The Boys Season 4's Controversial Hughie Storyline Explained By Creator Eric Kripke

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The following article contains major spoilers for "The Boys" season 4 and discusses abortion, suicide, and sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.

Look, no one watches the Prime Video satirical superhero series "The Boys" because they want to feel warm and fuzzy. The show, based on the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic of the same name, is a pitch-dark take on superhero franchises that skewers everyone and everything while putting its characters through absolute hell. Season 4 was more brutal than any of the previous seasons, however, forcing most of its characters to face their (significant) past trauma. For Hughie (Jack Quaid), season 4 was even more hellish than it was for anyone else, as he was put through traumatizing event after traumatizing event.

First, his personal life was invaded when his decision with girlfriend Annie (Erin Moriarty) for her to have an abortion was aired on Vought News, then he had to deal with the fact that his father Hugh Sr. (Simon Pegg) is in a coma, then his long-absent mother Daphne (Rosemary DeWitt) reappears to pull the plug. If that wasn't bad enough, his father ends up being "saved" by Compound V but it becomes deadly for others because his deteriorating brain causes him to lash out and Hughie has to euthanize him in the series' cruelest death ever. And that's not all! He was also sexually assaulted not just once, but repeatedly throughout the course of the season, both by Batman spoof Tek Knight (Derek Wilson) and a shapeshifting supe pretending to be Annie. Hughie is one of the few morally decent characters on the series, so what gives?

In an interview with Screen Rant at San Diego Comic Con, series showrunner Eric Kripke explained why Hughie had to go through the ringer in season 4, and he promised that there's some light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

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Kripke explained that he thought it was important for Hughie to go through a "real crucible" because the show is trying to tell a story about how "it's really hard to hold onto your humanity and your morals in the real world, and to be able to keep getting up every time you're knocked down." That's definitely a defining theme of "The Boys," as both supes and regular humans alike try to grapple with being a decent person in a very indecent world, but why did Hughie have to suffer so intensely? While Kripke recognized that "the fans had some very legitimate responses" regarding Hughie's suffering over the course of the season, he also felt that it was all necessary for Hughie to have a proper heroic rise in the fifth and final season. He elaborated:

"[...] that Hughie was able to get to the end of the season as a good person, to me is the most heroic story of the finale and the season. And like, there's another season to go. You have to, when you're like basically at the end of act two of your movie, it's your darkest point, and then there's a whole other season for him to rise to victory, which I could say that spoiler, that he's going to do."

It makes sense to take characters to their darkest points right before the big finale in an "Empire Strikes Back" kind of way, which feels like the downer ending of season 4 ... but honestly, Kripke's explanation just doesn't cut it. 

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Here's the thing: even if you can get past the emotional wringer of Hughie's dad's prolonged and tortuous demise, Hughie being sexually assaulted for laughs by Tek Knight and then being tricked into sex by the shapeshifter pretending to be Annie just takes Hughie's torture a step too far. By the season finale, it's clear that the show frames Hughie's assaults as traumatic but easy joke-fodder and it's time to remind folks once more that sexual assault is not funny. There's an unfortunate double-standard in our culture that when men are sexually assaulted it's somehow comical or less serious than when it happens to women, but that isn't the case and it's time for these jokes to stop. (I will admit the safe word joke was funny up until a point, but it went way, way too far.)

I'm all for the pitch-dark satire of "The Boys" and I don't mind a series that goes to some very bleak places, but sexual assault needs to stop being used as a plot device, especially when it's treated as a bit of a gag. Fans can look forward to Hughie finally getting his heroic rise, saving the day, and (hopefully) living happily ever after in season 5, but the lows of season 4 were an awful lot to go through for audiences and Hughie alike.

"The Boys" season 5 has yet to receive a premiere date.