Eric Kripke makes genre television with the wiring showing: monsters, capes and time machines built around the people who have to live with them. The Boys is the fullest version of that, and it is good, loud and about a season too long.
Fi1m perspective
A man in a cape smiles for the cameras, says the right thing about America, and then, when the cameras are off, does whatever he likes. That is the Eric Kripke shot, and The Boys (2019) repeats it for five seasons of eight episodes. Adapted from Garth Ennis's comic, the series asks what superheroes would be like if a company owned them, and answers with Vought, which sells capes the way other firms sell soft drinks. It is the best idea Kripke has had and he knows it, which is why he keeps telling it.
He is listed as a director and he does direct the odd episode, but writing is where he works. After film school he wrote for the short-lived Tarzan (2003) and the screenplay for Boogeyman (2005), then created Supernatural (2005), horror and urban legends hung on a family, and ran it for five seasons before stepping back; it went on for fifteen without him. Revolution (2012) and Timeless (2016) followed, each lasting two seasons. Then The Boys, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg producing, and the spin-off Gen V.
"I'm in the character business," he has said, and on the evidence he means it. Antony Starr's Homelander is a great television monster because the show gives him time: whole scenes of him being adored, or wanting to be, before anything happens. We were more frightened by that smile turned on a crowd than by anything the character does with his hands, and it took us a while to work out why. It is because Kripke lets the performance carry the threat and holds the violence back until it means something. The mythology, as in Supernatural, is built to pay off rather than to tease, so questions get answered and the answers hurt.
What he does less well is restraint. The Boys is cruder than it is clever; its satire of politics and celebrity is delivered at a shout, then delivered again in case we missed it. It also runs long. The later seasons have episodes that mark time, and the complaints about padding were not unfair. Kripke's shows are at their best when they have a monster in the house and a family to protect from it, and at their weakest when they stop to explain what the monster stands for.
See The Boys for Starr, for the corporate comedy of Vought, and for a showrunner who plainly likes his characters more than his targets. Twenty years of network television teach you to keep a series alive at any cost. Ending one on purpose is a different trade, and we will be interested to see whether he has learnt it.
Biography
Eric Kripke is an American writer, director and television producer. Born on 24 April 1974 in Toledo, Ohio, he graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He began his career directing short films and writing for the series Tarzan (2003) before writing the screenplay for the film Boogeyman (2005).
Kripke created the long-running series Supernatural (2005–2020) and served as its showrunner for the first five seasons. He later created or co-created Revolution (2012–2014) and Timeless (2016–2018). Since 2019 he has been the showrunner, writer and occasional director of The Boys (2019–) for Amazon Prime Video, and he developed the spin-off Gen V (2023–).
