What To Watch After ‘The Boys’ Finale: 10 Shows & Movies To Fill Your Brutal Superhero Void

Garth Ennis originally wrote The Boys back in 2006, but while he had an extensive career in comics before, writing series like ‘The Punisher,’ ‘Hellblazer,’ and ‘2000 A.D,’ ‘Preacher’ would be his magnum opus. It’s dark, gritty, and messed up on so many levels, and Preacher (2016) is cut from the very same cloth.

Preacher, like The Boys, is not a straight adaptation of the comics. It hits a lot of the same beats, but the story of Jesse Custer’s road trip to find God takes a lot more risks and isn’t afraid to push buttons. If you thought that Herogasm was a bridge too far, just wait until you meet characters like Arseface or see how the show portrays Jesus Christ. Pearl clutchers will call it blasphemy, and they may have a point, but it’s also a show that questions faith from the perspective of someone who’s spiritually lost trying to find meaning in life. Think of it as if Natural Born Killers (1994) became a four-season TV show, and you’ll have a vague approximation of what Preacher is like. It’s weird, it’s irreverent, and it isn’t afraid to piss people off. Yup, it’s a Garth Ennis series.

While people may fawn over how edgy and dark The Boys can be, there’s also no denying it’s a very silly show. After all, this is the same show where The Deep has a romantic relationship with an octopus voiced by Tilda Swinton. If you’re craving dark yet weird superheroics, you can’t beat Doom Patrol.

How weird is Doom Patrol? The first season features a kaiju battle between a despotic cockroach and a rat, all in an effort to save a sentient street from a man who bends reality to his whims and a man who can track people by eating their facial hair. The Boys wishes it could be as strange as Doom Patrol. And yet, Doom Patrol isn’t just an exposé of weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Much like DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (2016), it’s a story about found family, but one that also touches on very dark and heavy themes like mental health and survivor’s guilt. In fact, there’s an entire episode dedicated to the team going to a therapy session. It’s dark like The Boys, but in a way that feels more emotionally mature, even if its sense of humor is pretty sophomoric.

The Boys wasn’t the first major comic to be a dark reflection of the superhero genre, and if you’re going to talk about dark superhero movies and shows, it’s only a matter of time until Watchmen comes up.

Zack Snyder’s style of filmmaking may rub some people the wrong way, but his edgy approach to storytelling actually works in Watchmen. The film is mostly a faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel, but with a few twists here and there to modernize it in ways that, dare I say, actually improve upon the source material. It’s still brash and in your face, like other Snyder movies like Sucker Punch (2011) and 300 (2007), but that’s kind of the point with Watchmen. It’s impossible to look at characters like Homelander or Butcher and not see traces of Rorschach and The Comedian in them. The characters in Watchmen aren’t good people, and what we get is a depressing examination of superheroes that still hits over 15 years after its initial release. Watchmen isn’t afraid to get political and, like The Boys, isn’t afraid to show just how bleak living in a world of heroes would actually be.

We, as a species, have failed. After all, we let Dredd bomb at the box office. This is the film that made Karl Urban into a leading man, and lovers of action films like The Raid (2012), or just action in general, need to see it. 

While the story of Dredd is original, it draws upon a lot of the ideas, fittingly, of Garth Ennis’ run of the series. For 95 glorious minutes, we watch Judge Dredd lay a path of destruction through the Peach Trees apartment complex, complete with explosions, plenty of gunfire, and a perseverance that rivals a Terminator. Urban is just fantastic here, playing a man of few words, but each of them kicks all kinds of ass. It’s an action spectacle, made even better by the impressive slow-motion sequences that make the film pop, much like the heads of all the goons Dredd blows up. The Boys can be a gory fun time, but Dredd is an even better gorefest. Seriously, why did we let this movie fail?

Another film that didn’t get the respect it deserved when it was released, The Suicide Squad flew under the radar for a lot of people. It essentially served as James Gunn’s audition to be the head of the DCU, and feels like a modern-day and more violent take on Mystery Men (1999).

While there isn’t quite as much political and social satire as in The Boys, what it lacks in theming it more than makes up for with characters. Each of the members of the Squad are all awful people, much like The Seven in The Boys, and at points you’re both rooting for and against them. They shouldn’t be as likeable as they are, but by the time fans reach the end of the film’s two-hour and 12-minute runtime, you’re bound to like at least one of them. All of them have their issues (Polka-Dot Man’s mommy issues aren’t too far off from Homelander’s if we’re being honest with ourselves), but when it’s time for them to kick ass, they do so with flying colors. It’s a bloody good time for those looking for some really dark comedic action.

Speaking of The Suicide Squad, the breakout character of the film, John Cena’s Peacemaker, eventually would wind up getting his own two-season series. Peacemaker has to balance a lot of different genres and tones, but it does an admirable job doing so.

As the series progresses, it shifts from being just a simple superhero action series to a psychological deconstruction of the character. Peacemaker’s by far the most interesting character on the show, and while he’s initially presented as a jingoistic bro, he’s saddled with so much trauma and self-loathing that you can’t help but want to give him a hug. He would fit in perfectly with the Boys, though he and Butcher would probably butt heads a ton. You can see a lot of the DNA of Creature Commandos (2024) here, especially with how much Gunn makes his characters suffer, but even in the bleakest moments, there are bound to be a few moments of levity and action to perk you right back up. Here’s hoping that Season 2 won’t be the last time we see Peacemaker in the DCU.

When people think about dark superheroes, nine times out of ten, they’ll think of The Punisher. Frank Castle has become an iconic anti-hero who is willing to kill whoever it takes to enact vengeance for his family.

The Punisher perfectly captures the essence of the character, and Jon Bernthal’s take on Frank specifically draws upon Ennis’ time writing him. He’s a tragic character, a man who has abandoned all of his principles for the cause. He has nothing left, and even when there’s an out, an opportunity for him to find peace, he can’t accept it and commits himself fully to his crusade. There’s no denying that Butcher’s war on Vought and Homelander is drawn from Frank’s own one-man war, and The Punisher, especially the first season of it, perfectly epitomizes the lengths he’ll go to save the day. Like Reacher (2022), Frank will lay down ultra-violent justice on criminals, no matter who they are, and the kills themselves are always satisfying.

When The Boys wants to be creative with its supes, it can deliver some pretty imaginative and disturbing superheroes, much like the cast of oddballs that make up The Umbrella Academy.

One of the things that really helps give The Umbrella Academy some more nuance when compared to The Boys is that it’s a lot more morally gray. Both feature superpowered beings, but while The Boys paints them firmly into camps of good vs evil, The Umbrella Academy doesn’t. It shows its characters not fitting squarely into either side, which leads to a lot of self-discovery and character growth that fans of X-Men ‘97 (2024) will instantly recognize. It’s still weird as hell, though, and when it wants to remind viewers that it was written by the unconventional Gerard Way, it does so at the drop of a hat. Superhero ensemble pieces aren’t too uncommon nowadays, but rarely are they done as well as The Umbrella Academy.

Happy!, like Doom Patrol, is weird. Maybe not as weird as Doom Patrol, but any show featuring a drug addicted cop teaming up with an imaginary unicorn is bound to raise some eyebrows.

What helped make The Boys stand apart from other superhero shows was that even when things got dark, the way it satirized tropes, people, and companies always managed to keep its head completely out of wallowing in hatred and rage. Happy! does the same, but for gritty cop dramas. It turns what would normally be a soul-crushing show about a cop searching for his kidnapped daughter into a wacky and outlandish action series that channels the very best of Ash vs. Evil Dead (2015). The violence is plentiful and just as demented as you would expect from the man who directed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011). It thrives on tonal whiplash, and if you can stomach how wildly it swings between two extremes, then you’ll find a dark little gem that never got the love it deserved.

Maybe it was because Season 5 of The Boys featured a reunion of the key cast members of Supernatural, but if you just want a huge show to binge that captures the essence of The Boys, you can’t do much worse than Supernatural. 

For 15 seasons, Supernatural dominated TV channels, and it’s not hard to see why. It elevated the fantasy genre in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) did years before, modernizing ghosts, demons, and monsters for the modern era. Both shows had villain-of-the-week episodes, but they also had ongoing plots that built up even greater and larger threats. If The Boys is a superhero show for adults, then Supernatural is a fantasy series for adults. Not only that, but Eric Kripke created both series, so they share a lot of similarities in tone and writing, although Kripke left Supernatural after Season 5. Obviously, Supernatural continued well after that, but most diehard fans consider the seasons made under Kripke to be the show at its peak. Supernatural, like The Boys, was a phenomenon, and fantasy fans should prioritize giving it a watch.