Facing the Fascism: How This Season’s Emmy Contenders Pepper Storytelling With Real-World Perils

Awards Circuit Column: It continues to be difficult to satirize power and corruption when real life transcends Hollywood's most over-the-top ideas.

By Michael Schneider

Michael Schneider

Variety Editor at Large

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On this final season of Prime Video’s “The Boys,” Homelander — played by Antony Starr and described by showrunner Eric Kripke as “our sociopathic Superman” — decides he’s going to be the new God, and he’s going to make the world believe he’s the new God.

“We had endless conversations about, like, is that too far?” Kripke told me recently on an Emmy FYC panel at Sony. “Are people going to say that’s just stupid? Are we jumping the shark? I was having long conversations with marketing, like, ‘We have to be careful about how we introduce the idea. We have to build up to it. It’s too much.’ “And then, 48 hours before we air, Trump releases that image of himself as Jesus. Can you please give us an opportunity to do satire?! Can you not make the world crazier than our fucking superhero show?! So yeah. I’m tired.”

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