The Boys smartly responds to season 4’s review bombing in a new promotional video. Despite season 4’s fresh critical score of 95% on bad Tomatoes, the review bombing has resulted in a bad audience score of 51%. Many of the negative reviews attribute the show’s politics as the explanation for its poor ratings.
With The Boys season 4’s story centered on an election year and the superpowered Victoria Neuman (Claudia Domit) poised to be sworn into the White House, politics are more central to the story than ever before.
In a video published by Vought International, the series takes the review bombing debate hard on, with Vought CEO Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) unveiling a fictional internet browser that she proudly says allows users to review bomb TV shows. Watch the video below:
Vought is proud to usher in a new era of Internet privacy. Together with @operagxofficial, we’ve built BROWSER by Vought. What it lacks in branding creativity, it makes up for in speed and security. Download it today and you’ll be review bombing woke TV shows in no time! pic.twitter.com/AAgtZsWiTw
— Vought International (@VoughtIntl) June 22, 2024
In addition to the season 4 review bombing, the video includes political subjects from The Boys, such as “a laser-tight filter on news” and a video about all the lies disseminated by Starlight (Erin Moriarty), recognizing the show’s investigation of the hot-button problem of disinformation.
The Boys Have Always Been Political
The Boys is known for drawing parallels with today’s major issues.
While The Boys‘ politics may arguably be more overt in season 4 due to the storyline with Neuman about to become Vice President, the series has always been unsubtle in its politics. The season 1 episode “Good for the Soul” took place at an event called the Believe Expo, with the episode exploring how Vought weaponizes religious faith to make consumers see the company’s superheroes as benevolent individuals chosen by God. In season 2, Vought put Stormfront (Aya Cash) into the Seven despite knowing she was a Nazi.
When Stormfront is publicly outed as a Nazi, she tells the Boys, “People love what I have to say. They believe in it. They just don’t like the word Nazi.” In season 3, A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) confronts a fellow Supe named Blue Hawk (Nick Wechsler) who is overpolicing black neighborhoods, and who shouts the phrase, “Supe lives matter!” These are only a few of the many ways in which The Boys has always been blatant in its political commentary in previous seasons, which were not review bombed and received more favorably.
| The Boys Season | Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score |
|---|---|
| 1 | 90% |
| 2 | 83% |
| 3 | 75% |
| 4 | 51% |
Elements in season 4, such as the uproar surrounding Homelander’s (Antony Starr) trial and the debut of the exhibitionist Firecracker (Valorie Curry), are consistent with The Boys’ political commentary. The Prime Video series examines contemporary challenges through the lens of a world in which superheroes are revered as gods, statesmen, and celebrities. It will continue to do so in season 4 and the fifth and final season, with this strategy unaffected by any review bombing of The Boys season 4.
