Why can’t The Boys stop Love Island?
Constant pop culture references make it feel like supes just don’t matter much
This post contains light spoilers for The Boys.
Very few TV shows increase in quality toward the end. The Shield is a rare exception, where the quality of each season increases in a somewhat linear fashion. The Boys, Amazon Prime’s irreverent superhero show, is not one of these exceptions. The first season is the best. I just finished watching the final season’s penultimate episode, and unless the show delivers a mind-blowing finale next week, the final season will have been the show’s worst.
Something that has become more grating as the show’s writing has deteriorated is the constant stream of pop culture references. I have no problem with the show providing its own satirical lens on modern-day media such as livestreamers and podcast bros; indeed, this has provided some of this season’s best material. But the specific pop culture references, like this week’s references to the assassination of Jeffrey Epstein (oops, death of Jeffrey Epstein) and the TV show Love Island, or the countless celebrity name drops earlier this season, are a problem.
The problem is that Vought International, the most important corporation in The Boys universe, was founded in 1950 and has been dominant since the 1970s. The corporation is dominant in defence, pharmaceuticals, fast food, politics, and who knows how many other industries. And despite this, pop culture seems to have developed in much the same way as in our own world, with the same celebrities and the same reality TV hits dropped in almost unchanged. Somehow, Love Island survived Vought.
On the other hand, when Soldier Boy claims to have slept with an actress popular in the 1950s, it actually makes sense, since Vought had not yet had the opportunity to make its mark on the world of The Boys. But decades later, after supes have supposedly reshaped American politics, entertainment, religion, and consumer culture, it is strange that the rest of pop culture remains so recognizable. For a show about a corporation that supposedly reshaped America, The Boys spends a lot of time acting like America would have turned out more or less the same anyway.