The Boys Showrunner Was Really Stressed Making Season 2

Shortly after The Boys hit Amazon Prime last year, it took the internet by storm. In an age where superhero tentpoles ruled the box office, the streaming series served as a stark contrast to what was available to fans in theaters. Instead of the family-friendly fair for the masses, The Boys offered a hard-R superhero offering that was equally parts shocking and groundbreaking, at least for the current media climate.

That’s why series creator Eric Kripke says he was stressed when it came to writing the show’s second season. With the surprising response to the show’s first outing, the Supernatural creator says it took a lot of tiptoeing around expectations for the hit’s sophomore outing.

“I think that maintaining something that was as good, if not better, is really scary. I was really stressed making season two, because I was so happy with how season one turned out, and it was so well received, that you don’t wanna be the one-hit wonder,” Kripke tells ComicBook.com.

“You feel a real pressure to make it as good. By the same respect, you know, because I’ve done this job for a while, the first mistake that showrunners make is they try to make a season two bigger, and that’s ultimately unsustainable. Because even if you can pull it off, you jump the shark by season three,” the writer adds. “So I thought, I attack this season with like, ‘Okay, let’s not go bigger with, let’s go deeper. Let’s be more intense. Let’s corner all of our characters. Let’s put them all under the most pressure we possibly can.’ And then let’s see what comes out, and how they reveal new facets of who they are. And that you can keep doing season, after season, after season. So that was the goal.”

Fortunately enough for Kripke and his writer’s room, Amazon believed in his take on the second season, they ordered a third season weeks ahead of the debut of the next batch of episodes. Season Two has already tallied a near-perfect 96-percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The review-aggregating site says the season “comes out swinging” as it digs further into “its complicated characters” while upping “the action ante without pulling any of its socially critical punches.”

The Boys Season Two hits Amazon Prime Video on September 4th.

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