The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke Says the ‘Craziest’ Homelander Line in Season 5 ‘Already Happened’ in Reality

Across its four seasons so far, The Boys has never shied away from commentating on American politics — but this wasn’t showrunner Eric Kripke’s intention from the start. When he and executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg pitched the series in 2016, they primarily wanted to make a realistic version of a superhero show. “Trump was the, ‘He’s not really getting the nomination, is he?’ guy,” Kripke told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. But when Trump was elected, the show became something else. “Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism,” he said.

As The Boys readies for its fifth and final season — which premieres April 8 — it continues to be ahead of the curve. “I’m totally bummed out to say that we wrote [Season 5] before the [2024 presidential] election,” Kripke told TV Guide in March. “This sounds super naive now, but I swear the plan was, let’s write a 1984 version of what creeping authoritarianism looks like in America, and maybe everyone will be like, ‘Whew! We really dodged a bullet’ — but instead we got hit with the bullet.”