Table of Contents

Episodes
Cast and characters
Main
Recurring
Guest
Cameos
Production
Development
Writing
Casting
Filming
Visual effects
Music
Marketing
Release
Home media
Reception
Critical response
Audience viewership
Awards and nominations
References
External links

The Boys season 2

Season Number2
Bgcolour#9A0607
Image
CaptionPromotional poster
ShowrunnerEric Kripke
NetworkAmazon Prime Video
Released2020-09-04
Last Aired2020-10-09
Num Episodes8

The second season of the American satirical superhero television series The Boys, the first series in the franchise based on the comic book series of the same name written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, was developed for television by American writer and television producer Eric Kripke. The season was produced by Amazon Studios in association with Sony Pictures Television, Point Grey Pictures, Original Film, Kripke Enterprises, Kickstart Entertainment and KFL Nightsky Productions.

The show's second season stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Kapon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, and Colby Minifie returning from the previous season, and Aya Cash joining the cast. The story continues the conflict between the two groups with the eponymous Boys, now with the aid of Annie January / Starlight (Moriarty) continuing their efforts to defeat Vought despite being wanted by the government. The conflict is worsened when Billy Butcher (Urban) learns that his wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten) is still alive and she is being held captive by Vought with a superpowered son fathered by Homelander (Starr). Stormfront (Cash), a new superhero with a secret past, joins the Seven with the hopes of convincing an unwitting Homelander to lead Supes to world domination.

The season premiered on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video on September 4, 2020, with its first three episodes. The remaining five episodes were released weekly until October 9, 2020. The season received record viewership for Amazon Prime and positive reviews, with praise towards the themes, storyline, and performances (particularly Urban, Quaid, Starr, and Cash), becoming the best reviewed superhero show of the year. It received multiple accolades, including two nominations at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards with one being for Outstanding Drama Series. The series was renewed for a third season on July 23, 2020.

Episodes


Cast and characters

List of The Boys characters

Main


Recurring


Guest


Cameos


Production

Development

The television rights for the adaptation of Garth Ennis comic book series were passed to Amazon, after the original network that picked the series Cinemax was unable to move forward with the production due to budget issues. It was hoped that the series would appeal the audience that would give the chance to the company's streaming service Amazon Prime Video to finally have a big genre drama hit show with the size of series Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Stranger Things. The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke was planning at the moment to give the series a five-season run as he considered that the story and ideas he was planning would be enough to be covered and developed, with the possibility of other concepts from the comics being adapted for future spin-offs.

The second was confirmed by Amazon at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, a week before the series' first season was released. Kripke revealed that he was already writing the scripts for the season and that the production was about to start that same month intending to get a 2020 release. In June 2020 it was announced that the season would consist of eight episodes similarly to the previous season, though it was also revealed that it would be getting a weekly release instead of dropping all the episodes at the same date as a whole. Kripke considered that the season had many moments that he wanted to give time to marinate in order to make people reflect over it and have a conversation a little longer about it. During an interview with Collider, the series executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg promised that the season would be bigger and better as they intended to make the show's scope grow with each season to which they replied, "They already have more resources for the second season. They’re adding more characters, the scope of the show organically grows as the show continues. We just watched, actually, the first episode of the second season this week. It was a wonderful thing as producers. This is way better than I ever could’ve hoped it would be."

Writing

Kripke confirmed that the season would continue Becca's storyline after the first season ended with a cliffhanger where it was revealed that the character was still alive. While in both storylines the character of Becca is raped by Homelander and gives birth his child, her comic counterpart dies while giving birth, a fate that Ennis later expressed remorse over how he handled the character. Kripke wanted to avoid the trope of killing off female characters to motivate the heroes to which he deemed overused, he and the writers decided to keep the character alive and making her stronger and more courageous than her comic counterpart in order to make the character into a more interesting character, while also keeping some of her characterization from the source material. The fate of Becca's son whose name is revealed to be Ryan in the season is also changed in contrast to the comic counterpart who is killed by Butcher shortly after he was born. Kripke considered that the character had potential for the development for the characters of Butcher and Homelander and decided to keep him alive as a way to intensify their rivalry of both characters even further.

It was revealed that the season would deal with real-life issues similarly to the first season, with this time taking topics such as the white nationalism, white supremacy, systemic racism, and xenophobia, while also portraying over how people are trying to convey and pass those hateful ideologies through social media. Kripke wrote the scripts for the season during the 2018 United States elections, as the topic of President Donald Trump and his fears of xenophobic views from South American immigrants would be a major theme portrayed in the season. Kripke considers corporations to be responsible for allowing celebrities to spread their xenophobic ideas in the interests of profits, with the character of Stormfront introduced to represent these issues and contemporary neo-Nazism.

While the season is mostly focused on the conflict between Stormfront and Becca story, it also introduces a secondary storyline about a mysterious Supe killer known as the "Head Popper" whose identity remains mostly a mystery until the season finale, in which it is revealed to be the anti-Supe congresswoman Victoria Newman. The character of Victoria Newman is based on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while her speeches against corruption serve as an inspiration for Newman's speeches against Supes. Kripke wanted to introduce a storyline where Supes would start to be involved in the government and politics, which would give Vought even more power, an idea that he confirmed he would be exploring for the third season, so he decided to keep the identity of the "Head Popper" as a total mystery until the season finale intending to surprise audiences with the revelation of the character due to being initially treated as an ally of the Boys.

Casting

Karl Urban, Erin Moriarty, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Dominique McElligot, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara, and Nathan Mitchell reprised their roles from the first season as Billy Butcher, Annie January / Starlight, Hughie Campbell, Homelander, Queen Maeve, A-Train, Mother's Milk, The Deep, Frenchie, Kimiko Miyashiro / The Female, and Black Noir respectively. In July 2019, Aya Cash was in the talks with Amazon to join the show as Stormfront, though it was not until March 2020, when it was confirmed that Cash would be joining the show alongside the release of her character's first look the same day. Shantel VanSanten also reprises her role as Becca Butcher in a more expanded role than the previous season. She revealed that season two explores how she manages to reunite with Billy, but then being pulled apart as she is killed at the end of the season to conclude her storyline for good: "I trust their storytelling and I know that there's so much of wherever it goes, especially for Ryan, that Becca will always be a part of it, and a part of Butcher and a part of Ryan and they'll go on to honor that, just as though we do for people that we've lost."

Elisabeth Shue returned as a guest star on the fourth episode titled "Nothing Like It in the World", as a doppelgänger of Madelyn Stillwell. In September 2019, Goran Višnjić and Claudia Doumit were cast as Alastair Adana and Victoria Neuman respectively. A month later, Patton Oswalt was announced to be part of the show for an unspecified role, which later it was confirmed that he voiced the Deep gills. Giancarlo Esposito was confirmed to reprise his role as Stan Edgar, with Kripke revealing that he would have an expanded role for the season. Esposito explained that his character was not afraid of Homelander: "I don't believe Stan Edgar has any fear of Homelander at all. And when I was doing the scene, I thought, 'Just think in regards to being very calm, and dealing with a child, but with respect.' But also, you can't forget the vision of how Homelander could take you out. So in the back of my mind, I've got Compound V in my blood, so I'm not worried at all." In August 2020, it was reported that Shawn Ashmore joined the cast as Lamplighter for the second season, while John Noble confirmed that he would be making a guest appearance as Billy's father Sam Butcher the next month.

Filming

It was confirmed that despite the series taking place in New York City, filming would be taking place in Toronto, Canada similarly to the previous season. The filming for the second season officially began on July 17, 2019, with the intention of getting a 2020 release for the season. During the filming, it was revealed that a planned scene involving a rogue superhero attacking an assembled crowd was slated to be filmed at Mel Lastman Square. However, they were forced to relocate by the Toronto City Council, due to the planned filming location being close to the place where the Toronto van attack occurred on April 23, 2018, in order to avoid hurting the sentiments of the citizens of Toronto.

Similarly to the first season, the crew filmed at several touristic locations from the city of Toronto such as the Roy Thomson Hall, the Meridian Arts Centre, the North York Civic Centre, and the Wet 'n' Wild Toronto Waterpark. The scenes that were filmed at the Scottish Rite Club took place in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, while the Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health Care complex was filmed in St. Thomas, Ontario. Most of the places where the filming took place were digitally altered through CGI in order to make it look like New York City. Filming for the second season wrapped on November 1, 2019.

Visual effects

The visual effects were provided by ILM, Rising Sun Pictures, Rocket Science VFX, Rodeo FX, Ollin VFX, Soho VFX, Rhythm & Hues, Method Studios, and Studio 8. It was confirmed that Stephan Fleet would be returning from the first season as the visual effects supervisor. Fleet revealed that the season would have more visual effects than the first season, to which they required a bigger staff by doubling the coordinators and VFX editors, while reducing the number of vendors due to having to complete the visual effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fleet and the visual effects staff avoided using most of the green and blue screen as they considered that this would slow down the production of the show, so it was opted to complete the process of the visual effects with rotoscoping stating that the process would be faster and easier.

Rising Sun Pictures was responsible for the creation of Stormfront's powers with the staff having to do research on Nikola Tesla and the experiments he made about plasma, by using a plasma globe as an example and the cameras pointing out at the electricity of her powers to make it as realistic as possible. Fleet deemed it important to capture the ground of the fantastical and supernatural to some form of reality by replicating the errors of the visual effects and including it to capture the realism of the sequences. It was also used for the slow motion lightning examples and the research of Tesla guns that were created online in order to look over how the properties of plasma work and the way it interacts with several other objects including camera lens, which lead them to add secondary sparking at times that caused the lens to flare out once Stormfront turn off her powers.

Music

For the second season of the series, composer Christopher Lennertz wrote an original song named "Never Truly Vanish". The song is featured in the first episode ("The Big Ride"), which was performed by Erin Moriarty. On June 4, 2021, the music video was released on YouTube. Lennertz received directions from Kripke over how to write the song to make it sound like an "Adele-meets-Celine-Dion-meets-Whitney showstopper, over-the-top power ballad." One of the series writers Michael Saltzman revealed that during the production of the song production was with "the absolute conviction and sincerity with which they're doing the song," intending to make the song authentic and legit. The writing of the song took over six months due to the composer having to work with Moriarty's availability and other production factors.

Lennertz also wrote another original song named "Faster", which is performed by Jessie T. Usher alongside a collaboration with Aimee Proal. It is included in the sixth episode ("The Bloody Doors Off"), for which the composer also made a cameo appearance singing a demo for the song. On September 1, 2021, the music video was released on YouTube. The song and the video serve as a way to make an accurate representation of how the hip hop industry works as by today, while also fitting with Usher's character A-Train personality and style. A soundtrack album for the season was released digitally by Madison Gate Records on October 9, 2020.

Marketing

A two-minute clip depicting a young Homelander accidentally killing his tutor was unveiled online through social media on November 1, 2019. The following month at December 6, a teaser trailer for the season was released at the Comic Con Experience in São Paulo, Brazil and then released online. Dino-Ray Ramos from Deadline described that while the teaser starts featuring new footage for the series but then becomes a "tapestry of blood, violence and R-rated fun — which is essentially on brand for The Boys." Meaghan Darwish of TV Insider commented that the teaser did not offer much dialogue but give more action, carnage and more on display that she considers that "fans are sure to get excited over." For Nerdist, Matthew Hart stated that while the trailer was only a minute-long, it still managed to "pack enough guns, high-speed chases, exploded heads and… milk (yuck, probably)," as an anticipation of what would be coming for the following season.

On March 9, 2020, the first-look images for the character of Stormfront were released via Twitter . Amazon announced the season's premiere date and released the first poster for that resembles the cover of The Boys issue #65 in June 26, as well as two clips which are the season's first three minutes and a sneak peek of Stormfront's first appearance. The following month on July 8, the official trailer was released alongside a series of posters detailing wanted posters for each member of the Boys, which resembles the cover art of The Boys Vol. 6: The Self-Preservation Society. Describing the trailer, IndieWire's Tyler Hersko stated that the trailer promised that the season would be gleefully giving more tons of destruction for the fans of the "darkly comedic superhero series." Reid Nakamura at TheWrap considered that the trailer features several bloody deaths and explosion, expressing that it is something already expected given that the season is billed as an “even more intense, more insane” follow-up than the already bloody previous season. Lindsay MacDonald from TV Guide described that the trailer does not give too many spoilers for the season, but shows that the Boys and the Seven are still at war, "with Homelander and Billy Butcher gunning for each other."

A day before the release of the fourth episode in September 10, a short film set between the first and second season titled Butcher was released with Karl Urban reprising his role as Billy Butcher and David S. Lee making a guest appearance as Butcher's old friend Jock. The short film is set between the series' first and second seasons and explains how the titular character rejoined the main characters, after Homelander revealed to him that Becca was alive. A week later, Death Battle released two episodes on YouTube featuring the characters of The Boys, with both being sponsored by Amazon Prime Video.

Release

The second season premiered on Amazon Prime Video on September 4, 2020, consisting of eight episodes. Unlike the first season which was released in its entirety the same day, the episodes were released in a weekly basis with the first three being released on the premiere date and the remaining five being released weekly from September 11 to October 9.

Home media

The second season of The Boys was released on Blu-ray as part of a six-disc box set of the first two seasons by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on May 31, 2022. Special features included the Butcher short film, deleted scenes and a blooper reel.

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season holds an approval rating of 97% based on 106 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Boys comes out swinging in a superb second season that digs deeper into its complicated characters and ups the action ante without pulling any of its socially critical punches." On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Eric Deggans of NPR described the second season as "a wonderfully subversive, cynically entertaining piece of work". For his review at Vulture, Brian Tallerico considered that the season premiere manages to introduces new cast members without losing focus of what worked about the first season, and expressed excitement over what was going to come for the season. Roxana Hadadi from The A.V. Club deemed that all the elements of the series "feel most in line with The Boys as author Garth Ennis imagined the series: A portrait of shared capitalist and nationalist corruption, entwined together to create a morass of exploitation and abuse." In IndieWire the series received a "B" grade rating from a review by Ben Travers to which he stated, "The Boys is still an imperfect beast, but it gets so many parts right - I haven't even talked about the skilled stunt work or expertly staged action scenes - that you're likely to get caught up in its gorging satire." For his review at The Age, Karl Quinn considered that the season portrays accurately the real-world issues and over how corporations attempt to cover several issues with fake news and coverage, while also giving praise to its political themes and portrayal of media manipulation. Sonia Saraiya from Vanity Fair said "Even in the midst of stunning brutality, the show has a sardonic sense of humor that keeps the story crackling."

David Griffin from IGN considered the second season to be more profound than the previous one as he deemed that the series "continues its excellent form of balancing its comedy, over-the-top violence, and character development into a cohesive force of awesomeness. He also praised Aya Cash' performance as Stormfront, stating that she successfully captures the character charisma during most of her scenes and mostly when she is paired with Homelander. In his review for RogerEbert.com, Nick Allen was positive towards over how the show makes references that have been normalized in the American culture: "This is the season that helped me 'get' the appeal of The Boys, especially as it's more fun to spend time with these characters well-past their try-hard introductions. There's a totally indulgent nature to the series, the way that it offers such depictions of evil or extreme violence caused by pop culture icons, like an energy drink version of 'Watchmen.' And the world of Supes colliding with humans, based on the corruption of absolute power, can be a fascinating backdrop. But season two also proves that if the series is going to be so bloated and only sporadically punchy, it's never going to be as powerful as it thinks it is."

A review for The Daily Telegraph for Ed Power considered that the series successfully managed to show the darker side of the superheroes to which was something that Marvel and DC would not be able to do. Kshitij Rawat from The Indian Express considered that the second season was crazier and bigger than the previous one and lauded the season finale calling it one of the best that he have seen in years to which he commented, "If you like everything about The Boys' Season 1 — including the cynicism, brutality and the swearing — you simply can't go wrong with the second season. It turns everything several notches up. Due to a bigger budget, there is more action, bigger scale and more complex visual effects. It is not Marvel Cinematic Universe yet, and it certainly will never be, but it gets the job done. The social commentary is also bolder, and I daresay, The Boys is as brave as Watchmen in this regard." Rawat also considered Cash' performance as one of the highlights of the season and considered that the actress did a phenomenal performance, by capturing a character that knows how to use social media to meet her ends and is much more charismatic than Homelander. Doreen St. Félix wrote a review for The New Yorker where she considered that the show criticizing the monopoly of the companies such as Marvel and Disney, while also taking into account over how the series manage to deconstructs the superhero genre and the dystopic portrayal of the world and compared it with Watchmen.

On Amazon, season 2 of the series saw initial audience review bombing with 49% of 1400 reviews left by September 6, 2020, providing a one-star rating, most of which praised the available episodes but criticized Amazon's weekly release schedule.

Audience viewership

On September 11, 2020, it was revealed that the first three episodes of the season showed a big increase on the viewership compared to the first season, having drawing 7.2% share of streams during its opening weekend surpassing those from the third season of Stranger Things (5.8%) and the first season of The Mandalorian (4.4%). On the week of September 25, it was revealed that the viewership for the season was the double of what the first season got by having an increase of 89% millions being drawn to the series each week. After a month of its premiere it was revealed that 891 million minutes of the show has been watched placing the series in third place of the Nielsen Media Research list, just behind Cobra Kai (2.17 billion minutes) and Lucifer (1.42 billion minutes), becoming the first non-Netflix and Amazon Prime Video show to appear on the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Shows. By the week of October 9, the series reached over 1.06 billion minutes watched showing an increase of the audience compared to the previous week and retaining its position in the third place.

Awards and nominations

YearAwardCategoryNominee(s)Result
2021Black Reel AwardsOutstanding Guest Actor, Drama SeriesGiancarlo Esposito
British Fantasy AwardBest Film/Television ProductionThe Boys: "What I Know" (season 2, episode 8)
written by Rebecca Sonnenshine and Eric Kripke
Critics' Choice Super AwardsBest Actor in a Superhero SeriesAntony Starr
Karl Urban
Best Actress in a Superhero SeriesAya Cash
Best Superhero SeriesThe Boys
Best Villain in a SeriesAntony Starr
Edgar AwardsBest Television Episode TeleplayRebecca Sonnenshine (for "What I Know")
Golden Reel AwardsOutstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Episodic Long Form – Music / MusicalChristopher Brooks (for "Nothing Like It in the World")
Hollywood Critics Association TV AwardsBest Actor in a Streaming Series, DramaKarl Urban
Best Actress in a Streaming Series, DramaAya Cash
Best Streaming Series, DramaThe Boys
Best Supporting Actor in a Streaming Series, DramaGiancarlo Esposito
MTV Movie & TV AwardsBest Fight"Starlight, Queen Maeve, Kimiko vs. Stormfront"
Best HeroJack Quaid
Best ShowThe Boys
Best VillainAya Cash
Primetime Creative Arts Emmy AwardsOutstanding Original Music and Lyrics"Never Truly Vanish" – Christopher Lennertz and Michael Saltzman (for "The Big Ride")
Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour)Alexandra Fehrman, Rich Weingart, and Thomas Hayek (for "What I Know")
Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or MovieStephan Fleet, Shalena Oxley-Butler, Kat Greene, Rian McNamara, Tony Kenny, Steve Moncur, Julian Hutchens, Anthony Paterson, and Keith Sellers
Primetime Emmy AwardsOutstanding Drama SeriesEric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Craig Rosenberg, Philip Sgriccia, Rebecca Sonnenshine, Ken F. Levin, Jason Netter, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, Michael Saltzman, Michaela Starr, Gabriel Garcia, and Hartley Gorenstein
Outstanding Writing for a Drama SeriesRebecca Sonnenshine (for "What I Know")
Satellite AwardsBest Television Series – Comedy or MusicalThe Boys
Saturn AwardsBest Performance by a Younger Actor in a Television SeriesErin Moriarty
Best Superhero Adaptation Television SeriesThe Boys
Screen Actors Guild AwardsOutstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama SeriesMarco Bianco, Matthew Bianco, James Binkley, Jack Birman, Christine Ebadi, James Eddy, Tig Fong, Jason Gosbee, John Kaye, JF Lachapelle, Irma Leong, Chris Mark, Jonathan Mcguire, Geoff Meech, Anita Nittoly, Moses Nyarko, Daryl Patchett, Geoff Scovell, and Steve Shackleton
Writers Guild of America AwardsTelevision: Dramatic SeriesEric Kripke, Ellie Monahan, Anslem Richardson, Craig Rosenberg, Michael Saltzman, and Rebecca Sonnenshine

References


External links


Category:The Boys seasons
Category:2020 American television seasons
Category:Television shows filmed in Toronto
Category:Television shows set in New York City