The Dictatorship
Why ‘The Boys’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ became must-watch series for our political time
During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or rather the Hulu series based on Atwood’s original novel, which just teased its sixth season for early 2025, became a shorthand symbol in the battle for reproductive rights. With its dehumanizing vision of a world that reduces women to breeding vessels held captive, abused and forced to bear childrenfor the wealthy and privileged in a repressive state,the show felt ominously, if not fantastically, aligned with where this country appeared to be heading. But as Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, I see a different streaming show that speaks more directly to this unsettling political moment: Amazon’s dystopian superhero satire “The Boys.”
Since its premiere on Amazon Prime in 2019, the series has often felt like a cautionary tale, a not-so-thinly veiled rumination on the political and media climate that laid the groundwork for Trump.
It might be easily missed behind the colorful spin on comic-book tropes and its abundant helpings of gore and kinky sex, but the series removed its mask long ago when it comes to its warnings about how a toxic stew of celebrity, hero worship and disinformation can lead to autocracy, enabled and fueled by corporate greed, corruption and lust for power.
Adapted from the comics, “The Boys” concluded its fourth season with a chilling resolution setting up its final arc, which isn’t expected to arrive until 2026. In it (and spoiler alert for those yet to take the plunge), a psychologically broken man-child, the Superman-esque Homelander (played by Antony Starr), gained control of the government and claimed sweeping powers under the guise of security and restoring order.
Since its premiere on Amazon Prime in 2019, the series has often felt like a cautionary tale, a not-so-thinly veiled rumination on the political and media climate that laid the groundwork for Trump. After the 2024 election, the similarities, even if cartoonish, feel harder to ignore.
Showrunner Eric Kripke acknowledged as much in a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone, saying that Homelander, with his volatile mix of emotional insecurity and power, had “always been a Trump analogue for me,” adding that the character reflected a “bigger issue” — namely, “the more awful public figures act, the more fans they seem to be getting.”
Leaning even more heavily into politics in its most recent season, the series added a new superhero character, Firecracker, who parrots the conservative views espoused by avery Fox News-like TV network, owned by the shadowy corporation behind the superheroes, Vought International. Kripke told Entertainment Weekly that Firecracker represents “the super extreme right-wing news media.”
Like Trump, who leveraged his carefully sculpted and edited image on “The Apprentice” as he segued into politics, “The Boys” resides in a world where Vought uses TV, movies and other media to market the “supes,” so they’re called, to the unsuspecting public.
As depicted in the series, little about the show’s underlying political message is subtle, including a conspiracy-minded group within the show that evokes QAnon. Vought meticulously exploits the gullibility of those true believers, working to blur the lines between entertainment and news under its vast corporate umbrella while wrapping Homelander and his brethren in the American flag and faux patriotism.
Indeed, the cynicism at the heart of “The Boys” is that if you can play the hero convincingly enough, it’s possible to get away with all sorts of terrible behavior.
In an ironic twist, “The Boys” has pursued this unflinching vision of autocracy and unbridled capitalism while arguably becoming Amazon Prime Video’s signature franchise, spawning spinoffs (including “Gen V”) and plans for a prequel to carry on once it’s gone. At a time when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has drawn criticism for his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in another asset, The Washington Post, a fanciful superhero series has forged ahead, hiding its politics in plain sight.
The cynicism at the heart of “The Boys” is that if you can play the hero convincingly enough, it’s possible to get away with all sorts of terrible behavior.
Reality intruded on “The Boys” in another way when an assassination sequence in the season finale, which premiered close to the attempt on Trump’s life in July, prompted Prime Video to change the title and add a disclaimer to the episode, which was actually filmed last year.
With “Handmaid’s Tale” due to end next year and “The Boys’” climax to follow, neither of these programs will continue long into a Trump second term. But each in their own way has spoken through fiction with anger and urgency, warning that the threat of fascism isn’t necessarily the stuff of old black-and-white images. They have also shown the ability to tackle issues in a thoughtful and provocative way, setting forth a challenge for future shows wrapped in a cloak of entertainment to pick up that colorful gauntlet.
Brian Lowry is a media columnist and critic, most recently at BLN, and before that Variety and the Los Angeles Times.
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices rose, and stock markets dropped in shaky trading worldwide Wednesday after President Donald Trump raised doubts about the temporary truce in the war with Iran.
The S&P 500 fell as much as 1.1% after Trump said the ceasefire agreement was “over,” but the index then trimmed its loss to 0.3% after Trump said recent fighting did not mean a return to full-scale war. They’re his latest mixed messages on what will happen with the war, which threatens to worsen inflation for the world.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 576 points, or 1.1%, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2% after erasing an early loss.
The action was stronger in the oil market, where the price for a barrel of Brent crude climbed 5.2% to $78.02 and briefly topped $80.
That’s still below its peak from earlier in the war, when the price for the most actively traded contract reached nearly $120. But the jump is unsettling because oil prices had just dropped back to where they were before the war.
The worry is that a continuation of the war will block the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the delivery of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That could worsen inflationwhich economists expected would ease with oil prices, and in turn force the Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates.
Higher rates can keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments.
On Wall Street, stocks of companies in the housing industry helped lead the way lower. They were hurt by worries that rising Treasury yields in the bond market will mean higher rates for mortgages and chill the industry.
Builders FirstSource, which sells countertops, windows and other building supplies, fell 5.4%. Homebuilders PulteGroup fell 5.4%, and D.R. Horton sank 4.6%.
Companies with big fuel bills also sank. American Airlines lost 4%, and cruise operator Carnival fell 3.9%.
Helping to offset those losses was a steadying for some influential stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry. They’ve been under pressure in recent weeks on worries that their prices shot too high and that AI may not produce enough productivity and profits to make all the investments in chips and data centers worth it.
Their swings carry a lot of weight on Wall Street because AI stocks have grown into some of the U.S. market’s biggest, giving their movements more effect on the S&P 500 than other stocks.
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Nvidia rose 3.7%, for example, and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 because it’s the largest stock on Wall Street.
Close behind was Broadcom, which climbed 4.8% after Apple announced a multiyear commitment where Broadcom will design and produce custom components for its products. Apple said the agreement’s value could top $30 billion.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 21.14 points to 7,482.71. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 576.76 to 52,348.39, and the Nasdaq composite rose 51.96 to 25,870.65.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with the price of oil. The yield on the 10-year Treasury briefly got near 4.60% before pulling back to 4.57%. That’s up from 4.55% late Tuesday and from just 3.97% before the war with Iran began.
In stock markets abroad, European markets turned sharply lower after Trump said, “For me, I think it’s over” about the status of the ceasefire. He added that U.S. representatives can continue negotiations, “but I think they’re wasting their time.” Germany’s DAX lost 2.2%, and France’s CAC 40 sank 2.2%.
In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi dropped 5.3% and continued its sharp swings amid seesawing worries and euphoria about the AI stocks that dominate its market.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was an outlier and rose 3%. Shares that trade there of Chinese AI startup Zhipu, known also as Z.ai and traded as Knowledge Atlas Technology, jumped 13.4%.
A six-month lock-up period for “cornerstone” investors following its January trading debut in Hong Kong expires this week. China National Radio reported late Tuesday that nearly 70% of Zhipu’s cornerstone investors are committed to stay on, despite previous worries that the lock-up period expiration could trigger a sell-off.
Zhipu’s share price has risen more than 1,300% since its debut.
___
AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Chan Ho-him and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.
In the three weeks since Donald Trump declared that a “deal” between the United States and Iran was “complete,” the president and his team have been dogged by a series of difficult questions. Why does Iran have to make so few concessions under the memorandum of understanding? Why have prominent members of both parties slammed the agreement as inadequate? Why is Trump’s deal so much worse than the Obama-era Iran deal?
Now, however, the world is confronting a qualitatively different kind of question: Does Trump’s deal still exist?
On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command announced a new round of strikes against Iran, following reports of attacks on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration simultaneously said it was reinstating sanctions on Tehran, which had been eased as part of last month’s MOU.
Soon after, Iran’s military said it had fired missiles and drones targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait in retaliation for the strikes confirmed by CENTCOM hours earlier.
As for the tenuous ceasefire and peace process, it’s increasingly difficult to be optimistic. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday from the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump called Iranians “scum” and “evil people.” He added, “Frankly, we’ve wasted a lot of time with them. I think we should just do our business.”
The Republican didn’t elaborate as to what that “business” entails, but in context, he appeared to be referring to additional military strikes.
And then he kept going.
Asked specifically whether the ceasefire is over and the peace framework is dead, the American president told reporters, “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. … They’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people. … As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. … As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. … They’re liars. … There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo.”
Right on cue, oil prices jumped and stock market indexes started falling. There’s no great mystery as to why: If the ceasefire is over and the peace framework is dead, then we’re right back to where we were when the hot war was still underway.
The trouble, however, is that Trump is erratic and easily confused. It’s effectively impossible to know whether he’ll take the opposite position at any given moment, opening the door to new diplomatic talks or making matters vastly worse.
Either way, the truce appears to be unraveling.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy isn’t officially over yet, but as the Maine Democrat hemorrhages supporthis campaign has canceled fundraising events and scheduled ad buys. What’s more, Platner’s team acknowledged Tuesday that it had reached out to the Maine Democratic Party to discuss the process for possibly replacing him on the ballot.
That process, should it proceed, will apparently not be smooth: State party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson accused members of Platner’s team late Tuesday of “trying to put their thumb on the scale” of the process to find his replacement, even though the scandal-plagued candidate has yet to withdraw.
The Maine Democratic Party chief added that Platner would have “no role” in the selection process.
In the meantime, as the candidate faces new allegations of sexual misconduct, Platner’s would-be Democratic successors are taking unsubtle steps to make clear they’re interested in getting the nod for the general election race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
As for what to expect if Platner exits, Axios reported that Republicans “are preparing to welcome a potential Graham Platner replacement in Maine’s Senate race with $8 million in negative ads, aiming to introduce a new Democratic nominee to voters on their own terms before Democrats can.”
* It’s too late for Maryland to redraw its district map ahead of the midterms, but the Democratic-led legislature is moving forward with plans for a special legislative session next month to overhaul its congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election cycle.
* In Colorado’s Republican gubernatorial primaryVictor Marx, a controversial religious nonprofit leader, is ahead of state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer by roughly 2,000 votes in the latest tallies, but it might be a while before the race is officially called.
* Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida has faced a great many scandals of late, but last week, one of his primary rivals filed a formal legal complaint alleging that Mills improperly notarized his candidate documents, making him ineligible for the ballot. (Mills did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment about the allegations.)
* As if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn’t have enough troublesthe Republican Senate candidate is now facing mockery after spending July Fourth in Europe with a woman who is not his estranged wife.
* And a year after congressional Republicans passed their domestic policy megabill to significant partisan fanfare, it’s Democrats who are eager to tell voters about the regressive package ahead of November’s elections.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
- Chuck Grassley pushed for more transparency into Kash Patel’s FBI spending in May, Democrats reveal
- Jordan Wood joins crowded Maine Senate race
- In 60 years of independence, Botswana has refuted the authoritarian development myth
- Trump’s escalating attacks on Iran pose risks at home
- Both sides signed the Iran deal, but neither could deliver
- Losing in Ukraine, is Putin finally down to his nukes?
- Bipartisan Senate duo wants to help students get federal aid for learning outside college
- Nirav Shah, governor primary runner-up, jumps into race to replace Platner
- Capitol agenda: Collins loses her foil in Platner
- Platner’s advisers urged him to go out with ‘gratitude.’ He led with grievance.
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