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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

“Fascism that cloaks itself in patriotism”: “The Boys” boss on dangers of strongmen and superheroes

Salon talks to Eric Kripke about how his show predicted our terrible present and his expectations for what's next

Published December 28, 2024 1:30PM (EST)

Eric Kripke is accustomed to the real world aligning with the version he writes, where men and women fly. So of course the first trailer for James Gunn’s “Superman” dropped on the day I spoke with the man behind “The Boys.” Why wouldn’t it?

Gunn’s vision of America’s greatest comic book hero is wrapped in optimism. Homelander, played by Antony Starr, is the Man of Steel’s gaudy, cruel inverse, an all-American apple pie with radioactive razor blades baked into the filling. The regular guys standing against him — and for actual truth, justice and the ideal of the American way — are a grubby band held together by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Marvin Milk (Laz Alonso).

“The Boys” began as a best-selling comic by “Preacher” co-creators Darick Robertson and Garth Ennis; Kripke’s adaptation uses the comic’s Übermensch to show us how omnipotent men would actually behave, inspired by Donald Trump and the far right’s oligarchic power structure propping him up.

Homelander is also a product — an enhanced being created in a lab run by Vought International, a multimillion dollar “global leader in the media, retail, energy and pharmaceutical sectors,” according to the show’s lore. Over decades, the conglomerate seeped into every sector of American life to a degree that it might as well own the populace. Since Homelander installed himself as the company’s head, he’s functionally the king of the world. He views himself as a god.

Thus, the Season 4 parallels between Homelander’s coup and the inability of the namesake non-powered heroes to stop it turn out to be frighteningly prescient.

Its premiere dropped two weeks after Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by a New York jury in his hush-money trial. That episode shows Homelander being acquitted of murder despite having lasered a man’s head off in front of a crowd.

Its finale, originally titled “Assassination Run,” debuted days after Trump survived an assassination attempt. It was filmed in 2023.

The Boys (Prime Video)Prior episodes show this universe’s version of Laura Ingraham, Firecracker (Valorie Curry), revealing the medical records of progressive superhero Annie January (Erin Moriarty) to show that she had an abortion, and her fiancé and teammate, Hughie (played by Jack Quaid), stumbling on a plan to build prisons for dissidents. Elsewhere, families watch children’s programming that teaches kids to report on their parents’ supposedly un-American behavior.

By then Kripke already knew the upcoming fifth season of “The Boys” would be its last. What he and millions of others didn’t predict is that a few months after the fourth season finale, America would reelect the man who promised to be a dictator on Day 1 and enact vengeance on his enemies. Just like Homelander does in “Season Four Finale.”

A writers’ room rule to which........

© Salon