The Boys Showrunner Addresses That Joss Whedon Joke in Season 2

This week’s episode of The Boys hits home for some of the hardcore DC Comics fans. The story of Zack Snyder’s Justice League has actually by this point transcended being a geek culture topic and become a part of mainstream media. The short version is that Joss Whedon was hired to take over and redo the DC Comics ensemble film and most people were ultimately unhappy with it, even before the film’s release. Now, The Boys is having a little fun poking at such a story by having its super heroes film scenes they’re not proud of and calling the moments in an in-canon film project a “Joss rewrite.” According to showrunner Eric Kripke, this is not intended as a jab at anyone but a simple nod to things that have really happened for the sake of a joke.

“Yeah, ‘that Joss rewrite really sings.’ Yeah. We weren’t making any particular comment,” Kripke tells Collider. “I have no particular opinion on any version of any cut of any superhero movie. It’s just more that Joss is the most well-known name of a guy who writes and rewrites superhero movies. And so, we tipped our hat to Joss Whedon. I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan. Buffy‘s one of the best shows ever made.”

The Boys has done its fair share of jabbing at Hollywood life. A peek behind-the-scenes in an almost Entourage fashion of press junkets to personal branding and other aspects of celebrity life have been incorporated into the story as the Supes reign supreme. Kripke maintains a stance that they’re not taking anything too far behind the curtain of it all.

“To me, there’s no such thing as too inside,” he says. “I think what gives the show a reality is the deep dive into how this stuff really works. I push everybody the other way. I’m like, ‘That’s not what a PA would really say in the background when you’re getting ready to roll. You have to be the most inside-baseball accurate of how this goes.’ Because I just love that.

“If you listen, it’s actually like a shockingly real depiction of how a real movie set works. That’s what I love about it. Like, ‘Hey, will you play that back, Marty?’ Like Marty was our real playback guy who was back there. If you listen to all the crowd sounds in the back, they’re always very specific things that people really say on movie sets, the way the director kind of glad-hands A-Train, as our directors talk to actors. And then everyone’s buying each other food trucks all the time. It’s all very accurate, and I love that. I think the audience, I think they just sense that, even if they don’t entirely understand the lingo, they buy the authenticity of it. So the more, the better.”

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