In January, Seth Rogen introduced Twitter to the first teaser for his and Preacher collaborator Evan Goldberg’s upcoming Amazon Prime series The Boys. Created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the original comics concerned the operations of a clandestine squad whose chief task is monitoring the world’s superheroes and, if necessary, confronting them over their reckless behavior. The teaser didn’t give away much, but on Monday, Amazon dropped a new trailer that, among other things, invokes the Spice Girls.
Specifically, Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher, the leader of the titular group, is the one who cites the example of the now mostly-reformed English pop group from the ’90s and early 2000s. Why? To keep his rag-tag group of enforcers together in order to take on the series’ incredibly powerful — and incredibly irresponsible — celebrity superheroes. Per Amazon:
Supes have been committing atrocities, which keep getting swept under the rug because they are revered by the adoring public. Billy Butcher recruits The Boys who have all been wronged by The Seven, the world’s most notorious superheroes, to bring them down and stop the corruption. Based on the best-selling comics by Garth Ennis, The Boys is a revenge story where the nobodies take on the somebodies.
If the Spice Girls reference isn’t enough to get your attention, however, then let the entirely NSFW trailer’s generous use of graphic violence do the convincing. Where else are you going to see Urban’s character using a superpowered baby’s laser eyes to decapitate someone? Or, a talking dolphin that’s jettisoned through the front window of a crashing vehicle?
The Boys premieres July 26th on Amazon Prime.