The Boys Dunks On Donald Trump With New Homelander Sneaker
"The Boys" has turned its ruthless parody machine on none other than Donald Trump. A mock ad posted on the X (formerly known as Twitter) account for the Amazon Prime Video show's megacorporation, Vought International, peddles Homelander High-Tops shoes for just $777 and makes a specific point of mentioning an upcoming trial scheduled to take place on June 13.
Today, Vought is proud to announce the Homelander High-Tops! Based on our greatest hero's boots, these shoes will make you feel like you can fly. Available at a Super deal of $777, with all proceeds going to his legal defense fund. Get yours before his sham of a trial on June 13! pic.twitter.com/rBGD5KCYsw
— Vought International (@VoughtIntl) February 28, 2024
The post is a pretty obvious crack at Trump's $399 "Never Surrender High-Tops" sneaker line, which was launched in the wake of a court ruling that says he has to pay $355 million in penalties for inflating his wealth to secure loans and land business deals. Unless this is a literally sneaky way to announce the release date for "The Boys" Season 4, there's a decent chance that the date is a nod to June 13, 2023, which is when Trump pleaded not guilty to mishandling important federal documents.
This is just the latest way "The Boys" has dunked on the 45th President of the United States. Showrunner Eric Kripke has been pretty open about the fact that the show's central supe, the unstable and power-hungry Homelander (Antony Starr), is an expy for the controversial real estate mogul. "He's always been a Trump analogue to me," Kripke told Rolling Stone while discussing "The Boys" Season 3. "I'll admit to being a little more bald this season than I have in past seasons. But the world is getting more coarse and less elegant. The urgency of our team's writing reflects that."
The Boys keeps its finger on society's pulse
In addition to Donald Trump, "The Boys" has targeted multiple real-world phenomena, from consumerism and celebrity culture — which are at the heart of the show thanks to Vought and its corporate-sponsored superheroes — to white supremacy and social media influencers. It can be a tough line to walk, but the series does it well. The show's fans were impressed by the big reveal of "The Boys" Season 2, for example, which combines the latter two concepts by revealing that the peppy and progressive social media star Stormfront (Aya Cash) is secretly a ruthless Nazi who was active during World War 2.
Likewise, Eric Kripke sees Homelander as more than just a simple Trump stand-in. He uses the character's combination of emotional vulnerability and physical and social power to explore society's reactions to toxic behavior from famous people — like, say, Homelander murdering a protester and getting cheered by the crowd at the end of "The Boys" Season 3.
"It's a bigger issue than just Trump," Kripke told Rolling Stone. "The more awful public figures act, the more fans they seem to be getting. That's a phenomenon that we wanted to explore, that Homelander is realizing that he can actually show them who he really is and they'll love him for it."