In 2018, I had a brief conversation with a well-known television journalist I’ll never forget about “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She had asked me about a review I’d written about its poignant second season and offered a contrary opinion along the lines of, “Actually, this makes me optimistic.” Baffled by this interpretation, I asked why.
“Because it will never happen here,” they said.
There is no way this person could know Roe v. Wade The law would be struck down four years later. Forget it, maybe they could have done it if they had noticed the steady erosion of reproductive freedoms already underway.
I share this anecdote to illustrate the pitfalls of disguising real-world crises in elaborate sets, costumes, and dystopian oddities. Don’t take this the wrong way, these are adjectives that apply to some of my favorite stories.
But the proliferation of such unrealities allows many people to accept “The Handmaid’s Tale” at face value, freeing themselves from its designation as an alternate reality. Who would have imagined that women would be denied the right to work, read, or exist apart from men? Or that women’s reproductive rights would be controlled by the state? Or that we would ever find ourselves in the current situation?
Jack Quaid (Hughie Campbell), Erin Moriarty (Annie January aka Starlight) and Karl Urban (Billy Butcher) in “The Boys” (Prime Video)
Genre fiction indulges in extremes that make some scenarios seem impossible. But almost all of these works are influenced by events that have already happened or are happening somewhere on Earth. Just not here. Never here. And so people who should know better, like my colleague, can confidently dismiss concerns that these tales of doom might come to pass as unfounded.
The memory of that conversation played through my mind as I rewatched the fourth season finale of “The Boys.” The Prime Video series made headlines Thursday when the episode was posted online with a new “Viewer Discretion Advised” label that also reads: “This episode contains scenes of fictional political violence. Any similarities to recent events are entirely coincidental and fictional. Prime Video, MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Television and the producers of The Boys oppose, in the strongest possible terms, any form of real-world violence.”
The finale, set in 2023, was originally titled “Assassination Run.” In light of the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, it is now simply titled “Season 4 Finale.”
I’ve written before about the fourth season’s uncanny prescience and its blatant anti-Trumpism, for which show creator Eric Kripke makes no apologies. “I definitely have a point of view, and I’m not afraid to put it into the show,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “Those who want to call the show ‘woke’ or whatever, that’s fine. Go watch something else. But I’m certainly not going to pull any punches or apologize for what we do.”
Kripke declined to discuss the finale with Salon, and a request to Prime Video for an interview with the episode’s writers, Jessica Chou and David Reed, went unanswered.
The title of the finale is not worthy of discussion in depth, beyond the uncanny coincidence of its timing. Other films and television series have had to postpone their releases or rename episodes in light of violent tragedies, most of them related to school shootings.
“The Boys” is, however, an over-the-top apologia for the end of the worst, the product of over-the-top political rhetoric that has been going on for years and years, and which demonizes anyone who disagrees with you.
Almost all works of genre fiction are influenced by events that have already happened or are happening somewhere on Earth. But not here. Never here.
Kripke, Chou, and Reed are simply extending what they already know about our partisan atmosphere in 2023 to its darkest extremes. What I wanted to ask them is whether they consulted Project 2025 when they wrote these scenarios. It’s not like they needed to, since most of what these superhuman overlords say and do are slight variations of what Donald Trump promises at his rallies and talking points from Fox News pundits.
Claudia Doumit (Victoria Neuman) and Antony Starr (Homelander) in “The Boys” (Prime Video)
Homelander and his allies in Congress also have a vast propaganda machine at their disposal that aims to portray them as heroes, or at worst as wrathful gods (but fair!), and to turn their detractors into demons. At the top of the list is Starlight (Erin Moriarty), a former member of Homelander’s team who defected to become the face of progressive dissent. Firecracker paints her as a “baby killer” and pedophile to its Vought News viewers, urging them to hunt down her supporters, known as Starlighters.
The country’s wealthy conspire with them to build and run internment camps into which all dissidents opposing their oligarchy can disappear.
The “Season 4 Finale” shows the culmination of these plans, taking place in the show’s version of January 6. The Speaker of the House of Representatives prepares to certify the election results, making President-elect Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) the new Commander-in-Chief with Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) as his Vice President. Elsewhere, the show’s non-powered vigilante heroes move quickly to take down Neuman, as they and Singer know she is actually a Supe.
They also know that she’s working with Homelander (Antony Starr), Trump’s stunt double on the show, to invoke the 25th Amendment, putting her in power and giving Homelander the green light to hunt his “enemies,” starting with Singer.
But the main hero isn’t content to let events play out as planned and reveals on national television that Neuman is “superpowered,” sparking riots across the country. Meanwhile, a shapeshifting assassin posing as Starlight attempts to kill Singer in his bunker.
The Chameleon almost makes it before the real Starlight breaks out of her prison and disposes of her impersonator. But it’s all for naught as they record Singer talking about his plan to eliminate Neuman.
This video is leaked to the press just after the Boys’ fallen leader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) assassinates Neuman, setting Homelander’s master plan in motion. Singer is arrested, the Speaker of the House is appointed President, and by executive order, declares martial law, naming Homelander the nation’s top cop.
His first act is to hunt down anyone who threatens his reputation or who he dislikes. He and the three remaining members of his squad, the Seven, begin their purge by murdering half of his company’s employees.
“The Boys” promotes the belief that most people have good intentions while understanding that this is not enough to save us.
Before killing her, Neuman warns her that for his plan to work, he must eliminate half the country, a task easily accomplished once he delegates powers to everyone. A handful of them quickly go after the Boys, who are promptly exiled despite their best efforts to disappear before things go south on a global scale.
This occurs against the backdrop of Vought Network talking head and Christian fascist Firecracker (Valorie Curry) theatrically celebrating this violent regime change with her 2024 version of “It’s Morning in America”:
“We are waking up to a new world where the hope, purity and love of Jesus shines upon us all,” she says, “…where America finally sees the awakened mob for what they are: monsters who want to destroy our heritage, traffic our children and feminize our men. Where, with Homelander’s guidance, we will come together in unity.”
Jack Quaid (Hughie Campbell) and Erin Moriarty (Annie January aka Starlight) in “The Boys” (Prime Video)
The recurring motto of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week was “this is it.” Of course, as Salon political editor Amanda Marcotte observed after interviewing convention attendees, Trump supporters are interpreting “unity” in all sorts of ways, while denouncing Democrats who remind the audience of Trump’s claim that he would be a dictator “from day one,” and cite his supporters’ willingness to embrace fascism and violence.
Among his supporters is Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who told Real America’s Voice that “we are in the midst of a second American Revolution, and it will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
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It may have been easier in the past to view The Boys as a nihilistic escape, or to take comfort in its impossible components as proof that our society would never sink that low. This is despite the fact that many people cite our culture’s love affair with superheroes as a symptom of our willingness to equate wealth and fame with leadership.
The “if/then” game of speculative writing is about turning the possible into situations that the reader or viewer can reassure themselves are not real and never can be. But these final chapters of “The Boys” contain too many correlations with current events to not take them as a warning.
Yet this fourth season of “The Boys,” its penultimate, promotes the belief that most people have good intentions while understanding that this is not enough to save us.
That’s the conclusion Hughie (Jack Quaid), the gang’s hero, comes to when their chances of survival are dashed. “If we’re ever going to defeat the monsters, I think we’ve got to start acting like humans,” he says.
It only works if those against you don’t give in to inhumanity. Our last view of Hughie is of him being shoved into a windowless truck by men in black uniforms. He motions to his fiancée Starlight to fly away, not to fight. With that, she leaps into the endless unknown, casting her fate on the rest of us.
All episodes of “The Boys” are streaming on Prime Video.
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