The Boys Creator Reveals How Avengers: Endgame Inspired their Season 2 Finale Beat Down

As many fans astutely noticed in the second season of The Boys, the series was clearly making a statement about corporation’s (and by extension, movie studios) attempts at public displays of representation, and how in the end many of them are hollow publicity stunts that were crafted to sell movies or books. Even though many Marvel fans sung the praises of Avengers: Endgame, its sequence of every female hero appearing on screen together has been a point of contention since its release. By simply putting all their female characters together in the frame it didn’t make up for their other shortcomings. This scene was the big thing that sold series creator Eric Kripke on satirizing it in season two, but it wasn’t his idea.

“A lot of that came from our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened,” Kripke told The Hollywood Reporter. “She was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, ‘That was the dumbest, most contrived—’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t get me started.’ She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.”

It would be easy to assume that Kripke and co. don’t enjoy the Marvel movies, but that’s not the case and in the same interview he revealed his true feelings.

“People might be surprised to know this, but I’m actually a fan of the Marvel stuff,” Kripke said. “The filmmaking is often impeccable. I actually really enjoy the humorous tone that a lot of them are written in. They’re snarky and fast and glib and I like that style. My issue with them are not the movies themselves, but that there’s too many of them overall.”

He added, “I sort of believe it’s dangerous, not to overstate it or be overdramatic, but it’s a little dangerous to train an entire generation to wait for someone strong to come in and save you. That’s I think how you end up with people like Trump and populists who say, “I’m the only one who can come in, it’s going to be me.” And I think in the way that pop-culture conditions people subtly, I think it’s conditioning them the wrong way — because there’s just too much of it. So I think it’s nice to have a corrective, at least a small one in us, to say, ‘They’re not coming to save you. Hold your family together and save yourselves.’”

The first two seasons of The Boys are streaming now on Amazon Prime video, with season three tentatively scheduled to begin filming in the first part of 2021.