The Boys Star Says Amazon Series Breaks the Mold for Women Superheroes

Amazon Prime Video's massively popular The Boys is a superhero series like no other. While most superhero television presents its superpowered characters as, well, heroes, The Boys offers a satirical -- if not more accurate -- portrayal of how superheroes might act in the real world. The "supes" of The Boys are deeply flawed, often unstable, and not exactly good guys. And it's something that extends not just to the male characters but the female ones as well, something that series star Erin Moriarty praises as breaking the mold for women superheroes.

Speaking with Digital Spy, Moriarty explained that it's because The Boys presents its female characters -- particularly the superheroes -- as being just as flawed as the men that the show is breaking the mold, and it's intentional.

"We intentionally don't fit in because [outside of The Boys] you have these female superheroes [who are] super empowered, and that's amazing, but there's no chink to their armor, there's no thing that they do that's in the grey area, no mistakes ever," Moriarty explained.

She continued, "They do things that lie in the grey area. They do do things that would be quote unquote 'immoral' but they're also, you know, these are the most human superheroes I think that have ever been depicted in TV shows or in movies and that's intentional. So, I think we don't fit into the superhero world, I think we intentionally break that box, and I think we just try to make the statement that empowerment doesn't equal flawless."

For Moriarty, it's that idea of having flaws that really defines empowerment.

"Empowerment equals flaws, mistakes made, all of which are used to strengthen ourselves as women, as opposed to defeating us."

And Season 2 of The Boys doesn't shy away from showing how those flaws impact characters like Moriarty's Annie January/Starlight. A recent episode saw Starlight use her power in a carjacking situation and accidentally kill the man she whose car she was trying to take. It's something that Moriarty said in a previous interview will continue to haunt the character.

"That episode is a really important one because it makes her realize how far she's going in keeping herself safe, maintaining her objective to take down Vought and also it really wakes her up to realize -- I think she's kind of been in denial about how much this world and being in Vought has changed her, you know?" she said. "If we think back to Episode 1, Season 1 of Annie or Starlight, we all know that that would have not been a feasible thing for her at all, and I think the way she digests the death and that she causes it and what's going on in that episode is, it's a hard pill for her to swallow."

New episodes of The Boys are added to Amazon Prime every Friday.