The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke addresses the controversial storyline involving Hughie and Tek Knight. In a typical trope for television, Hughie has to go uncover (dressed as Webweaver) in season 4, episode 6, “Dirty Business,” to get some information about the villains’ plans. But, The Boys character engages in strange sexual acts and is set up to be tortured by his former idol, Tek Knight. At the end of the episode, Hughie admits to his girlfriend Annie that he felt violated by the experience, saying that he’s not okay following the death of his father.

In an interview with Variety, Kripke took a moment to address the controversial The Boys season 4, episode 6 scene being referred to as Hughie being “sexually assaulted by his childhood hero.” The showrunner disagreed with the dark characterization, saying the writers viewed it as “hilarious.” In the quote below, Kripke goes on to share some details about how the scene came about:

Well, that’s a dark way to look at it! We view it as hilarious. 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 of 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.

Why The Boys’ Latest NSFW Scene Misses The Mark

There Are A Few Issues With It.

With the end in sight, as The Boys season 5 will be the last, it’s fair to ask whether it’s useful to waste so much screen time on the actions of those who are secondary.

The scene is especially jarring in the context of how The Boys season 1 treated the assault of Annie by The Deep. That was handled with the seriousness it deserves and essentially informs both characters during the show’s early episodes. The tone of Hughie’s experiences is off from the start, and it reveals more about minor antagonists that don’t really matter. The series seems more interested in grossing out viewers with various extreme kinks rather than prioritizing what one of its main characters might be feeling. The focus is on cheap jokes, in other words.

The scene feels like a misunderstanding of the previous NSFW scenes that the series promoted. Whereas “Herogasm” was a gag about how sexual encounters could go wrong once superpowers are involved, the Hughie torture scene has no purpose except to humiliate the character and test the endurance of what the audience might feel comfortable seeing. There’s an argument that the scene could work better if it were darker and if it actually attempted to interrogate how Hughie feels. But it’s just the same insensitive humor, meant to shine a spotlight on a minor recurring character that swiftly gets killed off after.

The Prime Video show throws in a Zendaya reference for good measure, which some have felt was in poor taste. It’s not a fatal blow for a series that is usually pretty harmless in its nudity and fetishism. But amid falling favorability with critics and audiences, it is perhaps a reminder for the show to keep its focus on the characters and relationships that viewers actually care about. With the end in sight, as The Boys season 5 will be the last, it’s fair to ask whether it’s usual to waste so much screen time on the actions of those who are secondary.