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 Sony Pictures Television in association with 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 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, in contrast the release of the previous season which premiered in a single day. The season received record viewership for Amazon Prime and positive reviews, with praise towards the themes, storyline, and performances (particularly Urban, Starr and Cash), becoming the best reviewed superhero show of the year. It received multiple accolades, including a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards. On July 23, 2020, the series was renewed for a third season and several spin-offs, forming a franchise.[1]
Seth Rogen, Chris Hansen, Maria Menounos, Greg Grunberg, Nancy O'Dell, Katie Couric, Christopher Lennertz, and Thomas Roberts made cameo appearances, with Rogen making a cameo appearance as himself in an interview while Hansen appears as a news reporter in the episode "The Big Ride", Gunberg portraying a character for a fictional film within the series while O'Dell and Couric appearing as a reporter and the Deep's interviewer for the episode "We Gotta Go Now" respectively, Menounos appearing as Homelander's and Queen Maeve's interviewer for the episodes "Nothing Like It in the World" and "We Gotta Go Now", Lennertz portraying as a man singing a demo for A-Train's song in the episode "The Bloody Doors Off", and Roberts appearing as a news reporter in the episode's "Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men" and "What I Know". Greg Zajac, Anthony Lake, and Dylan Moscovitch also make cameo appearances for the fictional film within the series as pornographic impersonators of Homelander, Jack from Jupiter, and the Deep for the episode "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker". Kym Wyatt McKenzie and Birgitte Solem appear as actors playing Butcher and Stillwell in a reenactment of the latter's death for the episode "The Big Ride".
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.[15][16] 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.[17] 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.[18]
The second was confirmed by Amazon at the San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, a week before the series first season was released.[19][20] 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.[21][5] On 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.[22] 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.[23] During an interview with Collider, the series executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg promised that the season would be bigger and better as the 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."[24][25]
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.[26] 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 wanting 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.[27] 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.[28][29][26]
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 though social media. Kripke wrote the scripts for the season during the 2018 United States elections, as the topic of the president Donald Trump and his fears of xenophobic views from South American immigrants would be a major theme portrayed in the season.[30] Kripke considers that corporations are responsible for allowing celebrities to spread their xenophobic ideas due to wanting to fulfilling their own interests that allows them to win more money, while the regular guy end up being affected to which even the writers were very angered at this.[31] Due to the themes that are portrayed in the season, the character of Stormfront is introduced as the character represents the white fascistic and xenophobic issues that are currently affecting the lives of millions, while also being portrayed as a way to make the audicence to reexamine the racism that surrounds the celebrities and institution.[32] The character of Stormfront has been described by many as a very evil racist who is willing to kill people of color if she can get away with it, including innocent people,[33] spreading her ideologies of genocide through social media and hate speeches to target immigrants in the same way contemporary neo-Nazis do this in real life.[34]
While the season is mostly focused on the conflict with 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 where it is revealed to be the anti-Supe congresswoman Victoria Newman. The character of Victoria Newman is based on real-life congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sharing multiple physical similarities with her, while her speeches against corruption serve as an inspiration for Newman's speeches against supes.[35] Kripke wanted to introduce a storyline where Supes would start to be involved at the government and politics which would give Vought even more power than the one they already have, an idea that the showrunner confirmed that he would be exploring for the series third season, so he decided to keep the identity of the "Head Popper" as a total mystery until the season finale intending to surprise and shock the audience with the revelation of the character due to being initially treated as an ally of the Boys.[35][36]
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, Starlight, Hughie Campbell, Homelander, Queen Maeve, A-Train, Mother's Milk, The Deep, Frenchie, The Female, and Black Noir respectively.[4] In July 2019, Aya Cash closed a deal with Amazon to join the show as Stormfront,[37][38] though it was not until March 2020, when it was confirmed that Cash would be forming part of the second season showing the first look of her character.[39][40] 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."[8]
Elisabeth Shue returned as a guest star on the fourth episode titled "Nothing Like It in the World", as a doppelgänger of Madelyn Stillwell.[13] On September 5, 2019, Goran Višnjić and Claudia Doumit were cast in recurring roles for the second season.[11] A month later, Patton Oswalt was announced to be part of the show for an unspecified role.[41] Giancarlo Esposito was confirmed to reprise his role as Stan Edgar, with Kripke revealing that he would have an expanded role for the season.[9] 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."[10] On August 10, 2020, it was reported that Shawn Ashmore joined the cast as Lamplighter for the second season.[12] In September 2020, it was confirmed that John Noble would be making a guest appearance in the seventh episode of the season as Billy's father Sam Butcher.[14]
Like the previous season, it was confirmed that despite the show taking place in New York City, the filming for the second season would be taking place in Toronto, Canada.[42] The filming for the second season officially began on July 17, 2019, with the intention of getting a 2020 release for the season.[21][5] 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 of the place where the Toronto van attack occurred on April 23, 2018, in order to avoid hurting the sentiments of the citizens of Toronto.[43][5]
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. [44][45] Filming for the second season wrapped on November 1, 2019.[46][5]
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 that the first season, to which they required a bigger staff by doubling the cordinators and VFX editors, while reducing the number of vendos[clarification needed] due to having to complete the visual effects during the COVID-19 pandemic.[47] 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.[48]
Rising Sun Pictures were responsible for the creation of Stormfront's powers with the staff having to made 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 in order to make it more 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 include it to capture the realism of the sequences.[49] It was also used the slow motion lightning examples and the research of Tesla guns that were created online in order to look over ho 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.[50]
Christopher Lennertz returned to compose the soundtrack of the second season, for which he also wrote and composed two original songs for the series.[51] "Never Truly Vanish" was performed by Erin Moriarty for the season's premiere episode at Translucent's funeral with its music video being released on June 3, 2021.[52] Jessie T. Usher also performed an original song "Faster" which featured the collaboration Aimee Proal, with a music video being released at September 1, 2021.[53] The original soundtrack album for the second season which consists of 31 songs was released digitally through Madison Gate Records on October 9, 2020, alongside the season's final episode.[54][55]
The teaser trailer of the show was released on December 6, 2019, at the Comic Con Experience in São Paulo, Brazil.[56][57] A short film about a child Homelander was released by Kripke through his Twitter account on November 1, 2020, the day filming for the season wrapped.[58] On June 26, 2020, the teaser poster for the show was released which resembles the cover of The Boys issue #65.[59] The same two clips for the show were released with one being Stromfront's introduction and the other one showing the first three minutes of the season.[60][61] On July 9, 2020, another teaser trailer for the show was released, with a new poster detailing wanted posters for the members of the eponymous team being released two days later.[62][63][64]
A day before the release of the fourth episode, on September 10, 2020, 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 explains how the titular character rejoined the main characters, after Homelander revealed to him that Becky was alive.[65][66] On September 17, 2020, Death Battle released two episodes on YouTube featuring the characters of The Boys, sponsored by Amazon Prime Video.[67][68]
The second season premiered on Amazon Prime Video on September 4, 2020, consisting of eight episodes.[69][70] 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.[71]
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.[72]
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."[73] On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[74]
Eric Deggans of NPR described the second season as "a wonderfully subversive, cynically entertaining piece of work".[75] 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.[76] 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."[77] 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."[78] 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.[79] Sonia Saraiya from Vanity Fair stated that "Even in the midst of stunning brutality, the show has a sardonic sense of humor that keeps the story crackling."[80] While writing a review for Los Angeles Times, Lorraine Ali commented for her review that, "Pulling dark humor out of that caustic cauldron is not just a skill, it's a warped superpower. Even the most super-skeptic of viewers can agree about that."[81] Dan Jolin from Empire praised the series for its dark humor and Antony Starr's performance deemed that he remains the star of the show, the very embodiment of its black-hole-dark comedy concept, "with great power comes a complete disregard for any form of responsibility, accountability or morality."[82] Liz Shannon Miller wrote her review of the season for Collider where she considered that the most important thing that Season 2 does "is pushing the show's scope beyond the realm of capes and tights; its messages aren't subtle, but then again, neither is putting on a costume and fighting crime."[83]
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. While a few lackluster storylines that never get resolved, there are plenty of meaningful moments sprinkled throughout."[84] Daniel Fienberg gave a positive review to the show for The Hollywood Reporter where he deemed that the season improved the storyline and deemed it inferior to the previous one, comparing with other superhero shows that he considers that improved at their second seasons such as DC's Legends of Tomorrow and The Umbrella Academy.[85] 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."[86] The review for Polygon by Samantha Nelson was positive by praising over how the writers identify the difference between justice and revenge and the character development particularly the one from Butcher, as she considered it a representation of letting the past wrongdoing go and the character being willingly to betray his own friends despite having good intentions.[87]
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.[88] 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."[89] Jack Kleinman from Inverse praised Starr's performance and the action sequences stating when is less about the action and more about what happens in between. He also commented that what "Iron Man would actually do after having one too many drinks or what hanging out with Han Solo at the cantina was really like, The Boys has the answers. It's not pretty, but even after two brutal seasons, we still can't look away."[90] 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.[91] The review for Alex Flood received 4 out of 5 stars at NME considered that the season was too similar to the previous one but still considered it to be fun for his comment, "It’s difficult to tell if it’s better than season one, as Quaid also claimed, because this new batch basically offers more of the same. You’ve got your steamy sex scenes, plenty of gooey gore, and more effing and jeffing than Malcolm Tucker at a crisis meeting. The Boys may be the most adult superhero show on TV – but with its hotly-awaited return, it proves it’s the most fun too."[92]
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.[93][94]
On September 11, 2020, it was revealed that the first three episodes of the season showed an 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%).[95] 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.[96][97] After a month of its premiere it was revealed that 891 million minutes of the show has been watched placing number 3 on the Nielsen list, just behind Cobra Kai (2.17 billion minutes) and Lucifer (1.42 billion minutes),[98][99] becoming the first Non-Netflix and Amazon Prime Video show to appear on the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Shows.[100][101] 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.[102]