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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
78
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The TelegraphJul 8, 2022
Season 3 Review:
It’s heady, heavy stuff. And yet The Boys never stops being fun. It’s Marvel with a script by Noam Chomsky. Batman v Superman where the real villain is unchecked capitalism. And – provided you can stomach the gore and the orgies – it’s the smartest, bravest show on television right now.
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ColliderJul 22, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The Boys operates on a few different levels, all of which the creative team nails on one level or another. ... But where the writing staff really excels is in the world-building. They’ve kept large chunks of the comic book story intact while also stripping away a bit of the X-Treme Edginess. ... And setting it firmly in a setting that’s both comic-book elevated and so perfectly 2019.
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ColliderApr 6, 2026
Season 5 Review:
If the last episode can maintain the quality of the previous seven, The Boys Season 5 may just be one of the show's best. It has all the gore, dark comedy, action, and vulgarity that you would expect, while also never veering too far out of control ahead of the final hour.
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Jun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
The Boys has been one of the best shows on television for years now, and continues to cement its place in the pantheon with its deft blend of drama, gore, political commentary, and surrealism. The series is a pressure cooker that only gets hotter and tighter as it goes on.
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Sep 8, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The Boys is just flip and nihilistic enough to capture the full range of the suck, from the parasocial relationships we use to replace human connections to the active shooter drills with which we traumatize our children. As a result, it’s the first thing I’ve watched since the pandemic began that provided any meaningful catharsis. The Boys strikes a tone that Chaplin missed but the Stooges understood: If you want to satirize a sick culture, speeches about the brotherhood of man won’t cut it. Sometimes you’ve gotta unleash the lions.
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Sep 3, 2020
Season 2 Review:
A sharp, entertaining, eviscerating satire of superhero franchises and the culture that aggrandizes them. ... If Season 1 was great, Season 2 is even better, thanks to the expansion of the main characters’ back stories — which in turn throws the good-versus-evil, perfect folks-versus-regular slobs plot into even sharper relief. New twists and members of the ensemble are added judiciously, which is probably a strange word for a show that’s so wonderfully reckless.
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Jun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
“The Boys” serves notice immediately that its third season will be as ferociously gory and savagely satirical as the preceding two, racing through story at something approaching super-speed. While obviously not intended for every taste, the Amazon series remains a scathing examination of the superhero genre and society at large, threaded with warnings about the corrupting influence of power.
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IndieWireJun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
It’s mostly impressive how deftly “The Boys'” dramatic side balances its many arcs, while the black comedy’s demented inventiveness helps distract from any lingering deficiencies. Rattling them off would spoil the weekly joy of discovering each bizarre development, but rest assured: My notes on Season 4 are littered with “oh god’s” and “hoo boy’s.”
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Jun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
The Boys feels very much of this specific era, and the nihilism it inspires — the way it captures how futile the struggle to do and be good can feel sometimes, when the systems in place seem like they can never be fixed for the better, give it a certain relevance to today that frankly it’d be nice to ignore.
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Jun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
It’s heavily populated, extremely well cast — whoever found the chiseled Antony Starr deserves either a raise or an Emmy — and never boring. The third season has a lot of moving parts but the show wisely keeps its focus on Homelander. There are a lot of jerks here, but it’s the jerk at the top, the jerk with the most apocalyptic power (like that jerk in Russia), who’s scariest.
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ColliderJun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
Of the plotlines this season, Kimiko and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) are the most compelling to watch. ... There is a lot to love about this season of The Boys, but there is also a lot left to be desired. Most of the characters have reached a point where they need new motivations and outside influence to propel them forward.
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IndieWireSep 4, 2020
Season 2 Review:
“The Boys” is still an imperfect beast, but it gets so many parts right — I haven’t even talked about the skilled stunt work or expertly staged action scenes — that you’re likely to get caught up in its gorging satire. Performances, moments, and specific lines will sneak up and level you. And most of the time, it’s when you’re in need of a good leveling.
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Sep 4, 2020Sep 2, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 shows a greater willingness to sit down with its characters, and its presumably bigger budget makes for more assured effects and a slightly wider scope than before. There’s plenty of fun to be had in the chunky crimson mess; that is, if you have the eight hours to spare to look for it.
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RogerEbert.comJun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Beyond the gross-out moments and fun fight scenes, it feels like the series is finally growing up, without losing its urgency or build-up to a phenomenal season finale. If anything, the languid pace aids in multiple points of no return, and it’s clear that once this season is over, the universe “The Boys” exists in will forever be changed.
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LooperJun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
"The Boys," quite simply, is back like it never left. The two-year wait was worth it, the cast is still giving it everything they've got, and this show refuses to let up even for a second. It's still one of TV's wildest rides, and its superpower seems to be never losing that gift.
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Radio TimesJun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
It may not be quite as exhilarating or propulsive as season 3, but that isn't exactly a damning statement – this is still a strong entry in the show's run to date, and will leave fans not only excited for more, but also reassured that there are no signs of The Boys losing flight anytime soon.
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The TelegraphSep 4, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The Boys isn’t nearly as subversive at it fancies itself. The idea that superheroes have a dark side has been part of the conversation about the medium for decades. Indeed it is the basis for many of Marvel and DC Comics’s most compelling storylines (Captain America: Civil War, for starters). But The Boys takes a cleaver to the cult of the caped crusader with genuine glee. If the gore feels non-stop – watch out for an exploding whale early on – so, too, does the show’s wicked sense of fun.
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Sep 2, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The second season is even more shockingly ruthless than the first, demonstrating just how puny the Boys are in comparison to the flying, ultra-strong superheroes they’re up against. It might be more bloody to compensate for a season that is a little less sharp than the first, though it continues to unravel the central themes that make the show so compelling.
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The TelegraphJan 3, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The gore factor is significantly reduced for the screen. Nonetheless it is still frequently over the top. Heads explode, eye-balls fry, a beloved sea-going mammal smashes through a windscreen. You may feel queasy at least once per episode. ... Beyond the yuck factor, The Boys offers an astute commentary on popular culture’s obsession with superheroes.
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Jul 26, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The best part of the series is not that we recognize Homelander as a twisted, perverted Captain America knockoff. The best part is that we also immediately recognize the real-world corollary for Madelyn Stillwell, with her corporate greed, her desperation to keep this organization within her control, and her laser focus on public image.
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Jul 24, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The premise of the Amazon black comedy is never not fun, and the more we learn about this bizarro world, as the supes go on the late-night talk shows and stage team-up photo ops on various crimes, the better. ... The cast is fine, particularly Shue, who is icily effective; Quaid, whose neurotic but brave fumblings are endearing; and Urban, who is Hughie’s gonzo guide. But the real star of “The Boys” is the situation itself.
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The PlaylistApr 6, 2026
Season 5 Review:
The United States’ breakneck slide into dimwitted authoritarian oblivion is a drag to live through. Maybe it’s crass to turn that kind of thing into entertainment. On the other hand, “The Boys” makes god complexes and garden variety fascism entertaining–a distinction with merit that, in the end, sufficiently earns its laurels.
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Jun 13, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Since its 2019 debut, the show has unabashedly poked fun at everything while still being gory and inventive. But as seen in “Department Of Dirty Tricks,” it’s inching dangerously close to reality in a way that threatens to dampen its unique, most welcome commentary.
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Jun 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
“The Boys” grapples with a certain pressure to fulfill those expectations for the faithful. In its totality, the eight-episode season largely manages to clear that bar (or should one prefer, limbo under it), including a few explosively funny (and not incidentally, grisly) visual gags.
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Jun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
The acting and characterization is top-notch, and the gory fight scenes remain thrilling. While the satire is a downgrade in sharpness from Season 2, the story remains worth watching. For all the attempts at topicality, this season’s most effective capturing of the zeitgeist is in the narrative’s celebration of standing by your friends when the world at large is unfathomably awful.
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IndieWireJun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
“The Boys” is a black comedy, an action extravaganza, and a vicious editorial all rolled under the same cape. Doing any one of these things half as well as what’s seen in Season 3 would be a challenge, and doing them all while maintaining its own distinct identity makes “The Boys” that much more impressive.
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The PlaylistOct 5, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Amazing that “The Boys” juggles each of its storylines without fumbling most of them. Conceptually, the season’s a jumble. Practically, it works remarkably well, juvenile in the way everything producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg touch should be but smart enough to know when not to be dumb as rocks (or, at least, to know when to take itself seriously and when to burst heads like grapes).
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IndieWireApr 30, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It is nagging to see a show so devoted to criticizing the delusional nature of superhero culture also ignore one of its more persistent sins: diminishing women to props (not to mention using rape as a motivating tool for someone else). ... Given the top-notch special effects and sharp writing at the core of “The Boys,” there are still loads of potential within this well-realized universe.
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Apr 6, 2026
Season 5 Review:
The plot is sluggish at best, with the early episodes restoring a more traditional status quo and later episodes taking their sweet time in building to a dramatic showdown. And along the way, not every character enjoys as much spotlight time as they deserve. Still, The Boys Season 5 is a lot of fun even when it proves less than laser-focused.
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LooperApr 6, 2026
Season 5 Review:
Even without the season finale (Season 5 hadn't been finished when screeners were sent to press), this final outing is a bold conclusion to a series which was beginning to grow stale. If only the core group of undercover heroes were as interesting as they are likable.
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Jun 3, 2022
Season 3 Review:
What gets lost, though, is the camaraderie of the dissidents. It’s still around, but so much time is spent showing Homelander railing at everyone, it doesn’t give them their due – at least not in the early episodes. ... But the beauty of “The Boys” is you just never know where it’s headed.
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Sep 2, 2020
Season 2 Review:
TV's oddball superhero team-up genre is one that often coheres better in second seasons. DC's Legends of Tomorrow made a huge qualitative leap. Netflix's Umbrella Academy remained frustratingly uneven, but still tightened up its storytelling. The Boys, definitely better than either of those shows in its first season, didn't make that leap for me. It's still fun, quick-witted and, to its detriment, glib. But it's explodier than ever and you can take that to the bank.
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Apr 30, 2019
Season 1 Review:
A flashy, smartly meta, often funny and very solidly cast, the pilot leaves a bit of a bad taste. Part of that is surely intentional and accurately reflects the tone of the source material. Whether that will continue and intensify after the initial hour, the only one available to review for the moment, remains to be seen.
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Jul 22, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The Boys’s skewering of superheroism is often clever, but as the series progresses, the more hands-off approach of Butcher’s crew can leave them with little to do, to the point where the messy, circular plotting of the finale all but leaves them sitting on their hands.
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Jun 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
We mostly watch The Boys for gnarly violence and otherwise graphic material. While the show still leans too hard on that aspect—there are so many floutings of taboo that it all begins to feel curiously banal—much of its excess is guiltily appreciated. One watches the series eagerly awaiting the next gruesome thing. Such anticipation goes a considerable distance in covering up season four’s erratic plotting. There are myriad story threads tangled together, longer arcs and shorter digressions that, in their abundance, try patience.
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Jun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Varied threads, which don’t even include various team members of the namesake crew struggling with guilt from their traumatic pasts, already make the season feel less focused than its immediate predecessor. .... Season 4 starts to show the strain of that effort, both on the viewer’s tolerance for despair and the series itself.
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RogerEbert.comJun 2, 2022
Season 3 Review:
“The Boys” has grown up a bit, but it’s also grown outward, to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to truly keep track of its expansive cast of characters and the myriad politicking they have to navigate. ... “The Boys” is A Lot to take in, and the surface-level cracks in the façade of its superhero and social critiques become ever more visible.
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Jun 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
It takes real skill to take what is essentially the same story and disguise it as a fresh idea. That gambit has served The Boys well before, but Season 4 may be the weakest so far. Jagged stakes have been softened from season after season of repetition; the series has now been completely overwhelmed by its nihilist themes.
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Apr 8, 2026
Season 5 Review:
The Boys, unfortunately, doesn’t have anything new to say. It’s trying too hard to speak to the times, but having a scene in which Homelander talks about making this a god-fearing, safer nation again, to be met with chants of “USA! USA!” has no depth. I hope a proper map has been drawn for the show’s conclusion, but the meandering twofer of a premiere ebbs and flows in quality.
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RogerEbert.comSep 4, 2020
Season 2 Review:
This is the season that helped me “get” the appeal of "The Boys," especially as it’s more fun to spend time with these characters well-past their try-hard introductions. ... But season two also proves that if the series is going to be so bloated and only sporadically punchy, it’s never going to be as powerful as it thinks it is.
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Jul 26, 2019
Season 1 Review:
There’s a lot happening around The Boys‘ core concept, from a human-supe romance and a plan to sell superheroes to the U.S. military via Trumpian fear-stoking. There’s some serious Freudian baggage around Homelander and his handler and a number of gleefully absurd side vignettes. But none of it adds up to much, and there’s a constant sense that the show is treading over too-familiar ground when it’s not simply treading water.
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RogerEbert.comJul 25, 2019
Season 1 Review:
“The Boys” has too little emotional momentum, and trouble with its construction throughout—it’s too obviously taped together by conversations where one person tells another of a past incident solely so that we can learn about it, a cheap way to push the plot forward and cover exposition.
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