Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys” might be set in a fictional world where superheroes are real, but it has startling similarities to the real world.
“I hope that people see the world reflected and refracted, because this is obviously a heightened world and people have superpowers and there’s a fantastical element to it,” Aya Cash, who joined season two as a supe named Stormfront, told Insider.
Season two continues to push boundaries by tackling white privilege, systemic racism, white supremacy, and the effects of trauma.
The return of Minifie’s character, Ashley Barrett, provides a grounded look at how the supes — most of whom are far from the wholesome and clean-cut personas they’ve crafted for the public — impact those around them.
Ashley, who was fired by Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) during season one, returned this season thanks to Homelander (Antony Starr). Her new position at Vought takes a toll on Ashley as she scrambles to do damage-control, preserve the supes’ public images, and protect herself from being killed at any moment by Homelander (who calls her “dispensable”).
The stress of her new role as the mediator between the supes and the Vought executives results in Ashley losing her hair as season two goes on. Minifie told us that she somewhat related to her character’s journey.
“I felt like Ashley a little bit, in that I was so excited to get this huge job,” Minifie said. “Ashley had a different trajectory than I did, in that she gets this amazing job and she is immediately met with, ‘Oh, my life is on the line. My life is at risk. And I’m trying to control these people who could kill me at any second.'”
The actress added: “That is not my experience, but I just had a blast trying to figure out the internal repercussions of that amount of stress and what that can do to your body, and hair loss just seemed like a great option.”
Stormfront’s arrival also shakes up the status quo on season two.
She was initially introduced as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy supe with a loyal group of followers who call themselves Storm Chasers. She wields the power of social media to share relatable memes and bash Vought International’s money-hungry strategies, among other things.
Stormfront speaks with confidence when addressing crowds and spreads hateful rhetoric against marginalized people, which incites violence and hate crimes. It’s eerily similar to the current landscape and shows how people in positions of power can negatively influence the masses.
“I do think that there are things happening in our world with misinformation,” Cash told us. “There are things happening in our world on social media, and there are things happening with the way that hate speech is spread that this season is pointing at.”
“I hope that we can start to think about that as we take in all the content that we now do on social media, television, news, that we start to think about the intents behind things.”
