'The Boys' Showrunner on Weekly-Release Backlash: 'It's Not Fun to See Bad Reviews on a Thing People Actually Love'

Eric Kripke tells TheWrap rollout decision was not “a corporate, Amazon money grab — this was from the producers”

In the first week since its release, Season 2 of Amazon’s “The Boys” has a received a 98% “Certified Fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.7 star rating (out of 5 possible stars) from customers on Prime Video. While those numbers clearly don’t seem compatible, if you look at the actual reviews being left on the show’s home platform, you’ll see the reason behind the discrepancy has less to do with Season 2’s quality and more to do with the quantity of episodes that viewers have been given to start with.

“OKAY SERIOUSLY!!!… NO FULL SEASON AVAILABLE?!?!?!?!?!?! I give up, where is my Netflix!” one person wrote in their 1-star review.

“This is 2020…. we don’t want staggered releases of episodes !! what a shame, I was looking forward in watching it.. now I’ll just skip it and wait for it to be cancelled, then I can watch them all without any interruptions,” another 1-star giver said.

Yes, some fans — like the ones above — are mad that “The Boys” dropped its first three Season 2 episodes on Sept. 4, and is rolling out its remaining five on a weekly basis, rather than dumping the whole season at once, as the series did when it debuted last summer. And so these viewers are taking their anger out on the Prime Video series by “review bombing” it.

While “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke understands why fans like these are frustrated, he doesn’t understand “why you would harm something you love” just because you don’t like how it’s being released.

“I get that people are disappointed and, frankly, looking back, we thought that we were communicating that we were weekly,” Kripke told TheWrap Wednesday. “Clearly, in hindsight, we had to do a lot more than we did to make sure that people weren’t surprised and disappointed. I would have done that differently. I mean, again, we announced it. But we should have neon-signed it on everything, clearly.”

(To be clear, Amazon Prime Video revealed the show’s second season would be released weekly when it announced the premiere date back in June.)

“So I get that people are disappointed, but I think one thing they need to understand is, this is not like a corporate, Amazon money grab — this was from the producers. We wanted this. It was a creative choice. So they may like it or not like it, but they have to at least respect that the people who are making the show wanted it to be released this way because we wanted to have time to sort of slow down a little bit and have conversations about everything. So they at least have to appreciate that it was a creative choice.”

Kripke continued: “And then second, like, why you would harm something you love because you’re disappointed with how it’s being released is not awesome to me. We’re fine, and it’ll be fine, but it’s not fun to see bad reviews on a thing people actually love. Like, that doesn’t make the people who make the show feel good. I’ll say that.”

Check back with TheWrap later for our post-mortem interviews with Kripke about Episode 204, which dropped today.

Episodes 1-4 of “The Boys” Season 2 are streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.