The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has demonstrated an uncanny ability to predict the darkest and strangest turns in American politics. The season 4 finale was almost pulled by Prime Video because it involved an assassination attempt on the president of the United States and was scheduled to air less than a week after Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally. Unsurprisingly, Kripke has done it again in season 5, with a new plot for the Trumpian villain Homelander (Antony Starr) that parallels the AI-generated image Trump posted and then deleted on Monday showing him as a Jesus-like figure.
“I am really tired and weary of the world reflecting the show before we get a chance to do it,” Kripke tells Polygon in a video interview. “I appreciate the marketing. I’m just like, can you just please give us a chance to put some absurd satire out there before you prove that it’s more realistic than we ever intended?”
[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for The Boys season 5 episode 3.]
In The Boys season 5 episode 3, “Every One of You Sons of Bitches, which is streaming now on Prime Video, Homelander has a vision of an angelic version of the deceased Vought International vice president Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue). She assures Homelander that he is about to ascend and become an immortal god. “Who is more loved than Jesus?” she asks. “And why should he have more love than you?”
Back when they were writing and shooting the final season of The Boys, Kripke felt confident that this was one plot twist the real-world wouldn’t one-up.
“This is the episode where Homelander decides he’s going to be God and 48 hours before it, Trump releases an image of himself as God,” Kripke says. “A month ago when we were talking about marketing, I was like, Homelander saying he’s God is so out there. We have to be careful about how we even introduce the idea to the public because they’ll say he’s gone too far and here we are. It’s just really hard to out-satire this world.”
The vision sets Homelander on a season-long quest to establish a new American faith with the help of the corrupt megachurch pastor Oh-Father (Daveed Diggs). The only difference is that in the real world, Trump is now publicly beefing with the Pope, while on The Boys, not even his holiness is brave enough to face down Homelander.
“I dig the Pope,” Kripke said. “I think we take pains to make the point that religion, by and large, is a good thing. There are religious people on the show. It’s just when it’s weaponized, commodified, and used to tell politics of all things, it can be easily corrupted. I don’t know if people see this as well as I set it, but the show is pro-religion. It’s pro-belief. I just think the way that it’s used sometimes is just really shitty.”
The first three episodes of The Boys season 5 are available to stream now on Prime Video.
