20 Shows & Movies Like The Boys You Need to Watch
The Boys is an American superhero television series based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The series was developed by Eric Kripke. It has been streaming worldwide since July 26, 2019 on Prime Video. Two seasons have aired and a third is scheduled to air soon. The Boys takes place in an alternate universe where overpowered characters are recognized as superheroes by the general public and work for the powerful company Vought International, which takes care of their promotion and marketing. Far from their heroic appearance, most of them are corrupt and arrogant, even dangerous psychopaths. This superhero twist attracted a lot fans and while you’re waiting for the upcoming third season, we are going to give you a list of 10 series and 10 movies, separated into two individual categories, you need to watch if you liked The Boys.
Best shows like The Boys
1. Watchmen
Original Run: October 20 – December 15, 2019
Episodes: 9
The series begins with a reminder of the Tulsa Massacre, when between May 31 and June 1, 1921, white rioters violently attacked the city’s black population. A child manages to escape in the middle of these riots. We find Tulsa, nowadays, in the uchronic world of Watchmen. Three years earlier, a group of white supremacists called “the 7th Cavalry”, claiming to be Rorschach’s successor, attacked all the city’s police officers and their families.
In order to protect their identity since this attack, poetically nicknamed “the White Night”, the state police officers are now authorized to mask themselves with a yellow bandana in order to maintain their anonymity. Deeply marked by this tragic night, Angela Abar, “Sister Night”, and the Tulsa police chief, Judd Crawford, decide to jointly investigate this small group and its followers.
It appears that Angela Abar is the granddaughter of Will Reeves, the child who had managed to escape during the Tulsa massacre, and who, an old man, is one of the central characters of the series.
2. Invincible
Original Run: March 25, 2021 – present
Episodes: 8
Mark Grayson is the son of the most powerful of all superheroes: Omni-Man. Moreover, he seems to have inherited his powers, which is not to displease him, because he had been waiting for this since his father had revealed his true identity and his true origins to him. But, with Mark barely mastering his powers, the world’s greatest superhero team, the Guardians of the Globe, is murdered. This is the beginning of fights, betrayals, and reversals of situations as the protagonists mature and question themselves over the years.
3. Gotham
Original Run: September 22, 2014 – April 25, 2019
Episodes: 100
The series is a crime drama that examines the origin stories of future Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) commissioner James Gordon and the gallery of villains who will run amock in Gotham City. In the first season, Gordon and his partner Harvey Bullock have the task of solving the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, witnessed, among others, by the child-thief Selina “Cat” Kyle.
At the GCPD, Gordon is assisted by forensic scientist Edward Nygma, detectives Renee Montoya, Crispus Allen, and District Attorney Harvey Dent. Meanwhile, an underground war takes place between two crime families led by crime bosses Carmine Falcone and Fish Mooney. The gangster Oswald Cobblepot is forced into the middle. At the end of the season, Cobblepot kills Mooney and claims himself the “King of Gotham”.
In the second season, Theo Galavan comes to Gotham with his sister Tabitha, with the order by the Order of St. Dumas to kill Bruce. Gordon, Cobblepot, Selina, and the GCPD managed to save Bruce, however. Elsewhere in Arkham, experiments are being conducted at a facility called Indian Hill, run by Professor Hugo Strange, which turns inmates into monsters.
4. One-Punch Man
Original Run: October 5, 2015 – July 2, 2019
Episodes: 24 (+12 OVA episodes)
On an unnamed, Earth-like planet, powerful monsters and villains mysteriously appear and cause disasters. To fight them, patrons of the arts created the Heroes’ Association three years prior to the setting of the anime. Each of the members of the Hero Association is ranked from class C to class S, depending on their reputation and abilities. The main character of the show is a former clerk named Saitama, who commits heroic deeds for his own entertainment.
Since childhood, he dreamed of becoming a superhero, and three years prior, he began his training, which brought him to the point that now he can defeat any opponent with just one punch. Despite his exploits, Saitama did not advertise them and remained unknown to society for a long time. Having found the young cyborg Genos as a student, Saitama decides to join the Hero Association, where, having passed all the tests with records, but failing the written part, he falls into the C-class of the heroes roster.
It so happens that most of the heroes who meet Saitama look down at him, not believing that he is actually stronger than any hero of the Association, but those who get to know him better begin to respect his incredible strength and modesty. Gradually, Saitama gains some fame, but society still refuses to recognize his merits and even criticizes the hero for the city buildings destroyed during the battles. Despite this, Saitama continued his membership in the Hero Association and was enrolled in the B-class.
After the alien attack, whose ship was destroyed by Saitama, the Hero Association received additional funding and expanded its own influence. The monsters, dissatisfied with the strengthening of the Association, created their own Association of Monsters, which began an organized fight against superheroes.
5. Preacher
Original Run: May 22, 2016 – September 29, 2019
Episodes: 43
In Annville, Texas, local preacher Jesse Custer preaches an uninspired sermon to a bored church. A young boy asks Jesse to harm his father Donnie for abusing his mother. Jesse refuses, but checks in with Donnie’s wife, Betsy. On a business plane, an Irish vampire named Cassidy drinks and snorts cocaine with a group of hedge financiers, but kills them after learning that they are assassins in an attempt to take him out.
He jumps off the plane and lands near Annville. Jesse’s assistant, Emily Woodrow, warns Jesse about the precarious finances of the Church. Tulip O’Hare kills a gangster and grabs a card from his jacket. She tracks down Jesse in Annville and invites him to help with a job, but Jesse refuses.
In a flashback, a young Jesse sees men shoot his father John Custer in the head. Before his father dies, Jesse promises to be one of the good guys. Jesse visits Eugene Root, a severely disfigured teenager, to reassure him that God still loves him, despite everything he’s done wrong. Cassidy meets Jesse at a local bar. Jesse beats up Donnie after Donnie confronts him for talking to Betsy.
6. Doom Patrol
Original Run: February 15, 2019 – present
Episodes: 34
The Doom Patrol follows the unlikely heroes of the eponymous team, all of which have received their powers through tragic circumstances and are generally rejected by society. Most of the team members were treated by the Chief, a medic who gave them residence in his mansion to help protect them from the outside world.
Its name derives from a previous Doom Patrol team that was formed by the Chief. The first Doom Patrol members to be introduced to the series are Jane, the dominant personality of a traumatized woman with dissociative identity disorder; Rita Farr, who struggles to keep her body from turning into a jelly-like state; Larry Trainor, who has a negative energy entity living within him; and Cliff Steele, whose brain was placed in a robot body after a car accident.
Later, Victor Stone also joins the team, and he is a cybernetically enhanced superhero. In the first season, the Chief is captured by the malevolent Mr. Nobody, causing the Doom Patrol to go on a journey to rescue him. Along the way, they discover secrets about themselves and the Chief, from whom they eventually learn that he is responsible for the tragic events that gave them his powers.
In the second season, Dorothy Spinner, Chief’s daughter who possesses the ability to give life to her imaginary friends, joins the Doom Patrol. As members of the Patrol face their own personal dilemmas and wrestle with the truth about Chief, Dorothy inadvertently endangers the world when her powers threaten to unleash an ancient entity known as the Candlemaker.
7. Peacemaker
Original Run: January 13, 2022 – present
Episodes: 8
Five months after the battle between the Suicide Squad and the parasite Starro the Conqueror on the island of Corto Maltese, Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, is finally discharged from the hospital where he had been hospitalized. However, the vigilante is intercepted by Clemson Murn, Emilia Harcourt, John Economos, and Leota Adebayo, four A.R.G.U.S. in the pay of Amanda Waller, who induced him to join the Butterfly Project, without however explaining to him either the purpose or the details of the mission itself.
Later, Smith is attacked by a woman of superhuman strength, and their confrontation arouses the attention of the police: in charge of solving the hitch, Economos frames Smith’s father as responsible for the riots, causing him to be incarcerated. The team is also joined by Adrian Chase / Vigilante, and gradually Smith discovers that the mission’s purpose is to exterminate a parasitic alien species that threatens to take control of the human population.
Murn then turns out to be in turn under the control of a parasite, who however declares himself rebellious to his leader (of whom Peacemaker is secretly taking care) and willing to act against the alien threat; meanwhile, the cops Song and Fitzgibbon manage to indict Smith for the facts that led to the imprisonment of the White Dragon, who, once released, swears revenge on his son.
The leader of the parasites, Eak Stack Ik Ik, then takes control of Song, thus leading an invasion of aliens on the local police force: at the Peacemaker home, a fake personal diary is then found, created ad hoc by Waller and placed at the said domicile by his daughter Adebayo to frame the Peacemaker alone in the event of an unfortunate end to the mission.
The unity of the group falls apart: Peacemaker, the Vigilante, and Economos, hunted by the White Dragon, finally manage to kill him along with his minions, while Harcourt and Adebayo reorganize following the killing of Murn by Song. The team finally manages to reunite, storming the parasite base, in whose depths the mammoth being from which they draw nourishment is hidden.
The five then manage to exterminate the parasites (except the leader, who is spared by Peacemaker) and their source of nourishment, surviving despite serious injuries and the belated intervention of the Justice League. Sometime later, Adebayo decides to publicly denounce her mother Amanda Waller as responsible for the events.
8. Misfits
Original Run: November 12, 2009 – December 11, 2013
Episodes: 37
Nathan Young, Simon Bellamy, Kelly Bailey, Curtis Donovan and Alisha Daniels are five young adults who have been sentenced, for various reasons, to community service (TIG). As they perform their first day, not without provoking Tony Morecombe, their supervisor, a violent storm breaks out. They are then struck by lightning.
Very quickly, they will realize that they now have superpowers. But, they will also realize that they are not the only ones who have changed. Tony, gone completely mad, will try to assassinate them. In mortal danger, they will have no choice but to strike him first and kill him. Following this murder, which they refuse to reveal, a long series of misadventures ensues.
The five young people will have to try to hide their crime, moving the body according to the police searches, using the missing person’s credit card to deceive his relatives and make believe that he simply left. But also, they will have to learn to trust each other.
9. Titans
Original Run: October 12, 2018 – present
Episodes: 37
Dick Grayson, Batman’s protege, has become an adult and has definitively emancipated himself from his mentor. He left Gotham City to work for the Detroit police. He then meets the young Rachel Roth, an empath, with powers that she can’t really master, who interests a strange sect. Helped by Starfire and Beast Boy, he will then form a group of superheroes to protect the young girl.
10. The Defenders
Original Run: August 18, 2017
Episodes: 8
Set a few months after the second season of Daredevil, and a month after the first season of Iron Fist, vigilantes Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist band together to form a team to defend New York City and the entire neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, and fight against a common enemy: The Hand.
Best movies like The Boys
1. Watchmen
Original Release: February 23, 2009
Running Time: 163 minutes
The Minutemen are a group of costumed crime-fighting men and women, a group formed in 1938 in response to a rise in costumed gangs and criminals, with the Watchmen similarly forming decades later. His existence in the US has dramatically affected world events: Dr. Manhattan’s superpowers help the US win the Vietnam War, resulting in President Richard Nixon being repeatedly reelected in the 1980s.
Dr. Manhattan’s existence gives the West a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which in that decade threatened to escalate the Cold War into nuclear war. During that time, rising anti-vigilante sentiment in the country drives masked crime fighters out of the law. Although many of the heroes are retired, Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian operate as government-sanctioned agents, and Rorschach continues to operate outside the law.
Investigating the murder of government agent Edward Blake, Rorschach discovers that Blake was the Comedian, and theorizes that someone might be trying to take out the vigilantes. Thus, he tries to convince his fellow retirees: his former partner Daniel Dreiberg / Night Owl II, Dr. Manhattan, and the latter’s latest lover, Laurie Jupiter / Silk Specter II. Dreiberg is skeptical but still comments on his hypothesis to Watcher-turned-billionaire Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias.
2. V for Vendetta
Original Release: December 11, 2005
Running Time: 132 minutes
In a totalitarian Britain under the autocratic Grand Chancellor Adam Sutler, leader of the fascist North Fire party, repression of dissidents and total control of the media prevail. This form of government prevailed because it promised safety to frightened citizens at a time when the United States was in a civil war and a virus was killing nearly 100,000 citizens.
Sutler promised orderly conditions in Britain, was elected, and was able to establish a dictatorship as a result. An unknown, masked man named V defies leadership by killing senior members of the regime. As it turns out in the course of the film, he is the only survivor of an earlier forced experiment on “deviant” parts of the population to research a virus culture.
This was ultimately used against the population for the leadership to take power. Among the victims of Vs, who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and uses the powder conspiracy as a motif in his language to underline his revenge on the leadership, are mainly the heads of the prison where the experiments were carried out, all of which are now high hold posts or are part of the leadership.
3. The Warriors
Original Release: February 9, 1979
Running Time: 92 minutes
New York, 1970s. Gangs share the city’s slums. Cyrus, the undisputed leader of the all-powerful Gramercy Riffs, decides to organize a meeting in order to unify the gangs and raise a real army against the forces of order and the mafia. Very quickly, the meeting gets out of hand and Cyrus is murdered in public. The culprit, Luther, blames the Warriors gang, thus triggering a run to which all the other gangs are invited. It’s a fight for survival that begins then because the Warriors have a long journey to cover from the Bronx to Coney Island, their hometown.
4. Dredd
Original Release: July 11, 2012
Running Time: 95 minutes
In a post-apocalyptic future in which America is reduced to a devastated radioactive wasteland, Mega-City One is an urban agglomeration inhabited by 800 million people, made up of mega-buildings of hundreds of floors and tens of thousands of residents that stretches from Boston to Washington.
The only force attempting to enforce the law and maintain a semblance of order in a place dominated by chaos is the “Judges”, individuals who prosecute criminals, pass judgment, and execute it on the spot. Experienced Judge Joseph Dredd is entrusted with recruit Cassandra Anderson for a field evaluation. Although the girl proved to be below the required standards of the Academy, the Council of Judges decided to give her a chance, as she is endowed with extraordinary telepathic powers due to radiation.
5. 300
Original Release: December 9, 2006
Running Time: 116 minutes
Leonidas became king of Sparta following the Spartan ritual trials which he triumphed over. He learns from a Persian messenger that King Xerxes plans to invade Greece and subjugate his city but refuses to negotiate any arrangement. Against the advice of the ephors corrupted by Persian gold, he goes to meet the enemy with the 300 best soldiers of his city and is joined on the road by Daxos and his Arcadians.
Leonidas chooses to fight the Persian army in the narrow, rocky pass of Thermopylae, called the Hot Gates in the film. He refuses to enlist Ephialtes, an exiled Spartan, because this one, hunchbacked, cannot properly raise his shield because of his handicap in the back and the neck.
6. Logan
Original Release:
Running Time: minutes
In 2029, with mutants on the verge of extinction, Logan lives quietly as a limousine driver. However, he watches over his old friend Professor Charles Xavier, very weakened, living in a hidden lair near the US-Mexico border, with the help of Caliban, one of the last mutants still alive. But Logan will soon have to come out of retirement to help Laura, a little girl hunted down by dangerous individuals, who has powers similar to those of Wolverine.
7. Brightburn
Original Release: May 24, 2019
Running Time: 90 minutes
It is the year 2006; Tori and Kyle Breyer are a young couple who live on a farm in Brightburn, a small town in Kansas. The two are trying to have a child, but are unable to conceive due to fertility problems. One night, a spacecraft carrying a newborn baby falls from the sky and crashes near their farm. After finding him, the couple decide to adopt him by calling him Brandon.
Twelve years later, Brandon discovers he has superhuman strength after hearing strange voices in his head telling him to prove his power by putting his hand into a lawnmower cutting blade. That same night, Brandon dozes off to the barn, trying to open a hatch where the spaceship that brought him to Earth is hidden. Tori intervenes and wakes him up, and the boy starts to go wild.
Following this episode, Brandon becomes increasingly disobedient and disrespectful towards his parents.
8. Kick-Ass
Original Release: March 12, 2010
Running Time: 117 minutes
Dave Lizewski is a high school student that no one ever notices. He decides to become a superhero despite not having any particular physical aptitude. Sent to the hospital during his first outing, he does not give up and then saves the life of a man, which earned him to become a media celebrity when the video of his exploit is broadcast on YouTube. Things change when he meets a duo of vigilantes much more professional than him, and the mafia begins to take him seriously.
9. Joker
Original Release: August 31, 2019
Running Time: 122 minutes
In 1981, Arthur Fleck works in a clown agency in Gotham City. Scorned and misunderstood by those who face him, he leads a dull life on the margins of society and lives in a shabby building with his mother Penny. One evening, he is assaulted on the subway by three drunken Wayne Enterprise traders who brutalize him, causing him to kill them in return.
His gesture inspires part of the population with the idea of also attacking the powerful. In this decadent society, Arthur gradually descends into madness and ends up becoming the Joker, a dangerous psychopathic killer victim of hallucinations and the biggest criminal of Gotham City.
10. The Punisher
Original Release: April 16, 2004
Running Time: 123 minutes
Former member of the Delta Force, then special agent of the FBI, Frank Castle is preparing to retire to live a peaceful life alongside his wife and son. His last operation cost the life of one of the two sons of Howard Saint, the godfather of the mafia, and this one wants revenge. His second son and his men kill Frank Castle’s wife and son and his entire family and leave him for dead. But Frank survives and decides to take revenge in his turn on Saint, under the costume of the vigilante The Punisher.
