One perk of a coronavirus lockdown: It gives one plenty of time to binge watch shows. That’s exactly what I decided to do this past week, I’ve been meaning to watch The Boys for a while now and I took full advantage of home confinement, and I was not disappointed.
The Boys has a very interesting premise and concept, especially in a time where superhero films/franchises are running rampant throughout the industry. In this series, “superheroes” are corporately owned entities that are adored and worshipped by the general public, but behind the scenes they are incredibly corrupt, irresponsible, and downright awful people. The titular group, The Boys, are a group of vigilantes determined to expose the “Supes” and their actions.
It’s an interesting concept and the series does a great job of throwing you straight into the action and establishing how exactly this universe works. Within the first 10/15 minutes the tone is set, and I can confirm it is most definitely not family friendly. It’s vulgar, it’s explicit, it’s violent, but most importantly of all, it’s incredibly entertaining.
The eight episodes move along at a swift pace but it doesn’t feel rushed whatsoever, it’s concise and it doesn’t full victim to having too many plot threads that are either neglected or pointless, everything that occurs in the series has a purpose and the show does a good job of highlighting that this isn’t just a tale of “good versus evil”, the lines here are definitely blurred and there is clearly wrongdoings on both sides. Which creates an interesting dynamic that isn’t just fun, it might make you think about some deeper messages as well.
The cast are all fantastic, I particularly loved Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, the leader of The Boys, his foul-mouthed, no-nonsense attitude is extremely entertaining, but there are layers to his character that become apparent as the series goes on and Urban does a fantastic job highlighting the conflict within Butcher as he juggles with trying to do the right thing and satisfying his own personal vendettas.
If I was to criticise one aspect of The Boys, it is that the cast is extremely stacked and that means that some of the superheroes are nothing more than glorified cameos. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of some of them, but I understand that this isn’t possible and I also acknowledge that there is a future season to come, potentially more after that, so there is plenty of time to give some characters extra screen-time. I hope this happens, but as the stakes get higher I assume the stacked cast will be streamlined a bit as time goes on. We shall see!
Overall, I loved watching The Boys and I am so excited to see where the story goes next. If you’re looking for some lockdown entertainment, then you could do a lot worse than this, that’s for sure! Give this a go, I reckon you’ll love it just as much as I did!
The Boys is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.
I give The Boys an 8.5/10.
Wado Reviews 