Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 2. Proceed at your own risk!
It’s a side of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel like you’ve never seen before, presented as only The Boys can do.
During Season 4’s second episode, Butcher, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie and Kimiko found themselves fighting two new supes, Firecracker and Splinter, when the battle crashed a neighboring bat mitzvah party themed as The Marvelous Miss Rachel. Against the backdrop of Mrs. Maisel character cardboard cutouts, including ones featuring stars Rachel Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub, and the sounds of “Hava Nagila,” the two sides duked it out. But what gave the sequence that special, twisted Boys flare was the fact that Splinter — a supe who can clone himself — had replicated and all the many Splinters were completely, full-frontal nude during the fight.
So did Prime Video have any concerns about The Boys setting a very graphic and phallic scene against one of their biggest shows? Surprisingly not, showrunner Eric Kripke tells TVLine.
“I remember the day that [writer/executive producer] Paul Grellong said, ‘Well, you know, the bat mitzvah should be The Marvelous Miss Rachel,’ and we all just started laughing,” Kripke shares. “So we reached out to Amazon, and it’s not Amazon’s call, really. It’s the producers of that show. So Amazon reached out to them, and to their credit, they’re like, ‘That’s amazing,’ and they loved it. And once they gave us permission, we were able to go full Maisel. That bat mitzvah went full Maisel, and it’s one of the funnier jokes in a very, very funny episode.”
Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino tells TVLine that she hasn’t seen the risqué footage.
“It’s been like a million years since we talked about it,” she wrote in an email. “I’m sure it’s extremely family friendly and tasteful with no mentions of penises whatsoever! Boys will be boys… “
Baring all as Splinter is Rob Benedict, whom fans of Supernatural know as Chuck/God on the aforementioned CW drama. His supe character is a far cry from the world of the Winchesters — the naked fight was just one of the episode’s weird and, um, revealing Splinter moments — and Kripke notes that Benedict knew what he was signing up for when he got the part.
“We just did, obviously, the craziest s–t,” Kripke continues. “I mean, just to even film that sauna scene alone, we needed to build a photoreal prosthetic butt of Rob’s, because he has to eat out his own butt over and over and over again and keep moving in different positions. Even that alone is a victory for mankind.” (We told you it got weird!)
Between Benedict’s stint, Jensen Ackles’ naked introduction as Soldier Boy last season and Alexander Calvert’s explosive penis scene on the spinoff Gen V, one can’t help noticing a trend of Supernatural alums in unexpectedly graphic, nude scenes.
After a hearty chuckle, Kripke responds, “That’s just part of the show. I mean, hey, man, you’re swimming in our water. Sooner or later, you’re going to be naked. But yeah, that’s actually not intentional.”
So if one day Kripke gets his wish to have Supernatural’s other leading man, Jared Padalecki, on The Boys, how will he ever top all these other crazy moments?
“It’s about finding the right role,” he says. “Look, I want to. I mean, even if it’s just for a guest shot. I sort of feel like Jared is the Pokémon I haven’t collected yet.”