‘The Boys’, one of Prime Video’s longest-running and highest-rated series, is back in its fourth season. It is a very unique phenomenon: in times when superhero fictions are beginning not to be infallible, but to directly arouse a certain boredom in viewers, this satire continues to be one of the great attractions of the platform. His secret: superheroes are the least important thing.
At the top. ‘The Boys’ is a series that is extremely well valued by critics and the public. It still has a notable 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, although the criticism of Trump’s presidency in the third season earned it some enmity and a good deal of negative votes in its third season (many fans threw their hands up when they discovered that Patriot …he was the villain!), which has made the two spin-offs ‘Generation V’ or ‘Diabolical’ higher in the ranking. Even above, with perfect scores (or almost) are icons of the platform such as ‘Fleabag’, ‘The Legend of Vox Machina’, ‘Invincible’ or ‘Undone’.
The superheroic key. The formula for ‘The Boys’ is based on a comic scripted by Garth Ennis (‘The Punisher’, ‘Preacher’) in which the superheroes, associates of the Justice League, are part of a private corporation that finances and makes them participate in movies, realities and promotions (apart from saving the world from time to time, which is almost the least of it). A group of rebels who know that beneath the layer of superheroic happiness there is true villainy are preparing to bring their miseries to light.
The formula. ‘The Boys’ was born, like the comic, as a simple satire of the ridiculousness implicit in the concept of superheroes: if there were beings with superhuman powers we would perhaps see heroic activity, but also many excesses, excesses and abuses of power. But as the card of ultraviolence and toilet humor (both great) ran out, the series took sides and turned Patriota into a villain with a tragic point, like a spoiled child who sees people as inferior beings and who has frighteningly tangible political aspirations. His parallels with a thousand and one details of the Trump administration (from the public image to the lack of moral philosophy beneath the surface) are evident in a series that no one bet would become one of the best political satires of recent years.
Bad times for superheroes. The curious thing is that ‘The Boys’ continues to triumph at a time when superheroes in audiovisuals are at their worst. Every day there is news that raises doubts about the future of the subgenre (today, without going any further: ‘Blade has just lost its director… for the second time), and the two great powers are going through a couple of impasses during the year. Both promise to return with renewed strength in 2025, DC reformulating its universe and Marvel with premieres as powerful as ‘Fantastic Four’ But the times of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ seem to be definitively behind us, to the point that they have explicitly recognized that they have saturated the market.
‘The Boys’ is not (just) a superhero series. The secret of ‘The Boys’ is precisely using that lack of interest to its advantage. In the series, superheroes are absolutely prefabricated products, without the slightest substance and full of contradictions, since they aim to be a moral example without abandoning their status as a product for the masses. ‘The Boys’ is, in addition to being a splendid political satire, a Molotov cocktail launched into the very bowels of capitalism and its contradictions. It is not surprising that, without superheroes or without them, we are facing one of the series of the moment.
Good for Prime Video. The series, furthermore, is a product that suits Prime Video wonderfully: if we review the previous top of the best rated on Prime Video, we see series with very good ratings, but of medium/small size. Because in everyone’s memory there remain the contradictory opinions that have accompanied ‘The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power’ since its premiere, and the coldness with which very ambitious series, such as ‘Citadel’, have been received. Although Prime Video is perfectly capable of billing large medium-sized series, such as ‘Reacher’ or ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’, the platform needs a series of larger size and quality. And it works as well as ‘The Boys’
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