Hughie Campbell Becomes Spider-Man in ‘The Boys’ Episode 6… in a Way, Kripke Confirms Nod
The Boys is one of the most popular superhero series in the world, and since June 13, 2024, its fourth season has been airing. The season is filled with controversial moments and has been Certified Fresh so far, going strong, despite review-bombing by frustrated fans who don’t like the political context of the new season.
The series’ most recent episode was filled with numerous controversial moments and one of the more talked-about scenes involved Tek Knight’s sexual abuse of the superhero Laddio. We have already reported on this, but there is a wider context to this scene, as it also showed Hughie’s transformation into the superhero Webweaver.
Webweaver, as confirmed by Eric Kripke, is the series’ not do Marvel’s Spider-Man and the series does much to properly explain this connection, as Kripke himself confirmed. In a recent interview with Variety, Kripke discussed some of the most notable scenes from Episode 6 of the fourth season and revealed some background information about this particular one.
Kripke sat down for a talk with Variety, and he answered several questions related to the show and some of the most recent moments from Episode 6, including – as we’ve said – the evolution of Hughie’s character in this episode, as well as how Webweaver is actually connected to Spider-Man in the series. Here is what he confirmed:
Was the safe word always going to be “Zendaya” — with the hint that Tek Knight says it’s what Webweaver “loves the most” — as a nod to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man? Or did you work through any other potential safe word ideas?
No, it was Anslem Richardson, who is the brilliant writer of the episode — he just put that in the first draft. I don’t think we ever discussed it, and he just threw in that his safe word was “Zendaya,” and I just laughed my ass off about that.
It’s the thing Spider-Man loves most!
Yeah! It’s the thing Spider-Man loves most.
After going through all that, Hughie finally breaks down into tears with Annie at the end of the episode once they’re back at headquarters. Will we see more fallout from that in the final episodes? Because he’s been through a lot already with his dad’s death, and then that sex-dungeon trauma happened.
His story in this particular episode is the kind of denial and compartmentalization a lot of us have when we’re dealing with the death of a loved one. And if you look throughout the episode, he’s always just saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m totally fine. I’m fine.” Which is what a lot of people do before you finally can sort of open the door to the pain you’re feeling.
And I think that’s part of healing. So I think he’s going to go on and really try to absorb and learn what his dad and his mother taught him about forgiveness, and really try to take that into the season. Because he really does have the most mature and human arc out of all the characters this season.
Source: Variety
As you can see, this scene had several important aspects to it. One was related to the Spider-Man nod, which also played a bit on the real-life relationship between Tom Holland, the MCU’s Spider-Man, and Zendaya, which Kripke confirmed in the interview.
On the other hand, it also was an important moment in Hughie’s development as a character, as it helped him evolve and cope with some of the tragedies that happened to him over the course of the series, including the most recent one, which we are not going to spoil for you here.
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