The Boys Season 2 Spoofs New Mutants in Episode 5 Promo

The official promo for this week’s episode of The Boys has arrived online, and with it a tease of a surprising connection to a Marvel movie. Episode six of season two is titled “The Bloody Doors Off,” and features the reveal of a secret Vought facility called the “Sage Grove Center.” This location is revealed by Starlight to be a psychiatric hospital which appears to house troubled supes, with Frenchie even suggesting it’s where Vought is making more supe-terrorists. This entire scenario might seem familiar to Marvel fans as its bears a very striking resemblance to The New Mutants feature film, which was finally released in theaters this year. Check out the promo below and look for the similarities.

As you may know from the years of marketing we saw with The New Mutants, Josh Boone’s adaptation of the classic comic series saw the characters confined to a hospital with a horror movie take on the material. The characters were confined there for sinister reasons, which it perhaps shares with what we’ll see in The Boys, but with a distinct lack of demon bears on the Amazon Prime series.

It’s worth noting that the “Sage Grove Center” isn’t something from the pages of Garth Ennis’ comic series, but something created for the show. That in mind it’s unclear if this is a direct reference to The New Mutants or just a happy accident. In any event, you can see how things shake out in the new episode this Friday.

It seems likely that this episode and its plot is a bit of a riff on The New Mutants since the second season of The Boys has gone out of its way to lampoon both Marvel and DC in very direct ways. The season two premiere featured a clear riff on Marvel’s Daredevil in a new supe character named Blindspot. In the episiode he’s a potential candidate to join The Seven, revealed to be a naturally proficient martial artist who is blind and uses his hearing to navigate the world. Homelander doesn’t agree with the idea of him joining the group and smashes his ears so that they burst and blood flies out, rendering him mostly useless and without his powers.

On the flipside, The Boys has spoofed DC pretty directly in season two as well. Throughout the new episodes, The Seven are shown preparing for and filming their new Vought Studios movie “Dawn of The Seven,” with logos that look remarkably similar to Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman. There was also a hilarious namedrop of writer Joss Whedon who famously came on board the Justice League movie with a studio re-write.

Including this week’s episode just three remain in the second season of The Boys, so keep your eyes peeled for more references to Marvel and DC!