The bank robbers are overpowered by Homelander, revealing that the series takes place in a universe where the superpowered individuals are called Supes who are recognized as heroes by the general public.
While discussing his uncertain future with his girlfriend Robin Ward, the latter is accidentally torn apart by A-Train with his speed before he runs away, while Hughie starts to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the events.
He proceeds to show Hughie that the Supes are corrupt outside their heroic personas and that they lose hundreds of people a year, but Vought keeps this as a secret to hide the truth from the public.
Butcher takes Hughie to a secret "Supes Club" to show him security footage of A-Train laughing about Robin's death.
Hughie arrives at the Seven Tower where he reluctantly accepts the half-hearted apology from A-Train, and successfully hides the microphone while Translucent secretly watches him.
Erick Kripke became the series showrunner and head writer, alongside Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who would direct the pilot episode.
[4][5] On 2018, Dan Trachtenberg was hired to direct the pilot episode for the series, replacing Goldberg and Rogen due to scheduling conflicts.
[14] The episode's main cast includes Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr as John Gillman / Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight, Dominique McElligott as Maggie Shaw / Queen Maeve, Jessie T. Usher as Reggie Franklin / A-Train, Chace Crawford as Kevin Moskowitz / The Deep, Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir, and Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell.
[18] Also starring are Simon Pegg as Hugh Campbell Sr., Alex Hassell as Translucent, Shaun Benson as Ezekiel, Ann Cusack as Donna January, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, Jaden Martin as Jamie, Jess Salgueiro as Robin Ward, Bruce Novakowski as Doug Friedman, and Paulino Nunes as the Mayor of Baltimore.
One of the filming locations took place at the Roy Thomson Hall to recreate the exterior of the Vought International company headquarters, better known as Seven Tower.
[26] Jeff Cutter was the director of photography for the season's first episode, having already worked with long-time collaborator Dan Trachtenberg in the film 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Kripke believed it was important to keep most of the effects grounded to tease the kind of world eventually presented in the series.
[33] Mr. X was in charge of creating the visual effects for the fight between Butcher and Translucent, where the latter's stunt double used a gray tracking suit to capture the animation reference.
In the ending scene where Homelander destroys a plane, Starr is attached to a wire to capture the essence of his character's flight, while his cape is created through CGI by the visual effects company DNEG.
For Homelander's heat vision, the visual effects team refined an anamorphic lens flare to make it unique to play into the character.
Keeping a world in which superheroes sexually assault and murder with a twinkle in their eye from becoming too brutal to take is going to be this show's greatest challenge.
"[39] Samantha Nelson from The Escapist praised the performances and their faithfulness to the source material, to which he commented, "As a nice nod to the comics, Simon Pegg makes an appearance as Hughie's father, urging him to move on with his life and accept the things he can't control.
"[40] Randy Dankievitch from Tilt Magazine considered that the episode managed to break the old myths from other superhero projects: "If this is just another story of men fighting other men over who is right until the end of time, The Boys is never going to be able to entrench itself as a fundamentally different take on the superhero ethos, no matter how effective this first hour is at stripping away the inherent emotional, sexual, and moral sterility of the iconic stories it's satirizing.
He commented that the show is a wildly entertaining and somewhat cynical representation of the superhero genre that embraces this and the often-quoted aphorism of how power corrupts.