Right-wingers are only just realising 'The Boys' is mocking them

Amazon Prime Video’s hit superhero series The Boys has had four successful seasons so far (the latest is currently rolling out on the streaming site in weekly episodes, while showrunner Eric Kripke has confirmed the next series will be its fifth and final instalment), yet it seems only now are some conservatives realising that the show is highly satirical when it comes to their outlandish political views.

Based on the comic series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the story is set in a world where superheroes are far from the infallible beings other franchises make them out to be, and are instead highly corrupt, with a group named The Boys working to expose said corruption and take down the nefarious company managing the ‘supes’ - Vought - as well as the psychopathic, Superman-like big bad, Homelander (played by Antony Starr).

And on top of Trump supporters having a hard time recognising Homelander is a parody of the disgraced former US president (much to the enjoyment of Kripke), and Reddit users “really liking” the racist character of Blue Hawk in the third series before the character apparently “took the cliché route”, right-wingers are now complaining about the political commentary contained in its fourth season.

Last week, the first three episodes dropped on Prime Video and introduced fans to Firecracker, a far-right political commentator and ‘supe’ who attends a convention for conspiracy theorists to give a talk on “the Hollywood pedophile cabal”.

In that second episode – which also features the show’s most NSFW scene to date – Firecracker rants that good superhero Starlight is involved in running a “satanic home delivery service”.

“An order of a hot dog gets you a boy; a taco, a girl; a combo gets you a child they forced to have trans surgery; and a soda gets you a shot of adrenochrome,” she fumes.

Just to be clear, adrenochrome is a compound created from the oxidisation of adrenaline, and has been the subject of a baseless QAnon conspiracy that it’s harvested from kidnapped children by elites in Hollywood and the Democratic Party.

All of this overt satire of reactionary conservativism has upset a number of viewers online:

Kripke has addressed the criticism on a number of occasions, including telling the Hollywood Reporter: “Anyone who wants to call the show ‘woke’ or whatever, that’s OK. Go watch something else.”

As for Firecracker, he revealed to Variety that Valorie Curry’s character takes inspiration from a certain Georgia Republican.

“Firecracker came from like, ‘Hey, isn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene scary?’ And just that type of personality. Like, you had Trump, but now you have these Trump spawn that are trying to outdo each other for how outrageous and sexualized and gun-toting and slavishly obedient they can be.

“And just that idea - it wouldn’t just start and end with Homelander, he would start to create these spores that would grow into these other characters, and she’s a version of that,” he said.

Now you know…

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