The Real Reason The Boys Season 2 Is Releasing Episodes Weekly
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The Boys are back... but if you want to binge 'em, you're going to have to wait.
The second season of Amazon's hilarious, ultra-violent superhero deconstruction is shaping up to be just as awesome as the first, but a strong contingent of viewers are seriously peeved that the new batch of episodes are dropping weekly. The first season of The Boys dropped in one binge-able chunk when it debuted in 2019, and a flock of viewers are expressing their outrage that the new season isn't following suit, by flooding it with negative reviews — even though creator Eric Kripke insists that the shift has long been part of the plan, and that producers did their level best to inform fans before the new season's debut.
One glance at the series' page on Amazon leaves no doubt that the outrage is real. "This whole release a couple episodes then make us wait sucks," read one typical, one-star review. "I like the show, but not going to watch it until the full season is out. Whoever decided this delivery method was a good idea should be fired. This is not how people want to watch content. Outdated!" While reviews focused on the content can indeed be found amidst the sea of gripes, they are in the — and some of those gripes are positively brutal. "Raise your hand if you subscribe to Prime Video because you can watch an entire season on your own schedule," read another. "I would be shocked if 95 out of 100 hands were not up. The fact that showrunners decided to drip-feed their content is stupid and only matched by Amazon's agreement to allow it."
That's pretty harsh, but that particular remark comes from a reviewer who has obviously been following Eric Kripke's remarks on the subject.
The Boys' showrunner says the switch to weekly release was a creative decision
Speaking with the Wrap about the blowup, Kripke acknowledged fans' disappointment, while alluding to the fact that the switch was broadcast loud and clear back when the The Boys' second season was announced back in June. "Frankly, looking back, we thought that we were communicating that we were weekly," Kripke said. "In hindsight, we had to do a lot more than we did to make sure that people weren't surprised and disappointed. I would have done that differently. I mean, again, we announced it. But we should have neon-signed it on everything, clearly."
Kripke went on to share the reason for the change, and as the commenter above alluded to, it wasn't a business decision, but a creative one. "I think one thing [fans] need to understand is, this is not like a corporate, Amazon money grab — this was from the producers. We wanted this," he explained. "It was a creative choice. So they may like it or not like it, but they have to at least respect that the people who are making the show wanted it to be released this way because we wanted to have time to sort of slow down a little bit and have conversations about everything."
Finally, the showrunner expressed just a few hurt feelings of his own over the brouhaha. "Like, why you would harm something you love because you're disappointed with how it's being released," Kripke wondered. "[It's] not awesome to me. We're fine, and it'll be fine, but it's not fun to see bad reviews on a thing people actually love. Like, that doesn't make the people who make the show feel good. I'll say that."
Eric Kripke hopes that the weekly release schedule will make The Boys' second season more fulfilling
Kripke addressed all this in a bit more detail in a conversation with Collider earlier this month, before the backlash to the weekly drop schedule began in earnest. During that chat, he shared his hopes that the switch would ultimately make for a more fulfilling viewing experience. "The [idea of a weekly] airing schedule came when we were already close to being done, we were probably three-fourths of the way through post-production," he said, explaining that Amazon's powers-that-be weren't initially psyched about the idea. "We're the ones who pitched [Amazon on the weekly release schedule], and a lot of [the streamer's brass] were actually reluctant, because... they don't do it that often."
Kripke went on to make a pretty darned good case for the weekly drop for The Boys in particular. "Our feeling was that... when it airs all eight [episodes] at once, it becomes such, like, a sugar rush of a binge," he said. "There's so many great moments in season 2, we want to give it time to marinate, so people can just, like, reflect on it, and talk about it before they move on to the next thing... And also, I think a little anticipation, for the fans, is healthy. It helps the experience."
Unfortunately, it seems that a healthy portion of those fans don't agree, and would rather just have the sugar rush, thank you very much. Ultimately, though, at the end of the day, if you absolutely must burn through all eight episodes of The Boys season 2 at once, you can always wait until they've all come out, and binge your heart out.
New episodes of The Boys drop every Friday on Amazon Prime.