Eric Kripke Says Donald Trump Post Clashed With ‘Homelander as God’ Storyline in ‘The Boys’

Eric Kripke, the creator of The Boys, says real life is starting to feel too close to his show again.

Speaking to Polygon, Kripke explained that some recent events outside the show ended up matching a major storyline in the new season. He said this has happened before, and it keeps making his work feel less like satire.

“I am really tired and weary of the world reflecting the show before we get a chance to do it,” he said. “I appreciate the marketing. I’m just like, can you just please give us a chance to put some absurd satire out there before you prove that it’s more realistic than we ever intended?”

In the latest season, the character Homelander, played by Antony Starr, starts to believe he is more than human. The story moves toward him seeing himself as a god and building power around that idea.

Kripke said they thought this idea was extreme when they wrote it. But just before the episode came out, Donald Trump shared an AI-made image showing himself in a god-like form online.

“This is the episode where Homelander decides he’s going to be God and 48 hours before it, Trump releases an image of himself as God,” Kripke said. “A month ago when we were talking about marketing, I was like, Homelander saying he’s God is so out there. We have to be careful about how we even introduce the idea to the public because they’ll say he’s gone too far and here we are. It’s just really hard to out-satire this world.”

The new season also looks at how power can mix with religion. In the show, Homelander starts building a following with help from a church figure played by Daveed Diggs.

Kripke said the show is not against religion. He made it clear that the focus is on how belief can be misused.

“I dig the Pope,” he said. “I think we take pains to make the point that religion, by and large, is a good thing. There are religious people on the show. It’s just when it’s weaponized, commodified, and used to tell politics of all things, it can be easily corrupted. I don’t know if people see this as well as I set it, but the show is pro-religion. It’s pro-belief. I just think the way that it’s used sometimes is just really shitty.”

This is not the first time the show has lined up with real events. A past season had a plot about an attack on a U.S. president, which came out close to a real incident involving Trump. Reports said there were talks about delaying that episode.

This shows how strange things have become when real life starts to look like fiction. It also makes satire harder to do because reality can be just as extreme. What do you think about this situation? Do you feel shows like this still work as satire today? Share your thoughts in the comments.