Herogasm Means The Boys Season 3 Might Finally Go Too Far
With The Boys Season 3 poised to adapt the controversial Herogasm mini-series from the comics, some are wondering if the show might be going too far.
With The Boys season 3 adapting the controversial Herogasm miniseries, some are wondering if the Amazon Prime show might be going too far. While The Boys hasn't shied away from depicting violence and sexual content in its first two seasons, Herogasm was a shocking storyline, even by the standards of The Boys monthly comic.
The first miniseries set in the reality of The Boys, Herogasm opened with all the superheroes in the world publicly joining together to travel to deep space to protect Earth from a hostile alien fleet. In truth, this was a cover story meant to hide the fact that Vought-American's superheroes attended a company-sponsored orgy every year, in order to allow their super-powered employees to cut loose in a controlled environment. After several days of debauchery in a tropical resort full of drugs and well paid prostitutes, the costumed crimefighters returned home, rested and relaxed, to a hero's welcome with the world none the wiser as to what their protectors had really been doing.
Showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed that a Herogasm adaptation was in the works, posting the title page of the script for The Boys season 3, episode 6 on Twitter. Kripke also spoke of how many people had challenged him to tackle the controversial miniseries since the first day of pre-production. It is clear now that Kripke has accepted the challenge and, based on his response, is reveling in the chance to push the envelope even further than the first two seasons of The Boys did. This is worrying, however, as the controversy of Herogasm goes beyond its sexual content and jokes about how popular male superheroes with stretching powers are into making light of sexual assault.
During Herogasm, protagonist Hughie Campbell was sexually assaulted by the Batman parody character Black Noir and the series mined Hughie's shame over the incident for laughs. The scene was shocking for a comic published in 2009 and it's hard to imagine such a thing being portrayed, even played seriously, on a streaming service in 2021, given how skittish American audiences are regarding the idea of men being sexually assaulted. Herogasm also contained a similarly controversial scene in which it was revealed that Homelander had persuaded Soldier Boy (The Boys version of Captain America) to perform unspecified sexual acts in the expectation of being given a spot on The Seven in exchange for doing so.
Ironically, it's already been revealed that The Boys Season 3 will not have any scenes suggesting a sexual relationship between Soldier Boy and Homelander. Given that, there may be reason to believe that the show will also skip over depicting the incident between Hughie and Black Noir and that it's adaptation of Herogasm will be limited to depictions of the potential perversions allowed by creative use of various superpowers. Even so, it's possible that little may be enough to drive away the show's audience.