Amazon's The Boys has easily become one of the best superhero adaptations of modern times. Perhaps due to the fact that it's a delightfully dark and satirical take on the superhero genre, where the writers have turned the tables, making superpowered individuals the baddies. The Boys on Amazon certainly pushes the satire, gore, and shock factor and features some of the most gruesome and uncomfortable scenes ever adapted for television.
The writers at Amazon have the comic book scribes to thank for this as Dynamite Entertainment's The Boys is easily one of the most graphically adult graphic novel series out there. Both season one and season two did not hold back on adapting some of these scenes, and fans are hoping they're not let down when season three drops next year, but what can fans expect? Let's take a look.
Tek Knight's Heroic Rescue
The Boys is famous for taking satirical jabs at classic Marvel and DC heroes. Much of the Justice League have been parodied in the form of Homelander, Queen Maeve, The Deep, and A-Train; however, fans of the show have not really gotten a glimpse at The Boys jab at Batman. Enter Tek Knight, a genius who fights crime using technology and his adept hand-to-hand combat. Everyone knows that Bruce Wayne always has it easy with the opposite sex. The writers of The Boys comics send this up to ridiculous heights, making Tek Knight a man with a fist-sized tumor, leading the character to be unable to resist having relations with both animate and inanimate objects. In the Get Some story arc, Tek Knight comes to Earth's rescue by literally humping an asteroid to destroy it before it hits the Earth.
Ryan's Brutal Death
In the comics, Becca Butcher doesn't survive the birth of her super-enhanced infant, and nor does the child live very long after birth. In the comics, Billy is actually with Becca when Ryan is born, but as soon as the infant draws his first breath, its laser eyes and lack of control are an immediate problem. Being the brute he is, Butcher has no choice but to beat the child to death with a lamp. Of course, this is probably too brutal for TV. We already know the showrunners took a different path with Ryan's story, which sees Butcher leaving with him after Maeve threatens Homelander with leaking a video of them abandoning a plane full of people, which is plummeting to Earth. Perhaps Ryan will still prove a threat later in the show; maybe he can't control his powers or becomes more like his father. In either case, if this happens, we're sure fans will love to see Butcher being as brutal as he is in the comics.
Frenchie Shows No Mercy
Frenchie is pretty timid in the show when compared to his comic book version - and it would be nice to see him step it up, comic-style.
In issue twelve of The Boys, Frenchie all but loses his sanity when he obliterates a bunch of baddies in their car. When he's finished with his bloody task, there's a headless body sitting next to a man who has had an assault rifle shoved down his throat.
Butcher's Dog, Terror
Amazon's The Boys seems to have shied away from giving The Boys chemically enhanced powers, so the idea of Butcher's dog, Terror appearing is probably a pipe dream. In the comics, Butcher has a chemically engineered "canine death machine." In fact, the comics go as far as allowing Terror to sexually assault any of Butcher's targets upon certain vulgar commands from Butcher. Perhaps Amazon should have the killing side adapted and not the on-command canine assault.
Pizza With A Gruesome Topping
In issue eleven of The Boys, in the first issue of the "Glorious Five Year Plan" arc, The Boys find themselves in Russia. Butcher comments on just how bad members of the Russian mob are, calling them a "buncha bloody savages" right before a pizza gets delivered to them with the face of the delivery guy on it. Yikes.
Payback
As mentioned above, Butcher once takes out almost all the members of another Vought team of supes called Payback. Payback is Garth Ennis' parody of Marvel's Avengers. Long before The Seven, Butcher's crew, and Payback, Vought had other super teams. This dates back as far as World War 2.
Where the Avengers are there to avenge the meek and downtrodden, Payback pays back evil unto evil.
Malchemical's Death
In a story arc where Butcher recruits Hughie to shadow the Super Duper Vought team because he suspects that Hughie might be a mole working for Vought, Hughie comes across Black Hole, who has the power to consume all matter, choking on a spoon. As Hughie is the selfless type, he comes to the rescue, jabbing Black Hole in his throat, thus saving his life. Butcher witnesses this and begins trusting him even less. Hughie's heroic moment leads to Super Duper taking him in, and he becomes a friend to the only wholesome team of Vought supes.
Hughie, on Butcher's request, plants a myriad of spyware tools in their home. Later, Hughie witnesses Malchemical losing the plot and going Homelander on the team, threatening Super Duper with death unless they comply with his orders. Of course, Hughie being the man he is, who hates bullies, comes to their rescue but is nearly killed by Malchemical, who morphs into a gaseous form with razor-sharp tentacles, which start tearing away with ease at Hughie's flesh. Of course, Butcher isn't far behind, and with the flick of his lighter sets Malchemical's gaseous form on fire, burning him to death.
Little Nina's Explosive End
Amazon's The Boys certainly doesn't pull any punches when it comes to hardcore and overly imaginative deaths. We've seen Hughie blow up Translucent, we've seen multiple heads pop, and we've seen what happens to Stormfront when confronted with Mini-Homelander, aka Ryan. You ain't seen nothing yet. If Amazon keeps with their current MO of not shying away from brutal deaths in the comics, we might see what happens to Little Nina.
Little Nina is an associate of Vought who moonlights as a crime-boss in her spare time. In the comics, we see Billy Butcher and his crew travel to Moscow to go up against Little Nina, who has a penchant for creating her own supes using a lesser form of Compound V. The interesting thing about Nina is that she has a deeply rooted mistrust issue of all men, and thus she has taken to a rather addictive relationship with pocket-sized sex toys. Of course, Butcher hatches a gruesome plan which sees him planting a high-powered explosive in her favorite toy. You can imagine the rest.
Black Noir's Identity
While this revelation might have been retconned for the series, it would be an immensely awesome reveal if it happened in season three of The Boys. After going psycho and assassinating POTUS, Homelander is caught by Black Noir in the Oval Office.
At this moment, the mysterious Black Noir unmasks himself, revealing himself to be another Homelander. That's right; Black Noir was actually cloned by Vought as a failsafe if Homelander ever took his powers too far.
Butcher Fights Off An Entire Supe Team With Construction Supplies
Amazon has certainly nailed the vicious nature of Billy Butcher. Perhaps it was their stellar casting of Karl Urban as their vengeance-driven maniac, but viewers of the show should probably expect much more grisly deaths at his hand. In an issue of The Boys comic, he goes buck wild on the superhero team Payback in a fight at a construction site. While the rest of his vigilante team is busy, he manages to fight off the entire team with his savage instincts, a pickaxe, and a shovel.