‘The Boys’ is a relatively new original series produced by Amazon. The show snuck up on me and surprised me like finding a chupacabra shopping for beer at the supermarket. I like to think I’m fairly plugged in on the sci-fi community, but somehow I missed the announcements for this show. So it was with great surprise that I saw it pop up as a recommendation on Amazon stream.
My wife and I gave it a try and she immediately walked out of the room. She’s more of a purist when it comes to superhero movies, and ‘The Boys’ definitely does not deliver a traditional story. She likes the heroes to be of pure intention and always striving to make the world a better place, like Captain America or Iron Man. Without spoiling the entire show, I can only say that the supers in ‘The Boys’ do not fit that mold. I ended up binging all eight episodes with all my free time over two or three days and loved every minute of it! The story was original and usually didn’t go where I predicted. I was engaged the entire time and simply cannot wait for the second season!
It came as no surprise to me when it was recently announced that ‘The Boys’ is more popular than any of the other streaming Marvel shows. Marvel has seen a lot of success with the Netflix versions of ‘Daredevil,’ ‘Jessica Jones,’ ‘Luke Cage,’ and ‘Iron Fist,’ along with a couple of spinoffs like ‘Punisher‘ and ‘Defenders.’ I know Marvel has more shows than just those out there, but aside from ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,’ (a regular serial series on ABC), none of them have seen much success, and all of these have been cancelled. Karim Zreik, Marvel Entertainments Senior VP of Orignal Programming and Production recently explained that for those four originals, they had a planned target audience:
“Each show, for us, had a different demographic. Each show is very specific. Women took to Jessica Jones, men took to Daredevil, young men took to Iron Fist because of the age of the lead character.”
For a full review of all the various shows’ data analytics, check out the article over at Screen Rant. And if you’re looking for a truly fresh, albeit sometimes disturbingly dark story [trigger warning!], go watch ‘The Boys’ over at Amazon.
