The following article contains spoilers for The Boys Season 3, Episode 5, “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies,” which released Friday on Amazon Prime Video.
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke explains why The Boys were not originally given superpowers like their comic book counterparts.
In the original comic title created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, each member of The Boys is injected with an engineered variant of Compound V to permanently give them enhanced strength, durability and a longer natural lifespan (though Mother’s Milk and the Female already had their powers through other means). However, for Prime Video’s adaptation, the team’s members — minus Kimiko — are powerless from the start and only gain superpowers in Season 3 by using temporary Compound V, or V24. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Kripke discussed the importance of having The Boys be powerless at the beginning, drawing a comparison to real life.
“The Boys have superpowers from page one in the comic,” said Kripke. “And that was something that [executive producers] Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and I felt really strongly about. Because if we’re telling a story about underdogs and the blue-collar against the most elite One Percent of the One Percent, it cannot be a level playing field. Our guys have to be regular humans figuring out how to take down characters that are just infinitely more powerful than that. That’s the metaphor of the world we’re living in.”
One of the main slogans for The Boys Season 3 it that it is “time to level the playing field,” with the show giving Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) powers similar to Homelander (Antony Starr) in the latest season. Speaking on this change, Kripke continued, “Then we were in Season Three and looking for a way to shake the snow globe a little bit and give us a brand new wrinkle to play, and the notion arrived that we’ve earned the right to give [Boys leader] Butcher powers. And it actually it scared the shit out of me. Because you’re fucking with the fundamental DNA of the show. Anytime you’re under the hood into the core of the engine, that’s really scary.”
The Boys has given more than only Butcher superpowers though. Hughie (Jack Quaid) has also been given doses of V24 in the series, and this marks another way that the show strays away from its source material. In the comics, specifically The Boys #4, Butcher injects Hughie with Compound V without his consent, and Hughie reacts so angrily that he almost leaves the team. In the show, Hughie wants to take Temp V as soon as he sees it and begs Butcher to let him, who refuses to give it to him at first.
The rest of The Boys have yet to take V24 as of Season 3’s fifth episode, “The Last Time To Look On This World Of Lies,” and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) has seemingly lost the powers that she had. After getting hit with a blast from Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), Kimiko can no longer regenerate as she normally would, and her superhuman strength has also disappeared. This is a change that never happened in the comics, as with Kimiko having a dream sequence where she breaks out into a musical number with Frenchie (Tomer Capone).
As of writing, the first five episodes of The Boys Season 3, the show’s first two seasons and its animated spinoff, The Boys Presents: Diabolical, are available to stream on Prime Video.
Source: Rolling Stone