'The Boys' Showrunner Eric Kripke Says Season 5 Is About "A True Underground Resistance Against A Fascist Government"

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke shared some new details about the show’s fifth season confirming it will continue the show’s allegory on American politics with Homelander being a stand-in for President Donald Trump.

In an interview about the conclusion of Gen-V Season 2 with The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke shared details about The Boys Season 5. First, he shared that “there’s now this active and growing resistance led by Starlight that A-Train is an important part of. They’re really trying to take the fight back to Homelander and this sort of fascist government.”

Later in the interview he elaborated when he was asked who is Homelander up against, “He’s got a lot of people in line who want to (expletive) slap him. (Laughs) Obviously, Butcher is in the front of that line. But there’s Stan, Edgar, Marie, Annie, Huey. They’re trying to mount a real push, but they’re also outgunned, outmanned. You’re in an entire country that has drunk Homelander’s Kool-Aid. They’re outmatched by the size of the hundreds of superheroes that are in every town across the country, who have been given authority over the police.”

“So it really is a true underground resistance against a fascist government, which definitely has no comparison or parallel to anything going on anywhere in the world,” he concluded.

None of this is surprising in the least. Kripke has been outspoken about his hatred towards President Donald Trump and the Americans who support him. Back in 2020, in an interview with ScreenRant about the show’s second season, he claimed the most dangerous people are “the white dudes standing next to you.”

He was asked, “In season two, there’s the supervillain terrorists all over the world that have been activated by Homelander. However, you never really get the sense that they’re more dangerous than their creators. Can you talk to me a little bit about that dynamic?”

Kripke answered, “Yeah, it’s a great question. We were really interested in exploring the idea of authority figures getting the public really riled up with xenophobia and racism, but ultimately the most dangerous people are the white dudes standing next to you. We wanted to reflect that story. So, the supervillains are, in a way, a misdirect.”

In the same interview, he shared that part of Season 2 was inspired by the caravan of Central American immigrants who attempted to enter the United States illegally, “We wrote it at the time of the travel ban, if you remember; the caravan that were ‘going to come over the border and rape all the white women.’ We were in that world, and the way that authority figures were drumming up fear in these outsiders was disgusting, frankly.”

He elaborated, “And so we wanted to reflect that story, which is Vought and the superheroes and Stormfront are really drumming up quite a lot of fear about these supervillains. When in reality, Homelander and Stormfront are the real threat.”

In June 2024, he was asked by The Hollywood Reporter, “This season of The Boys features a presidential race being undermined by fascist forces. Coincidence or good timing?”

He answered, “We were already heading there anyway, but we’re talking about an election and a president and when the votes are counted in Congress. It’s odd to call it good luck, but sometimes we feel like we’re Satan’s writers room.”

In fact, he went on to admit the entire vision behind the show was to attack President Trump and his supporters, “When Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and I took it out to pitch, it was 2016. We just wanted to do a very realistic version of a superhero show, one where superheroes are celebrities behaving badly. Trump was the, “He’s not really getting the nomination, is he?” guy. When he got elected, we had a metaphor that said more about the current world. Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism. We’re right in the eye of the storm. And once we realized that, I just felt an obligation to run in that direction as far as we could.”

He elaborated, “It’s happened now almost every season, and we write them sometimes close to two years before they air and again we’ll find that the news is accurately reflecting whatever we’re talking about. It’s not a spoiler to say that first episode [of season four], Homelander [played by Antony Starr] is on trial. A big concern is ‘Can you convict someone that powerful of a crime?’ And what does that mean for the various supporters or the people protesting him? Did I know it was going to come out during Trump’s trial? Of course not. But we write what we’re either scared of or pissed off about. Someone asked me last year, about season three, ‘How are you so prescient with cops and over-policing in Black neighborhoods?’ Well, it’s been a problem for over 100 years. It was a problem five years ago, and, unfortunately, it’s going to be a problem five years from now. It’s always the same (expletive).”

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