The Boys creator and showrunner Eric Kripke has admitted that satirising reality has become increasingly difficult, especially when real-world events seem to mirror the show’s most outrageous moments.
Just days before an episode aired in which a character declares himself divine, Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image portraying himself as Jesus.
Now in its fifth and final season, the series centres on a group of corrupt superheroes who operate without accountability. At the heart of it all is Homelander — a supremacist, near-invincible figure driven by a desire for absolute control.
Speaking to Polygon, Kripke said he feels “tired and weary of the world reflecting the show before we get a chance to do it”.
“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?” he added.
In the episode titled Every One of You Sons of B*****s, Homelander — played by Antony Starr — proclaims himself a god. It aired shortly after Trump’s now-deleted post featuring the AI-generated religious imagery.
“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. 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,” Kripke further explained.