Although Amazon has created a lot of television products in recent years. The series (The Lord of the Rings) is just one of many examples. It didn’t have a show with great success until “The Boys” come out. Of course, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is a truly remarkable audio-visual product with excellent media coverage, but the television phenomenon is another matter. Then the series created by Eric Kripke showed up. “The Boys” conquered the general public and became the flagship series of the Prime Video catalogue.
It is a show that probably would have received the same success even in the past. However, after the MCU and the DC universe, The Boys on the prime video really makes sense in this historical period and its acclamation was obvious. We are invaded by superhero narratives, both those composed of antiheroes, and those composed of characters with an iron moral.
“The Boys”, instead, tells the theme of humans with superpowers starting from a simple question. What if these superheroes decide to use their powers for self-interest? This approach may remind you of the incipit of “Batman vs Superman”. But “The Boys” builds this structure in the first and second season, and slowly shows the consequences of those superheroes who are dedicated to crime and selfishness.
This is the world we face when we watch “The Boys”. We immediately notice it, in one of the first scenes, when A-Train literally crosses the girlfriend of our protagonist, Hugh Campbell. The fastest superhero in the world, at that moment under the influence of drugs, pulverizes the poor girl, under the devastated look of the boyfriend. In the blink of an eye, his face covered with blood. The terrifying sensation of feeling for the last time the warmth of his beloved on his skin.
A-Train is one member of the Seven, the group of superheroes (generally called “super”) most famous in America and that deals with averting crime. They are real idols in the eyes of the citizens. Their heroic deeds are amplified by advertising and media campaigns promoted by the multinational that takes care of their image.
What matters is not so much doing good, as more people as possible see the goodness of those actions. It is right to do what brings popularity, not what has moral value. In this sense, actions are not defined by goodness, but by fame, where this is no longer a consequence of heroic deeds, but its cause. It then becomes important, if not being able to save everyone, not to save anyone from an airplane that falls, because – The Homelander knows well – fame cannot be stained by failure.
The Deep, another member of the Seven, will find out at his own expense, how there can be no space, in the light of the sun, for words or behavior that could threaten the popularity index of millions of fans. It does not matter what happens in the darkness of anonymity. “The Boys” was what Amazon was trying to have in its catalogue. The series able to build a fandom that fits into the profitable world of merchandising too.