Rob Benedict as Splinter in The Boys Season 4's sauna scene

The Boys‘ fourth season just dropped one of the superhero satire’s most shocking sight gags yet: the sauna scene. So, is The Boys Season 4’s sauna scene in the comics, or was it invented specifically for the show?

The Boys Season 4’s Sauna Scene, Explained

The Boys Season 4’s sauna scene arrives midway through Episode 2, “Life Among the Septics.” After Frenchie and Kimiko trail Firecracker’s assistant, Splinter, to a conference center sauna, they hear strange noises coming from inside. Nudging open the door to investigate, they’re unprepared for what they find. Splinter has used his self-duplication superpowers to create a row of doppelgangers linked together in a Human Centipede-style chain, and they’re all, well, rimming each other. And at the front, Splinter Prime is getting off to Firecracker’s headshot.

This is exactly the kind of gross-out humor you’d expect from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s The Boys comic book series. However, The Boys Season 4’s sauna scene isn’t actually in the comics. It can’t be, as Ennis and Robertson didn’t devise the Splinter character; The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke and his team did. The same goes for Firecracker. She only exists in the show’s canon. So, even though The Boys comic books boast plenty of depraved sex acts – the comics inspired Season 3’s Herogasm sequence, after all – Splinter’s shenanigans in the sauna aren’t among them.

The Boys Showrunner Breaks Down the Sauna Scene

Regardless of its origins, The Boys Season 4’s sauna scene (and the fight that follows) was predictably tricky to shoot. Kripke recounted the scene’s behind-the-scenes story in a recent Variety interview, starting with his initial discussions with Splinter actor Rob Benedict. “I said, ‘Here are the things that this role is going to be doing, and you need to know exactly what you’re getting into, because we’re friends,’” he said. “So I explained every single scene, and [Rob] was just down to do it. He just thought it was hilarious – and it is.”

“And the stuff we had to do to make all that work,” Kripke continued. “Like, we had to make a perfect prosthetic of his ass so he could eat his own ass in the same shot. Because it’s a seven-day shoot, that fight scene, and he’s every other person in that fight, that’s a lot of time to be naked. So we ended up building a prosthetic penis, for what it’s worth. So he’s not so much naked, as he is wearing a thong for seven days. But pretty close.”

The Boys Season 4 is currently streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes dropping Thursdays.