Get Ready for Everything from Ewww to Awww with The Boys: Diabolical – Releasing Today!

I reviewed the first episode of Diabolical earlier this week, with a teaser about what the new animated series is all about and how it kicks off. Today all eight episodes are available to watch on Prime Video, so here are some thoughts on the other seven episodes of this innovative show. They’re ‘fun sized’ episodes so you can watch as many as you’re up for – and it’s a welcome fix of The Boys universe for fans waiting impatiently for Season 3 to finally release in June.

Episode 2 Introduces Supes with some Weird Powers

Weird is actually an understatement. Again switching the perspective from “the boys” who are fighting against Vought to the supes themselves, this episode is all about some of the children whose parents sold their chance at a normal life for money in exchange for doping them with Compound V and making them into lab rats. When the parents find out that their kids didn’t get any of the really cool powers and won’t be joining The Seven any time soon, they returned them to Vought instead of dealing with the challenges. That in itself is incredibly disturbing – I can’t even deal with the thought of ‘returning’ a pet adopted from the SPCA let alone a child!

Vought houses the kids at an orphanage of sorts for kids with “shit powers.”

The emotional punch of this episode is in the sense of betrayal that the kids feel when they learn that their parents adopted them for a chance to get rich and then abandoned them, complaining that they wanted their lives back. The fun of the episode is that the writers got to go totally off the rails and create the most outrageous super powers they could think of. I can imagine them sitting in the writers’ room just giggling as they try to outdo each other.

Sometimes the humor makes me eyeroll even as I snicker. There’s Picante Balls, who can melt anything with his testicles and walks around with more bowlegs than Jensen Ackles.

Exhibit A.

Anyway…

There’s Boobie Face, with giant swinging boobs in place of eyes. Some of the failed supes are funny only until you think about it, like the supe that turns into various animals but his cognitive ability transforms too, or Ghost, who can’t touch anything or be touched by anything and stares forlornly at the food she can’t eat.

The abandoned supes, now adolescents mostly, decide to take revenge on their parents, all set to Hootie and the Blowfish’s ‘I Only Wanna Be With You’. Have to admit, I loved the poetic justice of some of the (bloody gory disgusting) ways the supe kids went after their parents.  (I mean, you can imagine what Picante Balls does, right?)

Favorite part of this episode? It’s a meta episode! Narrated by one of the failed supes, whose power is that he always tells people what’s going on.

Supe: That’s right, I’m the Narrator.

Title card 3 minutes in: Shrug, we can do whatever we want.

As a long time Supernatural fan, I love the little bits of fourth wall breaking that executive producer Eric Kripke made an integral part of that show too. That is literally a big part of the point of The Boys and Diabolical – doing whatever the hell they want!

Episode 3 ‘I’m Your Pusher’ – Written by Garth Ennis!

Episode 3 of opens with another bit of meta. A comic book is grabbed from the racks – ‘The Boys’ written by Garth Ennis! This episode is also written by Ennis, ripped from the pages of the original comic and featuring Billy Butcher and Hughie – voiced by Simon Pegg!  Simon was how the character of Hughie was originally conceived, but wasn’t right to play him in the live series by the time it aired – but he gets to here.  There’s also some original cover art by Darick Robertson. This episode is more directly tied to the canon of the original series, and also to the truly original comics.

Butcher confronts the pusher for information about a supe he supplies known as the Great Wide Wonder. Not only do we get to hear about his heroin enemas, we get to see some of that too. Yay? Butcher intimidates the pusher into adding a substance Frenchie has mixed up to the next treatment. He does, so when Homelander and Queen Maeve host a rally to recognize the Great Wide Wonder, he arrives looking totally tweaked out after his special treatment. His super power is that he flies fast, like around the world, but this time he goes so fast he starts running into buildings and destroying things on his way.

Homelander (who clearly doesn’t like him and with purposeful irony): How high he has flown…

Antony Starr voices Homelander here too and made me laugh out loud at that delivery.

Great Wide Wonder is supposed to fly through a flaming ring in the middle of the river in front of the gathered crowd, but instead he flies right into the hapless supe holding the ring, emerging with entrails around his neck as he lands in the water in a pool of blood.

Homelander: Oh Jesus Fucking Christ

Queen Maeve wearily spins the narrative, echoing what we’ve seen in the original series, and Homelander goes along, swearing to avenge the Great Wide Way. Butcher is triumphant, but Hughie looks around at the destruction and bystanders throwing up and isn’t so sure.

It’s an interesting addition to the canon of The Boys universe, with some nice treats for the comics fans too.

Episode 4 – Social Media On Steroids

Episode 4 is titled “Boyd in 3D” and it’s tragic – and one of my favorites. The original series has commented a great deal on the impact of social media on all of us and the way that we’re manipulated through it. While that focus has usually been on its use by an evil corporation like Vought, this episode is at its core more about its everyday impact on all of us.

Boyd, who lives in Apartment 3D (haha), is a relatable everyman, scrolling Instagram and walking dogs for a living, almost getting run over by a truck in the process. He’s got a crush on his attractive neighbor Cherry, who has an asshole boyfriend and an inferiority complex because she hates her freckles. (Every Jensen Ackles fan who’s now watching The Boys just scratched their head at that).

Exhibit B.

Anyway…

When Boyd gets a piece of her mail, he very much wants to give it to her, but is sure she won’t give him the time of day.

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‘The Boys Presents: Diabolical’ Premieres This Friday – And Is Even More Out There!

‘The Boys’ kicks off its newest incarnation on March 4 with “The Boys Presents: Diabolical,” an 8 episode animated anthology series that takes place within the same universe as the original series, which in turn was based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Plenty of other well-known names are also contributors, including Awkwafina, Garth Ennis, Eliot Glazer and Ilana Glazer, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, Simon Racioppa, Justin Roiland and Ben Bayouth, Andy Samberg, and Aisha Tyler.

While we all wait for Season 3 of ‘The Boys’ in June – and the introduction of Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy – the animated series fills in some blanks and provides some even more over the top entertainment. Diabolical was described as a series that “plunges elbow-deep into the unseen crevices of superhero violence audiences have devoured—and emerges with a fistful of insanity.”  That part turned out to be true, but surprisingly so did another teaser in the press release: “Diabolical has something for everyone—everyone who enjoys blood-drenched but also shockingly emotional television. It’s cartoons with the safeties off!”

Of course, that’s an advantage of animation versus live action – the show really can portray anything it can get away with. And it does. I’m not nearly as much of a fan of the blood-drenched aspect as many of The Boys fans, but I’ve been fascinated by the psychological and sociological messages of the original show. To my pleasant surprise, ‘Diabolical’ picks up those themes too (along with a lot of blood and guts). I’m a big fan of watching shows an episode at a time, maybe because I didn’t grow up binge watching, but Diabolical lends itself to that since each episode tackles a different theme and focuses on a different character, usually one we don’t yet know. So, as a means of whetting your appetite for all of Diabolical on Friday, here are some thoughts on Episode One, which pays homage to classic American cartoons.

The first episode is titled ‘Laser Baby’s Day Out,’ and introduces Simon, a Vought researcher assigned to one particular laser eyed baby. In keeping with what we know about how Vought treats its subjects, from Homelander’s tragic childhood to its lab full of often failed human experiments, the babies are there to make themselves useful by getting control of their lethal powers – or else. There’s an intimidating security guy there to see to it that Simon makes sure Laser Baby fulfills her supe potential.

Simon, on the other hand, is a very human everyman just doing his job, but as the time limit for Laser Baby to prove herself draws near, increasingly a father figure whose parental instincts are firing thanks to the baby’s growing attachment to him. From my perspective as a psychologist, that makes sense. We’re all wired to respond to certain ‘demand characteristics’ that infants possess – their oversized eyes and heads, the way they cling, the sound of their crying. Simon is not immune, as much as he tries to be (and neither are we, watching). He begins to fantasize about taking Laser Baby home and being a dad to her, never mind that she could slice him into ribbons with her eyes. In spite of how ridiculous that sounds, as a parent myself, it was impossible for me not to start rooting for Laser Baby and the bumbling but well-intentioned Simon.

One of the fascinating things about ‘The Boys’ in all its incarnations is how much it leads all its characters (and us as viewers too) down the slippery slope of where good intentions often lead. We clearly see evidence that the babies are dangerous from the start, but when Laser Baby can only laser accidentally when she sneezes and is put on the termination list, we’re somehow on her side anyway. Simon goes all out to save ‘his’ baby when she escapes, pursuing her in a hilarious chase across the city with first the intimidating guard and then the whole Vought security team after them.

In typical cartoon fashion, both the unlikely escapes and the graphic violence are over the top – there is SO much blood and gore that you can’t help but laugh as the baby cluelessly crawls through the resulting mess of blood and guts she’s created and gets away each time, leaving red knee and hand prints as she goes. The ridiculousness of the scene is part of both its humor and its chillingness because she looks like an adorable little crawling baby and there are giant men with huge guns confronting her.  The chase scene is sprinkled with pop culture references from The Boys universe and in general, from King Kong to a poster in the local zoo of The Deep proclaiming that “Piranhas Need Love Too”. You can imagine what happened at that point in the episode. No, of course I wouldn’t cheer if a Vought sharpshooter almost caught up to the baby and a piranha ate his face.

I won’t give away the ending, but Simon and the baby end up on top of a skyscraper as he wraps the baby up in his coat and she calls him ‘Dada’.  You need to watch the episode on Prime Video to find out whether they escape the Vought security team ready to swoop in.

I was hooked on Diabolical from this first episode. I love the way this universe is constantly pulling me in multiple directions, including directions that I absolutely know I should not be going in. I love the way it manipulates and stretches and questions a sense of right and wrong and that it’s dark as hell yet has moments of optimism and hope anyway in the resilience of its characters fighting against impossible odds.

This episode, like many in the original series, challenged my original perspective.  It’s easy to see the threat of a human with lethal super powers and assess that as a 100% bad thing when you’re watching an adult onscreen – it’s a lot harder to root against that same human when you’re watching an adorable baby. Like Simon, we all feel like we’re bumbling through life sometimes, almost missing the elevator and then getting your coat caught when the doors close, being intimidated by the office bully, and just trying to do our jobs. We all want to make a difference somehow and most of us care – about someone. When that someone is threatened, how far would we go to save them? As a long time fan of executive producer Eric Kripke’s series ‘Supernatural’, that’s a familiar question – and I love that he’s still asking it.

You can watch ‘Diabolical’ starting March 4 on Prime Video. ‘The Boys Presents: Diabolical’ is executive produced by Simon Racioppa, Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Ori Marmur, Ken F. Levin, Jason Netter, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, Michaela Starr, Loreli Alanís, Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, and Ben Kalina. The Boys Presents: Diabolical is produced by Amazon Studios and Sony Pictures Television Studios, with Titmouse, Kripke Enterprises, Original Film, and Point Grey Pictures.

Stay tuned for more Diabolical – there are seven more totally out there episodes in Season 1! And don’t forget, Season 3 of ‘The Boys’ with the amazing returning cast and Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy joining in the fun premieres on June 3!

– Lynn

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‘The Boys’ Universe Expands with ‘The Boys Presents: Diabolical’

As we all wait with great anticipation for Season 3 of The Boys (and for Supernatural fans especially, Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy) the universe of the series  expands even more in March with an 8 episode animated anthology series The Boys Presents: Diabolical. The episodes, which are animated shorts of 12 to 14 minutes, will all premiere on March 4 on Prime Video for easy bingeing.

Diabolical episodes will each have their own animation style, and are all set in the same universe as the original series, though showrunner Eric Kripke tweeted that “a couple are canon, the rest are just insane.”  It’s hard to fathom that they are MORE insane than the original, which has set the bar pretty high, but if anyone should know, it’s Mr. Kripke!

He added, “And you guys, trust me, they turned out so so good.”

I do trust him, which has led me down the road to ‘ruin’ for over fifteen years, that’s the problem! Which means, of course, I’m looking forward to these mini episodes of bonus material for the series. If we thought The Boys pushed the envelope with its live action, imagine what it can do with the limitless opportunity offered by animation! The teaser lives up to its name, starting out looking and sounding like a harmless Animaniacs episode and abruptly devolving into… well, I’ll let you watch it yourselves! (link at the end of the article).

The Boys universe will expand even more next year with Varsity, a new show that is set at a college for young adult superheroes that’s run by (who else?) Vought International. The show is described as R rated (which should surprise no one) and irreverent (again, no surprise) – it should be interesting to see who’s successful in moving up in the ranks toward being part of The Seven.

As for Diabolical, in addition to Kripke, Awkwafina, Garth Ennis, Eliot Glazer and Ilana Glazer, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, Simon Racioppa, Justin Roiland and Ben Bayouth, Andy Samberg, and Aisha Tyler are all involved with Diabolical. The Boys is based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson and was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke.

The original series returns in June with a focus on original supe troop Payback, featuring the discovery of Soldier Boy.

Jensen Ackles recently described him as an old man with all those sensibilities and definitely not a good guy – but obviously the old man  looks like Jensen Ackles, so how confusing is that gonna be? I can’t wait!

Check out Diabolical now –

The Boys: Diabolical Teaser

— Lynn

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