The Boys creator Eric Kripke has come under serious fire from fans of the show, after admitting he thinks the scene where Hughie is sexually assaulted was “hilarious.” His admission has led to serious backlash from fans who feel as though he is minimising the impact of sexual assault on men, and is using the scene as a throwaway gag.

In an interview with Variety, Eric talked about the most recent episode of The Boys, during which Hughie goes undercover at a party hosted by his childhood hero and billionaire, Tek Knight. Unfortunately, he ends up being Tek Knight and Ashley’s sexual plaything in their sex dungeon and ultimately ends up breaking down in tears at the end of the episode, admitting he’s “not okay.”

Via Amazon Prime

In an interview with Variety, the interviewer asked Eric: “Let’s start with the Tek Knight sex dungeon part. Where did the idea come for it? And why bring Hughie into this situation now — kicking him when he’s down by having him sexually assaulted by his childhood hero after his dad just died?”

Eric replied claiming that it’s a “dark way to look at it! We view it as hilarious.” In full he said: “Obviously, Tek Knight is our version of Batman, and we wanted to really play around with that trope: Batman’s fascist underpinnings as a really wealthy dude who hunts poor people, and then profits from the incarceration. So that was one. Tek Knight was already set up to be a freak, so we were kind of already halfway there.

“Then the notion came up of, he should have a Batcave — but let’s be honest, the Batcave would be a sex dungeon. Like, even the real Batcave is just this side of being a sex dungeon. It’s really dark, and there’s rubber suits everywhere. It’s not that much of a push to add a couple dildos and then a weird urinal that turns into a face mask.

“And in the comics, there’s a great storyline where Hughie goes undercover disguised as a superhero. That was a story that Jack had always asked us to do. So part of it is, always be careful what you ask the writers for. Then we finally had this Webweaver character and the idea of Spider-Man going down to be kink tickled in the Batcave is just too good to pass up. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t leave that on the table.”

Via Amazon Prime

Despite being asked whether there were any moments during the scene with Hughie that Eric felt was too far for The Boys, he replied: “No, that was all pretty much as scripted.” But the inclusion of the scene in the show at all, in combination with the creator’s comments has turned a lot of fans off from wanting to continue watching the show.

One Redditor wrote: “This made me quit the series. It wasn’t because it was shocking, it was just so tone-deaf and disheartening. This episode has at least 10 minutes of the male lead being forced to do some really uncomfortable things and it’s played for laughs the entire time. There’s a very short scene at the end where he cries about being “not okay” for ambiguous reasons. I was hoping this plot line would be treated with the same weight Starlight’s has been. It just makes me feel worse as a male victim myself.”