Stefania Sarrubba
Even the staunchest fans of The Boys have turned up their noses when they saw what the show has made of protagonist Hughie Campbell.
Played by Scream (2022) star and our favourite 'nepo baby' Jack Quaid, Hughie has been having a hard time this season as he's been involved in some pretty rough storylines.
And while tough, gruesome and, let's be honest, hyper-traumatic events are at the very core of the show created by Eric Kripke, it seems there is one thing that The Boys lovers don't intend to put up with: dumping on Hughie without some real processing, particularly when it comes to sexual assault.
Wee Hughie already had a lot on his plate in this chapter, having to deal with his father Hugh Sr's (Simon Pegg) stroke, his V-powered recovery and subsequent killing spree at the hospital that forced Quaid's character to ultimately put his own dad down.
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It did seem like a pile-on when Hughie ended up in Ted Knight's sex dungeon disguised as Supe Webweaver. There, he got effectively tortured for what its captors thought it was a bit of kinky fun. While the show handled this relatively well, with Hughie being comforted by his girlfriend Annie aka Starlight (Erin Moriarty) later on, another assault storyline put the final nail in the coffin.
When Annie gets kidnapped and replaced by a shapeshifter, Hughie is tricked into having sex with her.
The show didn't seem to frame this as sexual assault, though it is as Hughie gave his consent to Annie under false pretenses.
What The Boys does instead is play the subplot for laughs, once again downplaying Hughie's trauma, blaming him for having been assaulted and focusing on Annie's hurt reaction upon finding out her boyfriend has slept with someone else.
While Annie's irrational response is understandable, the show doesn't afford Hughie any empathy, laying the blame on a man who's been assaulted and perpetuating harmful stereotypes on male rape. Following the show's season finale on July 18, fans have taken to social media to reflect on the storyline.
"Jack Quaid has been phenomenal as Hughie in this season of The Boys but the show really needs to evaluate how they treat his character. He's assaulted several times this season and it's played for laughs or like it's his fault; not like how other characters' trauma is handled," one person noted on Twitter/X.
"The way they handled Hughie in this Season of The Boys has been awful," someone else wrote, while another stated the show 'dropped the ball'.
"This week on The Boys, we graduated from sexually assaulting Hughie for comedic effect to yelling at him for allowing himself to be raped multiple times... And then resolving it with a joke," another fan offered. "No, I'm serious. He got in trouble with Starlight for being raped by a shapeshifter."
With the show being greenlit for a fifth and final season, all eyes are on whether The Boys will finally acknowledge that grisly stories can be great, but affording them complexity and a proper resolution is what makes them even better.