The Boys season 2 on Amazon takes aim at Trump's America - CNET

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Season 2 of The Boys will premiere on Amazon Prime Video with the first three episodes on Sept. 4, with new episodes available each Friday following.

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Remember when the cast of The Avengers sang Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire on Jimmy Fallon ? They recapped the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe with lyrics like, "Bucky, Peggy, I love you," and "Thanos and Infinity War, I can't take it anymore," ending with a heart-wrenching tribute to late Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee.

Season 2 of The Boys is the equivalent of a giant dump on all of that.

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If Amazon's adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comic book hadn't already out-Deadpooled Deadpool, in its second season The Boys turns up the pops of gore, the absurd, cringey powers and the unpleasant dimensions of its celebrity superheroes to even greater extremes.

Is the viscera-spraying violence gratuitous? Yep. But The Boys' compellingly gray characters, timely themes and stark, satirical universe continue to be a humdinger of an antidote for anyone with Marvel fatigue.

Colby Minifie, Aya Cash, Antony Starr and Dominique McElligott.

Jasper Savage/Prime Video

Season 2 of The Boys will premiere on Amazon Prime Video with the first three episodes on Sept. 4, with new episodes available each Friday following. The season picks up a little while after sailor-mouthed antihero Butcher (Karl Urban, still doing a confusing accent) discovers his wife is alive and had a son with Homelander, aka the psychopath version of Superman/Captain America (Antony Starr, who deservedly gets more screen time and should be the next Joker).

With no Elisabeth Shue to be his perverse mother figure/lover, Homelander opens a new chapter in his search for connection by recklessly attempting to mentor his as-yet untarnished kid.

Antony Starr and Erin Moriarty.

Jasper Savage/Prime Video

But his absence from Supe duties, which in this universe include appearing as themselves in movies, leaves newcomer Stormfront (a scene-stealing Aya Cash) to take advantage of memes, Instagram livestreams and social media in general to build her popularity in the cheapest way possible.

Meanwhile, from their underground bunker hideout, The Boys, including an increasingly lost and out-of-place normal Hughie (Jack Quaid) but excluding the now MIA Butcher, continue their vigilante ways by investigating the smuggling of suped-up terrorists.

Where season 1 tackled #MeToo and capitalism, showrunner Eric Kripke (who also created Supernatural) now holds a mirror up to cancel culture, Scientology, white supremacy and Trump's America, while continuing to send up greed-fueled franchises with their merchandise, focus groups and current preoccupation with girl power and diversity.

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"We're going to pull through the roof with millennials -- inclusion's a big priority for them right now," publicist Ashley (Colby Minifie) says as she interviews new candidates to join Justice League equivalent The Seven after The Deep's ousting for sexual harassment. "Fingers crossed [we find] an ethnic female to replace The Deep and then we're golden."

Yet for a show that revels in ripping its peers apart, you can't help but hold The Boys up to its own levels of scrutiny. Are its characters thin? Is the action good? Is it predictable?

While The Boys avoids tired CGI fests through merciless, pulse-racing, ground-level action and a conspiracy thriller plot, it has its own way of overloading your senses, mainly through its relentless cynicism.

Tomer Capon, Jack Quaid and Karl Urban.

Prime Video.

It's pretty much down to Starlight (a superb Erin Moriarty) to provide, yep, a light in the tunnel. Her clear arc from naive, young newcomer, to hardened, take-no-shit hero, plus her affection for the equally moral and Billy Joel-loving Hughie, shows The Boys has an interest in developing its characters and that you do need love.

This season also ramps up the plain ridiculous comedy, particularly through a C-story involving Deep (Chace Crawford) and Goran Višnjić's leader of The Church of The Collective, a religious group suspiciously enthusiastic about Coca-Cola drink Fresca. One scene involving Deep, mushrooms and his gills wins any jaw-dropping silliness prizes.

Elsewhere, young, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-channelling congresswoman Victoria Neumann (Claudia Doumit) leads a campaign to challenge Supe corporate overlords Vought International in a hearing. We also see more welcome tense action scenes with Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell).

We don't see Simon Pegg as Hughie's dad. Having fulfilled his special cameo in season 1 -- Pegg was the inspiration for the comic book character Hughie -- he leaves the party with barely a mention.

If it was holding anything back in season 1, the second season of The Boys goes to town. "This new Joss rewrite really sings," Homelander says of The Seven's ensemble movie. It can be a bit much at times, but The Boys treads where others won't. Whenever you think it won't go somewhere, it goes there -- in ludicrous, often-thrilling, reality-dissecting fashion. Shoot it up into your eyeballs if you think HBO Max's Justice League is just another cynical money grab.

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