The Boys has always drawn inspiration from a variety of other superhero franchises, although the show’s upcoming and final batch of episodes looks set to pay an especially strong homage to the X-Men saga. Although various elements of X-Men‘s worldbuilding have long served as a foundational part of the Prime Video series, The Boys Season 5 has brought the influence to the forefront in a way that’s now impossible to ignore.
After its 2019 premiere, The Boys rapidly gained a devoted following, with many finding the show’s shameless approach to blood, gore, and shameless political satire endlessly refreshing. In a time when superhero media fatigue is becoming a real problem, The Boys seems to be immune to the steep decline when it comes to interest in the genre. Furthermore, with the X-Men returning to the small and big screens in recent years, it’s even more surprising that The Boys is still doing a far superior job of bringing the Marvel property to life – albeit unofficially.
Why ‘The Boys’ Has Always Felt Like a Huge ‘X-Men’ Tribute
As already mentioned, I’m fully aware that The Boys parodies superheroes from various franchises, although it’s largely Marvel and DC. For many heroes and villains in those universes, there is a twisted counterpart in The Boys. However, the Prime Video show’s premise feels like it wouldn’t exist without X-Men in particular. It all comes down to how the Supes and the Mutants get their powers. In The Boys, Supes are just regular humans who were exposed to Compound-V. The powers that then manifest vary on a case-by-case basis. While one Supe might basically become Superman, the next person to take Compound-V might just grow a tail.
In other words, Compound-V is a cure-all for needing to agonize over writing a new origin story for each superpowered character. The writers can just decide on what powers they want a Supe to have, no matter how wild, and attribute those abilities to taking Compound-V. This is exactly the same framework that Marvel uses for the X-Men. The only real difference is that it’s the X-Gene that gives Mutants their powers instead of Compound-V. It’s also a naturally-occurring phenomenon in X-Men, whereas Supes are essentially the result of genetic experimentation. So, whether The Boys wants to functionally replicate a character from another franchise or introduce a completely new form of Supe, Compound-V makes that just not possible, but incredibly easy.
How ‘The Boys’ Season 5 Makes Its ‘X-Men’ Influence More Obvious Than Ever
The power of the Mutants in the X-Men franchise often has regular people fear and ostracize those with the X-Gene. Villains with the resources and desire to do so often try to devise ways to take the Mutants down, especially in the comics. While the movies had a storyline that revolved around a “cure” for Mutants that removed their powers, they avoided anything quite so dark as the mass murders that had occurred in the source material. The Boys‘ R-rated approach means it isn’t quite so squeamish in this respect.
In Season 5, the virus designed to weaken and kill Supes, which first appeared in spin-off Gen V, is finally being weaponized by Butcher (Karl Urban) in an attempt to kill Homelander (Anthony Starr). Not only that, but by the trailer’s own admission, Butcher apparently wants to kill “every f****ing Supe on the planet.“ So, the storyline that X-Men‘s various adaptations have so often danced around is properly making its way to the screen due to The Boys‘ carefree willingness to seize the plot with both hands.
