Amazon Prime's superhero show, The Boys, has pushed the envelope several times during its three-season run, but according to showrunner Eric Kripke, only one scene so far has led to Amazon requesting an advisory warning.
"I have not reached any pushback from Sony and Amazon on anything we wanted to do. I'd say the most extreme we've gotten is this season, and they said, 'Hey, can we put some kind of viewer advisory about the Deep's [sexual relationship with an octopus?]' And literally, that was it. That's the most I've ever had in three years," Kripke told Rolling Stone.
Kripke explained that despite the lack of concern from Sony and Amazon, going too far is something that the writers are always conscious of. "Internally, the writers are really wringing their hands over all of it," he explained. "As crazy and as insane as the show is, we sincerely worry a lot about being exploitative and gratuitous, and making sure that it feels like a heightened show and not like soft-core porn on late-night cable, you know? So we worry about it a lot."
The scene in question occurred in Season 3, Episode 3. After The Deep was reinstated into The Seven by Homelander, he celebrated his return by having sex with his wife, Cass. However, an aquarium tank was at the head of the bed, and The Deep locked minds with a watching octopus. As the scene progressed, The Deep's dirty talk became less about his wife and more about the octopus and its multiple tentacles.
Before the episode aired, Kripke hinted at what was to come by revealing the influence of the documentary My Octopus Teacher on Season 3. The relationship between the filmmaker and the octopus star of the documentary stuck in the mind of both Kripke and the show's writers. "In the writer's room, we just kept laughing about that documentary," Kripke explained. When Kripke asked The Deep's actor, Chase Crawford, if he had seen the documentary, Crawford immediately understood what might be ahead for his character. "I was like, I know where this is going," Crawford said.
Although Sony and Amazon have been tolerant of The Boys, it appears that Twitter might not be the same. The Boys' official Twitter account revealed that the social media site rejected their suggestion of a caped eggplant emoji for the upcoming "Herogasm" story.
New episodes of The Boys premiere each Friday on Amazon Prime.
Source: Rolling Stone
