he was raised. And for Butcher, it was – Can he escape the ghost of Becca? Each person has a thing that really makes them who they are. For Starlight or Annie, it is – How do you live life with an entirely new identity when you’ve had this identity your entire life and what it’s done to you? So, we try to do a lot of armchair psychiatry with these characters and this was sort of us digging a little deeper.

Conway: How do you, Eric, straddle the line between touching upon themes and observations that we see, with the conflicts and the power-hungry individuals in our real world, while not letting the show become political – or are you okay with The Boys sometimes sending a cautionary message that we society can and perhaps should be learning from?

Kripke: Look, I think The Boys probably, for better or worse, is a political show at this point. I think season four was political. I think the world has sort of grown to resemble the show more and more in a way that’s not great. And so, we just sort of lean into it. I mean, the show is about why and how you should question your leaders. You should question anyone who stands in front of you. You should question anyone who is pitching you simple answers to complicated problems and who is saying that they’re the only ones who can save you – like those are dangerous people. Obviously, we’re not shy about saying that, but I take a little bit of pride in that for our bananas superhero show, we’re one of the most current shows on TV, in terms of like reflecting exactly what’s happening in the world at this moment, and that’s great. It’s amazing for a superhero show to be doing that. So, I’m really proud that we pulled that off.

Conway: Absolutely. I know you’re in the midst of filming season five, so I’m wondering – obviously, you bring up the leaders of our world. We recently had a November U.S. presidential election. I’m sure you had your scripts written before that, but did you and your writers ever so softly tweak anything, following what happened in November, and what we plan to potentially see moving forward?

Kripke: Yeah, I mean, they’re not all written, by the way. They’re about half-written. I mean, look – things adjust all the time. That happened in season one when like the “Me Too” movement broke in the middle of the season and we had to go back and rethink a lot of things. So, we’re sort of used to this organic movement of the scripts always transforming a little bit, based on what’s happening in the world. So, that doesn’t really scare us. That’s pretty par for the course. You’re always rewriting these things right up until the day before they shoot, and sometimes, the day they shoot. So, we’re used to changing things as the world changes – but yes, we definitely adjust scripts as new events come to light.

Conway: So, if I may just even piggyback, you say there’s a few more scripts still to be written for this season. Now that the election went one way than the other, do you feel like maybe the writing – the narrative does change potentially with The Boys as time goes on, because of real events?

Kripke: No, we have in terms of the big picture of the story, like it stays the same. I mean, especially in the final season when every character has to reach their climax – like we’ve had those in our back pocket for a while and this season is mostly just figuring out how to get there, you know? So, it’s more like the stuff that the characters talk about that’s happening in society and some of the joke targets we’re taking, and some of that stuff changes, but the main bones of it stays pretty similar.

Conway: So Eric, now heading into five seasons of The Boys, how would you say you have grown, not only as a professional in the entertainment industry, but as a human, through your experiences and your storytelling, and the people’s reaction to your show over these years?

Kripke: Wow. You know, I’ve been on this show for when you think about like when I even just started pitching it, it’s been like nine years. So, it’s been quite a while. How have I grown? Well, I’ve aged nine years.

It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I’ll be sad when it’s over. This cast is uniquely amazing, not just as actors, but as people. You come to think of the crew and the writers as your family. It’s just the best group with the most fun I’ve ever had at this particular job, writing the thing that I think is probably weirdly most personal to me. I think I’ve been forced to become a news junkie in a way that I’m really looking forward to not being when it’s over. I wouldn’t mind being able to turn off all that, which I, up to now, have had no choice but to dive into all of it.

But mostly, I feel pride. I’ve come to actually weirdly respect the superhero genre maybe even more than I did. I think I probably started a little cynical about it, although I was always a fan of it. I see that it’s really hard to pull off, so I have a really healthy respect that it’s a challenging genre to do well. I used to say even in earlier interviews, like – Superheroes are dangerous. I think what I’ve come to realize is superheroes in the real world are dangerous. Superheroes in the fictional world can be inspiring because what I realized was people don’t view themselves when they’re watching a superhero movie as the person who needs rescuing – they view themselves as the rescuer. They put themselves in the superhero’s shoes, not the people on the planet. And so, it like gives them a positive role model and there’s something good about that. It’s just in the real world, strong men suck. That’s all.

Conway: Fair enough. So lastly, as I wrap up, I’m curious, hypothetically, of course – being the creator of The Boys, how do you think Homelander would react or respond to an interaction with Donald J. Trump? Would it be a friendly and enjoyable interaction, or do you think these two would ultimately clash?

Kripke: I think they would clash. I think they both require a lot of oxygen. So, I think if you were to put them in the same room at the same time, I think that between them, there could probably be only one.