Outside of the major tentpole superhero franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, there aren't many other superhero-based shows or movies more popular at the moment than Amazon Prime's The Boys . Owning a much more mature and adult tone than most of the other properties in existence right now, The Boys finds a number of different ways to take the superhero genre and accentuate a great number of its qualities and mannerisms, usually in extremely over-the-top violent and outlandish fashion.
As the show has progressed to its second season on Amazon Prime, the antics and satire have been taken up a notch at seemingly every turn. Recently, the show even took a shot at one of the most successful superhero movies of all time in one of its episodes, and news has arrived revealing exactly the production team's reasoning behind this move.
NEWS
A new release from The Hollywood Reporter has taken an in depth look at season 2 of The Boys , including a particular scene that appeared to take a jab at the popular "She's got help" A-Force tease scene during the final battle of Avengers: Endgame . In a scene from The Boys season 2,, three of the show's superpowered characters are acting in a fictional superhero movie that includes a female group shot with the dialogue "Girls get it done." The show's creator, Eric Kripke, shared that he's "actually a big fan of the Marvel stuff," but went in depth about why he and the series showrunner, Rebecca Sonneshine, decided to go the route that they did with their scene:
As for "girls get it done," a lot of that came from our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened. She was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, "That was the dumbest, most contrived—" And she’s like, "Don’t get me started." She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.
WHAT THIS MEANS
The scene in Avengers: Endgame that featured nearly every living female hero in the MCU going against Thanos and his alien army has had some of the most mixed reactions of any scene in the MCU. While it did give a major highlight of female empowerment and some awesome action for just a minute, many fans have griped about how forced the scene felt after Captain Marvel flew in to help save the day and was joined by her female comrades.
While The Boys is known to take plenty of shots at some of the most noticeable shortcomings of the superhero genre, this was one of the most direct of those shots, as well as possibly the most high-profile target the show has gone after . Kripke and Sonneshine didn't hold anything back about how forced and condescending they felt this scene was, and they are clearly part of the viewing audience that had some major problems with how the A-Force tease played out in the final battle of Avengers: Endgame.
This also isn't the first time Marvel Studios has included a female-centric scene in their movies, considering they had a very similar one in Avengers: Infinity War which featured Scarlet Witch, Black Widow and Okoye all taking on Proxima Midnight in the battle of Wakanda. The studio is clearly very focused on its powerful female heroes as it looks to the future with projects like Black Widow , Captain Marvel 2 , She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel all in various stages of production. It will be interesting to see how the MCU tackles these types of scenes going forward, especially knowing how other franchises are keeping a close eye on them.
