In 2024, reality and satire came a little too close for comfort when Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally just one week before The Boys Season 4 finale aired, in which Homelander plots to kill the newly elected President Robert Singer.
You probably noticed at the time that it had the rather uneventful title of ‘Season Four Finale’ in place of ‘Assassination Run,’ a clear attempt to distance the show from real-world events, but things nearly went much further. In an interview with Polygon, showrunner Eric Kripke revealed that Amazon almost pulled the episode.
“It created a lot of anxiety because I directed that one,” Kripke said. “I had a lot of emotional eggs in that basket, and there was a very real possibility that they were going to delay its airing. It went all the way up the chain to Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon, and he was okay with airing it. All that came back was, ‘Just change the title. It’s a tasteless title considering, but it’s different enough, and we will back it.’ Thank god that they did. I had a really stressful 24 hours, but it all pales in comparison to the madness in the real world.”
The Boys Season 5 Accidentally Predicted Political Developments In The US Post-Trump Election
The coincidences don’t end there, either. Eric Kripke explained in an interview with ScreenRant that the team accidentally predicted several political developments when penning the Season 5 script, as he tried to plot out what exactly a fascist America might look like.
“We wrote Season 5 before the election,” he explained. “And so it was really the very first time we were like, ‘Alright, so let’s speculate about what American authoritarianism would look like based on…’ We were honestly going more on history, like other countries who have gone through it and what does it look like? And then we were just slapping red, white, and blue on it. And my genuine, turns out naive, hope at the time was, I think everyone will be like, ‘Boy, we really dodged a bullet.’ But then we all got hit in the face with the bullet!”
While Kripke might have been panicking at the ill-timed Season 4 finale, he’s less stressed about these predictions, and hopes that the show holding up a mirror to contemporary America will serve as a wake-up call to viewers.
“We were just trying to imagine what fascist creep in America would really look like,” he continued. “I hope it just alarms people, honestly. I hope they look around and they’re like, ‘Oh sh*t, some of this stuff is really fu**ing happening. That doesn’t seem good. We should maybe do something about this.’ That would be great. But I don’t expect to change anything because I think if the last eight years have shown us anything, the thing that The Boys is best at is not changing anything.”
- Release Date
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2019 – 2026-00-00
- Showrunner
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Eric Kripke
- Directors
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Erin Moriarty, Karen Fukuhara, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Eric Kripke
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Jack Quaid
Hugh Hughie Campbell
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Antony Starr
John / Homelander
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Erin Moriarty
Annie January / Starlight
