The Boys
Our Review
The superhero satire that became essential viewing by being the only franchise honest about what superhumans would actually be: celebrities with god powers and the moral compass of a Fortune 500 company. Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher leads a crew of supe-killing vigilantes against Homelander (Antony Starr, one of the great TV villain performances — a narcissist superhero whose smile never reaches his eyes), the flag-wearing face of Vought International’s corporate hero machine.
It’s crude, cartoonishly violent, and smarter than it looks: the corporate satire — the brand deals, the PR crisis management, the milk — is the show’s real subject, and its fascism-adjacent politics hit uncomfortably close to home. The deep cast (Jack Quaid’s Everyman Hughie, Erin Moriarty’s Starlight as the true protagonist, Karen Fukuhara’s Kimiko) keeps the humanity front and center even when the episodes are doing things with a whale you can’t unsee. Season 1 is a perfect season of TV; later seasons wobble but never collapse.
Verdict: Watch it. The anti-MCU, and it’s glorious.