WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Boys Season 2, Episode 8, "What I Know," available now on Amazon Prime Video.

The political commentary in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's 2006 comic The Boys can, unsurprisingly, feel dated at times. Take for example the character Victor Neuman, also known as “Vic the Veep,” who Ennis intended to be a parody of President George W. Bush. He writes Neuman as a corporate stooge who can hardly string a full sentence together. While that commentary would be cutting at the time that Bush was in the Oval Office, it feels a bit dated, as the television series was created two presidents later. So when adapting the comic, showrunner Eric Kripke took a different approach, abandoning nearly everything about the character (save for the name) and creating an entirely different one. Enter Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, a more serious pastiche of another real-world politician: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez rose to sharp prominence in 2018 shortly after she was elected to New York’s 14th Congressional District. She was confirmed in 2019, which is also the year that the first season of The Boys aired. It’s unclear whether Victoria Neuman would have existed without Ocasio-Cortez as a real world model, but actress Claudia Doumit stated in an interview with Entertainment Weekly she drew upon “how [Ocasio-Cortez] holds herself in a room and how she communicates something” without making the character a “carbon copy of AOC.”

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Regardless of what degree of inspiration was drawn, Neuman ends up filling the same role as AOC -- a political newcomer and young woman of color who’s determined to shake up the status quo. For the majority of Season 2, it seemed like the show was willing to let her exist in that role as a counterweight to Vought, a part of the institution that could occasionally be in The Boys’ corner, but the season finale shows that the writers have bigger plans for her character.

Season 2 centers around the escalating conflict between The Boys and Vought as the company attempts to create a public crisis with the introduction of manufactured “supe-terrorists.” But there’s also a third power present -- the mysterious "head-popping" supe. Throughout the season, random characters' heads explode, seemingly without explanation. Susan Raynor’s head explodes when she tries to give The Boys crucial information, and Jonah Vogelbaum is later prevented from testifying at Congress as he also had his head blown off. The identity of the head-popper remains a mystery until the Season 2 finale, when it's revealed to be Victoria, as she kills the head of The Church of The Collective.

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Victoria Neuman in The Boys Season 2 finale.

It would appear that this makes Neuman aligned at least in part with Vought, which is confusing to say the least. Her public persona is all about opposing the corporation and its interests, while her private actions advanced their agenda. It’s also here where the show’s cutting wit veers into dangerous territory. So far, its message and goals have been fairly left-wing, making fun of ultra-nationalism, corporate greed and the rise of modern white supremacy. Turning Neuman into the next season’s villain risks conflating the show’s target and creating a South Park-esque ironic satire where both sides are bad and caring about politics is a sucker’s game.

Ennis and Robertson's portrayal of George Bush was blatantly disrespectful. Victor Neuman was an unintelligent pervert and a puppet for vast corporate forces that sought to further their share price at the expense of human lives. It’s not a problem for a piece of media to caricaturize public figures, as some of the best and most poignant works have come from satire like this. But those works do need to be focused, to have intent and to have purpose. Just as well, Kripke and his fellow writers need to be careful as they turn America’s left-wing firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into a villain for their show. In doing so, they risk sabotaging their show’s positive message and social impact, but it’ll be hard to say whether they walk that line successfully until Season 3 premieres.

Amazon Studios' The Boys stars Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie, Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk, Tomer Kapon as Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara as the Female, Erin Moriarty as Annie January, Chace Crawford as the Deep, Antony Starr as Homelander, Aya Cash as Stormfront and Simon Pegg as Hughie's dad. Season 2 is available on Prime Video now.

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