Amazon’s small screen adaptation of The Boys has become a bit of a cultural phenomenon ever since debuting over the summer, as well as ending up as one of the streaming platform’s most-viewed shows in just a matter of weeks. Violent, compelling and darkly comedic, it found itself as 2019’s buzziest new series and to the surprise of absolutely no one, season 2 is now in production.
When exactly it’ll be with us is still unclear, but things hit a bit of a bump in the road this week as shooting was halted in Toronto due to protest over a rather violent scene. According to the description from the production company, here’s what it would’ve involved:
“One of the rogue superheroes attacks the crowd. There will be people screaming and running in the scene as well as a considerable amount of fake blood.”
On the surface, that doesn’t seem too excessive or offensive, but it’s important to remember that Toronto residents are still reeling from an attack in the city last year that saw a crazed driver take his van down a sidewalk in an attempt to kill as many people as he could. When all was said and done, he’d murdered 10 individuals, leaving 16 more injured. As such, it’s easy to see why shooting a scene like the one described above might not’ve been the best idea.
Toronto Councillor John Filion was on hand to speak up and halt the production, explaining that he knew it needed to be cancelled out of respect for the victims of the aforementioned attack.
“I flipped out,” said Filion. “There are people who work in this building, who went out onto Yonge St. to try to help the van attack victims — many of them are still traumatized. And think about the families and loved ones of those victims. So I made some phone calls and that second portion was cancelled.
City of Toronto spokesperson Brad Ross mentioned that there were complaints from residents, too, and Filion went on to talk about how disrespectful the scene would’ve been had it gone through.
“It’s about people literally re-living those events. It’s disrespectful to even think of it. Even if nobody had seen anything, it’s still disrespectful. I guess somebody just wasn’t thinking.”
The first season of The Boys delicately balanced a number of hugely different tones, and while this scene by itself wouldn’t be out of character for the show, we don’t blame the city of Toronto for putting an end to it and can certainly see why it would’ve been problematic to shoot.
It doesn’t appear that it’ll cause any sort of significant delay to the production, either, and as far as we know, season 2 is still on track for a mid-2020 debut. Watch this space for more.