The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke Has Given Up Trying To Understand Homelander Fans [Exclusive Interview]

There are days when it feels like society and culture are crumbling all around us and there's nothing we can do to stop it. That's why there was never a more perfect era to produce "The Boys," a blend of superhero satire and devastating truth bombs whose warped, funhouse mirror reality echoes our own in ways both discomforting and hilarious. The timing isn't lost on series showrunner Eric Kripke.

"I really lucked into adapting it at the single best time in history to adapt that comic," he told me over Zoom. I was speaking to Kripke ahead of the season 4 premiere of the Prime Video series — which has evolved from an ultra-violent adaptation of the equally gnarly comics series from writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson into one of Amazon's streaming Crown Jewels — and we were chatting about how the series reflects the very specific anxieties of being alive right now. And how, somehow, a certain subset of viewers seem to totally miss the message that is plastered all over the gory superhero action and bawdy humor. 

Kripke is a television veteran who made his name as the first showrunner on "Supernatural" and hasn't slowed down since. Over the course of our conversation, he spoke about how his network experience prepared him for streaming, his vision for the ending of "The Boys," and how he'll remain forever baffled by fans of the show who think Homelander is a good guy.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

You come from a world of more traditional network TV with "Supernatural" and other projects where you were cranking out 20 episodes a season. How did that landscape, and working in that more traditional method, prepare you for streaming, and how does it inform your choices when you have fewer episodes but generally bigger budgets?

First of all, twenty-two episodes, just because it was so painful that I need to say that. Well, I'll tell you one thing: It makes streaming easy as s*** in terms of your stress level. They don't really even do it that much anymore, but 22, sometimes 23-episode seasons, that is the extreme sports version of showrunning. If you can survive that, you can survive anything. If nothing else, it gave me the confidence of when everything catches fire on this show, and it always does because you're constantly managing chaos, but when everything catches fire, you just don't panic. I'll never be in a tougher situation than I was when I was running that show.

You appreciate it. You appreciate the time and money they give you. It's such a gift to finish shooting all of your episodes before you air any of them, because you can come up with an idea in the seventh episode that just needs set up in the first episode, and you still have time to go back and shoot a couple of scenes in the first episode that make that work. The reason streaming shows feel so coherent in their storylines is because you've shot them all already. You can look at them of a piece, and go back and reshoot and change things and make them all fit. Which is impossible to do when you're airing episodes every week, and already writing the ones that come five episodes later. That, I think, is really valuable.

But yeah, I mean, we shoot "The Boys" on a schedule that was twice as long and four times the money than what we shot "Supernatural" on. Now, I think had I started that way, I don't know if my filmmaking would be as sharp, because you need to really learn how to make things work for no money, so that you can remain disciplined when you do have money. I think that's a value, too.

There's all these headlines about people who are talented writers, but don't have the nuts and bolts filmmaking experience and they're being thrust into showrunner positions.

Yeah.

Do you feel this is dangerous for television, if people don't have that experience? 

I think it's a huge danger, and it's one of the things the writers struck about, because you need to ... young writers need to learn how to produce, and they need to be on set. They need to hear the actors say their words. They need to understand that what they're writing on the page has an impact on literally hundreds of people, and they need to learn how to navigate all of it. Just network television in general — in particular, The CW, because those were smaller, lower budget shows — you could bring in a lot of young writers and really train them, and you don't really have that opportunity anymore. You're throwing these people who have never done this job into these huge shows, and then you're surprised when it becomes a flaming s*** show. It's not that person's fault. They're not being set up to succeed. You've got to learn how to crawl before you can fly, man, and so I think it's so important.

That's why to me, even before the strike, I was like, "All of my writers are going to set. That's all there is to it." Not just because it's better training for them. It's better for the show, because now they know how to produce it when they're writing it. They know what the sets look like in three-dimensional space, and what the actors' strengths are. To me, it's so self-defeating to not do that, because what, so a studio can save a few bucks on, what, airline fees? I mean, what's the value? In exchange, they're not training up the next generation, and it might not be a problem today, but if it's not fixed substantially, it's going to be a huge problem in a few years.

Well, speaking of flaming s*** shows, there have always been headlines about a certain segment of people who watch "The Boys" and insist there's no politics, insist it's not a political show, that people are overthinking it. I have to imagine this drives you crazy as much as it drives me crazy. Do you write with those people in mind now, or do you just try to ignore it?

No, I don't write with them in mind. I mean, look, it doesn't really particularly bother me. I just kind of throw up my hands, and I'm like, "Well, I don't know what else to do then." The show is many things. Subtle is not one of them. If you, for instance, think Homelander's a hero, I just don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you. But look, on the other hand, if people want to watch this show as just escapist entertainment, like as any other superhero thing ... then I guess thanks for watching, question mark? But obviously, the show has a lot on its mind, and I would certainly appreciate it more if people get the different layers that we work so hard to put into it.

Speaking of Homelander, were you as surprised as I was that he's emerged as the breakout character? He's a great villain, and he's the kind of villain who only could have been conceived in the past decade. He's such a character of his time.

Yeah.

I think that he's become such a representative for everything that is terrifying about life right now. I'm curious about how you reacted to people embracing him as being that icon of, "Hey, things are f***ed up right now."

Well, yeah. I mean, look, even as short as 10 years ago, the idea of a celebrity trying to turn themselves into an authoritarian autocrat was a slightly crazy idea. Then with 2016 and the build-up to it, suddenly it became a very, very real idea. Here's this comic book that has a character that's doing exactly the same thing, and I really lucked into adapting it at the single best time in history to adapt that comic. I think he really connects with people on that level. I think none of that would happen if Antony Starr isn't delivering just a masterful performance, every single episode. He makes you understand the guy. He gives 17 facial expressions when someone else gives one. He's just an astounding actor, and he's doing Emmy worthy work. It's mind-blowing to me that he hasn't won anything yet. I think he makes that character so undeniable, and is delivering just such a performance for the ages, that I think people just naturally gravitate towards it.

Speaking of the comic, I'm wondering, do you ever maintain contact with the creators of that comic, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson? How do they feel about the changes that you've made to the show?

Yeah. Especially when I'm writing scripts, I'm in regular contact with Garth, and then we talk to Darick throughout as well. Garth reads every single draft. He gives me notes on Butcher's dialogue, which I'm happy to take, because I'm not from that part of the world. Look, he always said to me early, he said, "Get Butcher right, and get the tone and the characters right. In terms of the story, I get that the story has to be different."

Yeah, no, obviously we deviate quite far. It is its own animal. To people who say, "Yeah, but I love the comic book, but what about the comic book?" I say, "Go read the comic book. The comic book's amazing. It's a beautiful piece of art. But what I'm making is my interpretation of how the comic book makes me feel." Again, all try to do is I try to capture the tone, and I try to get the characters, and I try to capture how I feel when I read it, and try to convey my excitement to the audience. I think they like it. I think Garth likes it. He tells me he does, so we'll see. [laughs]

Note: A few days after this interview was conducted, Amazon announced "The Boys" will be coming to an end after its fifth season.

The "Lost" guys always talked about how they had a plan, they had an endgame in mind. The "Breaking Bad" staff always talked about how they made it up as they went along. Both plans have resulted in great shows. Where does "The Boys" fall in the spectrum, between master plan and making s*** up as you go along?

I'd say we're squarely in the middle. Every season, we know that we want Homelander to get a little more disconnected from reality, and we want Butcher to get a little scarier. The show is, at the end of the day, about these two forces charging towards each other, between Butcher and Homelander. I know that them finally smashing into each other, once and for all, will be a big part of whatever endgame we come up with. But beyond that, and beyond knowing where I want Hughie — I know where I want a lot of the characters to end up, that's what I would say. I actually don't even necessarily know the climax of the show, as much as I know that 10 pages that happens at the end, when they say "six months later," and you see where everyone is. I know where everyone is. Then my job, whenever we get to it, my job is to just make sure we can back into that.

I spoke to the showrunners of "Evil" recently, and they said that they reached their thematic climax, even if they didn't have the actual physical roadmap lined out. It sounds like similarly, you have your thematic climax, you just don't know how you're going to get there quite yet.

Yeah, exactly. And you don't want to know. You want a room of brilliant writers to surprise you, and you want to leave space for that because it's their show too. I think there's a danger in being overly planned out. It's too insular, it's a little suffocating.

With your name on spin-off series like "Diabolical" and "Gen V," are you satisfied and happy to be the godfather of the "Boys" universe? How much "Boys" is too much "Boys" for you?

I'm still having a blast. As long as it's still fun, and as long as I still love the world, I'm happy to work on it. We have brilliant people both on "Diabolical" and "Gen V," and a couple of things we're working on in development. Each of their own shows, they bring their own sensibilities, and they're totally different. But I weigh in a lot. I mean, I weigh in a lot, like a bald Kevin Feige, and try to make sure that it's tonally consistent and logically consistent with the larger world. But you want each show to feel different. You don't want the thing where it's like you're just spitting out widgets. You want each piece to be its own idiosyncratic thing that could have lived on its own.

Now I was picturing you wearing the baseball cap, and standing in front of a giant screen, pitching the next 10 years of "Boys" shows.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, phases 12 through 19.

Season 4 of "The Boys" premieres on June 13, 2024 on Prime Video.