Why ‘The Boys’ is a better series than ‘Stranger Things’

Is ‘The Boys’ a better series than ‘Stranger Things’? Would Homelander beat Vecna ​​in a fight? Would Eleven be a threat to, well… anyone? Nobody may be asking these questions, but precisely because of that (and because of that incessant struggle to find the balance between relevant news and pleasing the algorithms), it has been our turn to ask them.

Matt and Ross Duffer presented ‘Stranger Things’ to the public in the summer of 2016 and, from the first moment, it became one of the most successful Netflix series. His mysterious adventures full of nods to the favorite products of their creators convinced an audience that, somehow, still clinging to that hyperbolic idea of ​​the 80s that has been exploiting since the mid-2000s.

‘The Boys’ arrived at the Amazon Prime Video catalog in 2019, in the midst of the film fever of entangled characters, to become one of the best superhero series. Based on the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, this title from Point Gray Pictures (the producer of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen), is already the biggest success of its main developer, Eric Kripke, responsible for ‘Supernatural’ and ‘Timeless’ .

His violence, black humor and impudence before the superhero current hooked an audience thirsty for well-charged drinks given the abundance of 0.0 drinks on most of the platforms, something that has increased even more in the third season of ‘The Boys’.

Season 4 of Stranger Things and the third of the Butcher’s boys are over and have fans raving and now entrusting us to our Mr. SEO, we have decided to face them discovering that the bloody macarrada is better than the stretched look at the past. And we are going to demonstrate it in four perfectly refutable points that we have pulled out of our sleeves and with which you can be totally against it, nothing happens, we have no powers.

That’s how we are vs. so we didn’t go

Although of course it is not necessary for an audiovisual product to serve to better understand the moment in which it was created (and they do everything in one way or another), ‘The Boys’ does not hesitate to introduce in its form and background elements that help to better understand the world.

On the one hand, it makes us calm down in the face of upcoming Marvel releases. Like the original comics, the series plays (always from convinced fanaticism) to laugh at the tropes that populate the best superhero movies in general and the industry that produces them en masse in particular.

On the other hand, in its plots we are told of the corruption of gold figures, lies and misinformation in the media, racism, machismo, patriarchy and the dangers of voracious capitalism. As we reviewed in the review of season 3 of ‘The Boys’, in its last batch of episodes the dangers we face with the rise of far-right groups, radicalized by disgusting leaders who are everything against what they say is fighting but that they get the support of everyone who needs someone to tell them what they want to hear.

‘Stranger Things’, being anchored in the altered memory of the 80s, it is limited to playing with the expected rules and little else. Without intending to, it has become a sample of the present as it is a product that, given the overdose of crisis that we have been experiencing since 2008, represents the collective stagnation of generations obsessed with continuing to look back to that decade when, from what they’ve been told they remember, everyone was happier than hell.

balance in plots

The main plot of ‘The Boys’ is clear: the Butcher and Hughie and his boys fight against the merchandising empire of superheroes Vought and want to end the Patriot, a psychopath created by the brand.

Subplots present us with such interesting ideas as the continuous personal conflicts of A-Train, the sexual affiliations and abuses of the Deep or the mental problems of the Patriot himself. Even if the Frenchie, Kimiko and LM comics never quite explode like the rest of the series, then Herogasm arrives, the best episode of ‘The Boys’ according to many fans, and you forget.

‘Stranger Things’ always follows three plot lines to which it dedicates the same time, only four less than any episode of ‘Family Doctor’. This means that, inevitably, the successes and errors in each of its tributaries are more noticeable. In the first season, while we enjoyed the plot of children and adults, we had to put up with the boredom of the adolescent third. In the second, we start to lose Eleven and Mike, turning them into a loop that engulfs everyone who is next to them. Maybe that’s why, when we thought of 3 ideas for the future of ‘Stranger Things’, one starring Dustin, Steve and Robin (and commanded by Erica) quickly came to mind thanks to their wonderful adventure in the third season, being unable to remember very well what happened to the rest.

And while we’ve all loved ‘Stranger Things’ season 4, the plot of California is, objectively, a suckling pig. Less Eleven raising her little hand and more Dustin righting wrongs.

format vs. Contents

‘The Boys’ is a series. Eight episodes of 60 to 70 minutes per season in which Eric Kripke and his team of writers narrate what they want to tell, being aware of the classic format with which they are working and always taking into account a different duration margin of about 10 minutes so as not to cut or lengthen the narrative excessively.

On Netflix they are short of hours and the Duffers have carte blanche to do what they want. In fact, the number of casualties on the platform seems to be directly proportional to the spirit with which the streaming channel receives the very large episodes of ‘Stranger Things’, the ninth episode of the fourth season lasting two and a half hours, a collection of repetitive ideas that might seem too cheeky but that, seeing the votes of the best episodes of Stranger Things, it seems that the fans do not end up displeased. Hopefully Eleven remembering her past with her father in the laboratory in season 5 of Stranger Things, which we have seen little…

the lols

Here, in the end, to what we come to have a good time. Proof of this are the votes for the best episodes of The Boys, a list of nonsense that first makes us catch our breath, only to burst out laughing a second later.

Maybe that’s why our favorite season of the Netflix series was the third, the most open to play with their own ideas and have fun. While we like a lot of ideas from the latter, like the true crime behind ‘Stranger Things 4’ that gave us Eddie Munson, it’s a shame this reference party tries to take itself so seriously.