Franchise · Secondary · since 2019
The Boys
Superheroes as a PR department, which is a much scarier idea than a villain. Vought, the Seven, the people trying to hold them to account, and what Compound V actually means.
The real heroes are the people watching at home.
Vought International, marketing
The premise is one swap: superheroes are not myth, they are inventory. A pharmaceutical company manufactures them, owns the film rights, runs the news channel that covers them, and keeps a crisis team on retainer for when one of them kills somebody. Nobody was born with anything: every hero on the shelf was made in a lab and sold a story about destiny afterwards.
That is a much scarier idea than a villain, and it is why the show works long after the shock wears off. The horror is never the powers. It is the PR department that exists to make the powers palatable, and the fact that it is very, very good at its job.
Subject: internal guidance on the Compound V program. Circulation limited to senior management and legal.
To confirm: no member of the Seven was born with abilities. Each was administered Compound V as an infant with parental consent obtained by the Vought paediatrics division. Public messaging remains destiny, gift, miracle as previously approved.
Where an administration results in an adverse outcome, family liaison is to route all contact through the crisis management team, and under no circumstance through the hero involved.
Not a real document. The show’s whole point in one memo: the powers were manufactured, and so is the story about them.