‘The Boys’ Receives Backlash For Mocking ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Female-Empowerment Scene

On October 17, Eric Kripke, the showrunner and creator of the popular Amazon Prime television series The Boys received strong backlash on Twitter when he revealed that one of the scenes in the season 2 finale was meant to make fun of a female-empowerment scene from Avengers: Endgame. In the particular scene from Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is joined by all of the surviving female superheroes such as as Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and many others as they move through Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) army. This scene and team-up has been referred to as “A-Force” by the fans. Even though there were many people who adored this female-empowering moment, there were others who were disgusted by the scene, considering it to be pandering and forced.

Recently, Kripke has been one of its most vocal critics.

The scene in which Kripke parodied the moment took place in the season 2 finale, where Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) faced off against the Nazi superhero Stormfront (Aya Cash). As Stormfront began to overpower the two of them, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligot) joined in to help, and the three heroines soon gained the upper hand on Stormfront. As the fight went on, Hughie (Jack Quaid), Frenchie (Tomer Kapon) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) watched the brawl in awe, with Frenchie quipping that “girls really do get it done.”

Kripke revealed in an interview where this scene came from. “As for ‘girls get it done,’ a lot of that came from our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened. She was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, ‘That was the dumbest, most contrived—’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t get me started.’ She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.”

Fans on Twitter were furious at this statement, and it did not take long for many people to defend the scene from Avengers: Endgame. They claimed that show is just jealous of the movie’s success and called Kripke a misogynist.

The Boys can be watched on Amazon Prime Video while Avengers: Endgame can be viewed on Disney+.