A TV-MA superhero satire with graphic violence including sexual violence, explicit sex and nudity, constant profanity, recurring same-sex relationships, and a final season in which Homelander proclaims himself the next Jesus Christ. Its satire of false messiahs is real, but the content cost is too high to recommend.
The Boys is a TV-MA superhero satire made for Amazon Prime Video by showrunner Eric Kripke, adapted from the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It imagines superheroes as celebrities managed by a corporation, Vought International, and follows a team of ordinary people led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and joined by Hughie (Jack Quaid) who try to expose them. The cast includes Antony Starr as the Superman-like villain Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Starlight, Chace Crawford, Karen Fukuhara, Tomer Capone, and Jessie T. Usher. The series premiered in 2019 and its fifth and final season aired in spring 2026, so the whole story is now available. Prime Video lists the show as TV-MA, and its content advisory for the final season names sexual violence, nudity, portrayals of suicide, violence, substance use, self-harm, and sexual content. Common Sense Media rates it for ages 17 and up.
Sexual content is pervasive and explicit. Common Sense Media reports that characters have sex, oral sex, and group sex and masturbate, with partial female nudity and full-frontal male nudity, and Plugged In describes sex, nudity, same-sex pairings, and even bestiality across the screen. A parents guide from The Parent Watch recalls an orgy episode involving a superhero whose anatomy becomes a weapon. Sexual assault and abuse are depicted as crimes committed by the supposed heroes, and Plugged In notes that most of the show's crimes, from sexual assault to murder, appear onscreen.
Violence is graphic and constant. The Parent Watch guide points to the first episode, in which a speedster runs through a bystander, as the standard for what follows, and Common Sense Media adds suicide, references to rape and child abuse, and hard drug use. Language is heavy as well: Plugged In counted 80 f-words in a single hour-long premiere, and the Parent Watch guide says the c-word is used constantly.
LGBT content is recurring but not the center of the story. Common Sense Media identifies Frenchie and Queen Maeve as bisexual characters who have various relationships, and Plugged In records same-sex pairings in the show's sexual content.
This is where the series says the most, and where it deserves a precise description. In season one, episode five, Starlight is pushed by her mother into giving a speech at a Vought memorial event, and she angrily criticizes her handlers' approach to Christianity and voices her disillusionment with Vought, according to the Wikipedia summary of that episode. The final season puts religion at the center. Homelander, now in control of the country, hallucinates an angelic vision of his former handler Madelyn Stillwell urging him to ascend and asking why Jesus should have more love than he does, and then he announces himself as the next Jesus Christ. His company builds the Democratic Church of America around him with a megapreacher named Oh Father, played by Daveed Diggs. TheWrap reports that the arc takes Homelander's god complex from a small g to a capital G and quotes Kripke saying Homelander is "truly disgusted by his own biological humanity."
Critics read this as satire of Christian nationalism and televangelism. Religion Dispatches calls the church a barely concealed reference to the God of Christian nationalism and describes a commercial in which Homelander takes the crown of thorns from Jesus, and Slate notes the church's plan to reframe Christianity as an America-first religion. That reading is fair, and the show frames Homelander as a deluded villain and not a savior. The cost is still real. The series uses the imagery of Christ, the second coming, and the crown of thorns as satirical props, which is irreverent toward what Scripture treats as holy, and the reporting we read describes no Christian character who stands as a sincere counterweight to the parody.
Scripture warned about the kind of figure Homelander plays. Jesus said false christs and false prophets would arise (Matthew 24:24) and that false prophets are known by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-16), and Paul describes a man who takes his seat in God's temple and proclaims himself to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). A story that exposes a self-proclaimed god as a monster agrees with that warning, and it is the strongest thing to be said for the show. But Paul also says there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality among believers (Ephesians 5:3-4), and the psalmist vows to look with approval on nothing vile (Psalm 101:3). The Boys asks its audience to sit through graphic sex and violence in order to receive its critique, and a critique of false messiahs is available in many forms that cost far less.
The Boys scores 1/100, Avoid, the lowest score GodlyScore gives. The score follows from what we verified: graphic violence including sexual violence, explicit sex and nudity, constant profanity, recurring same-sex relationships, and irreverent use of Christ imagery, with no clear Christian counterweight in the sources we reviewed. The satire of Christian nationalism is real, and some Christians will see it as a useful warning, but the price of admission is one we cannot recommend any Christian viewer pay. Under our scoring rules, high sexual content alone caps a title at 22 and graphic violence caps it at 38, so no reading of the show's strengths changes the outcome.
Before deciding anything for a teenager, read Plugged In's review and Common Sense Media's parents guide for scene-level detail. For another satire aimed at televangelism, see our guide to The Righteous Gemstones, and for related adult television and superhero material see Christian perspective on Marvel, Shrinking, and American Horror Story. Our Christian discernment guide explains how we weigh a tradeoff like this one, and the Christian TV show reviews hub lists every show we have scored.