(Warning: This post contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “The Boys.”)
Among the many, many, many shocking moments in the finale of the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s raunchy superhero series “The Boys” was a scene that showrunner Eric Kripke had originally wanted to include back in Season 1, but was deemed too wild by the streaming service.
The bit in question comes at the end of the episode, when Antony Starr’s Homelander is standing atop Vought Tower, masturbating while he looks out over the city and repeats, “I can do whatever the f–k I want!”
In July 2019, just a few days after “The Boys” freshman season launched, Kripke told fans during a Reddit AMA that “there was ONE SCENE that Amazon said F– NO, you have to cut” that to. “I couldn’t quite understand why considering everything else we have in the show, but: Homelander [played by Antony Starr], after being dressed down by Stilwell [Elisabeth Shue] in episode 2, was standing on one of the Chrysler building Eagles. He pulled his pants down and started jerking off, mumbling ‘I can do whatever I want’ over and over again until he climaxed all over New York City.”
So how did Kripke managed to get that scene into “The Boys” Season 2 finale after Amazon banned it from the show’s first batch of episodes?
“That was amazing. Well, it helps– it helps to be a hit,” Kripke said, referring to the 89% spike in worldwide viewership that “The Boys” Season 2, which rolled out weekly, has seen from Season 1, which dropped all at once. “Originally, we had a different final image for Homelander. He was just kind of, he was actually in space and he was like, hovering over the earth, kind of like Superman does, but had like a scary sociopathic look. It was awesome. We shot it. But Amazon had the note of like, ‘We’d love to see if we could stick the landing on him a little harder. And, you know, have something that maybe isn’t quite as ambiguous.’ And I was like, I got just the idea!”
“So we dropped it back in and I sent it to them without comment,” he continued. “I just sent it to them with like, ‘Did your note.’ But to their credit, they were like, you know, I think it actually really works in this in this context, because it’s telling us something about how powerless and pathetic he feels in that moment and how dangerous he’ll be moving into Season 3. But yeah, thrilled to get it back in.”
You can read more from our interview with Kripke about the Season 2 finale — and his plans for Season 3 — here.
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