The Boys Season 4 Joins The Time-Honored Tradition Of Batman Parodies
Spoilers for "The Boys" to follow.
"The Boys" season 4 is making the best use of its spin-off series "Gen V." The season is not only incorporating the supe-killing virus developed during "Gen V" season 1, but now some familiar faces are joining the party. Among them is the supe detective Robert Vernon/Tek Knight (Derek Wilson).
Introduced in "Gen V" episode 4, "The Whole Truth," Tek Knight debuted on "The Boys" itself in season 4, episode 5, "Beware The Jabberwock, My Son." The sixth and most recent episode, "Dirty Business," brings him back into focus as Hughie (Jack Quaid) goes undercover in Tek Knight's home: a stately manor.
"Gen V" already used Tek Knight as a Batman parody. On that show, his powers were established to be heightened senses that make him as observant as Sherlock Holmes or Adrian Monk. Unlike Batman, however, Tek Knight does have superpowers, but his are invisible ones. By turning Tek Knight into the World's Greatest Detective, "Gen V" satirized both the Dark Knight and the true crime industry.
If there was any doubt that "Gen V" intended Tek Knight to be the Batman of "The Boys," they've now been erased. "Beware The Jabberwock, My Son" reveals his latest in-universe movie — "The Tek Knight" — has a Nirvana soundtrack, an obvious reference to "Something in the Way" being the unofficial theme of 2022's "The Batman."
"Dirty Business," in turn, reveals that Tek Knight is a billionaire orphan who was raised by his butler and comes from a long line of wealth. Unlike Batman, though, Tek Knight is as sinister and reactionary as you'd expect any real billionaire to be.
Tek Knight is as loaded as Bruce Wayne
Homelander (Antony Starr) is plotting a Trump-esque coup and in "Dirty Business," he uses Tek Knight's mansion to host a party for the world's most powerful oligarchs and get them on board with his plan. No matter if a world has supes or not, you can't move any political power without capital.
Tek Knight is already Homelander's co-conspirator, and not just because he's a fellow supe. (Unlike Superman and Batman's chummy dynamic, though, Homelander has no respect for Tek Knight.) You see, Tek Knight's wealth doesn't come from his movies; as he tells Firecracker (Valorie Curry), "You don't get this [a mansion] from entertainment money, this is real money."
Like Bruce Wayne, Mr. Vernon inherited his wealth — but he's no dime a dozen industrialist. 11 generations back, his family made a living catching enslaved people in the Antebellum South; today, they carry on that tradition as private prison moguls. Tek Knight has also used his super-sleuth career to inflate his coffers: "I catch, house, and rehab criminals — and then I catch them all over again!" Now, Homelander wants to use these prisons to lock up dissidents and his political enemies once he seizes power.
This is a clever twist on Batman; after all, Gotham City's Arkham Asylum is probably the most famous super-villain prison in comics. The idea that Batman's rogues gallery of criminals, and Arkham's high escape rate with it, is all part of a racket? That's inspired and comes with a salient point about the corrupt American justice system (which throws countless Black men behind bars every year to exploit them for unpaid labor.)
Instead of zeroing in on this, "The Boys" takes its humor... elsewhere.
In The Boys, Tek Knight has his very own Batcave
Batman famously has a Batcave hidden under Wayne Manor, with secret entrances in the manor itself. The Batcave is a crime lab, armory, training gym, garage, and brooding spot all-in-one and essential to Batman's self-imposed mission.
"Dirty Business" shows that Tek Knight has his own Tek Cave, one that's accessed by pulling the right book from the shelf in his study ("Just like in my movies," he says). Only, the Tek Cave isn't for crime-fighting; it's Tek Knight's personal sex dungeon. Dildos line the walls instead of Batarangs and the room's centerpiece is a Saint Andrew's cross, not a Bat-computer or Batmobile.
"The Whole Truth" established that Tek Knight had... perversions. Due to a brain tumor, he feels a compulsion to stick his dick in every hole he sees, from donuts to vacuum cleaners to logs. ("The Whole Truth" is a homophone pun.)
Some context: In the comics, Tek Knight is an Iron Man parody who wears a suit of armor with a jetpack and is part of Payback, a team parodying the Avengers. His tumor, and its side effects, were a reference to Tony Stark's frequent ailments (from his bad heart to the tumor he had in "The Ultimates") — but with a perverse twist.
The tumor is the only bit of Iron Man remaining in the TV show's take on Tek Knight. In keeping it, the show yet again repeats its suspicious habit of using sex as a shorthand for depravity. (A habit inherited from comic co-creator Garth Ennis, granted.) In "The Boys," anyone with a kink or interest in BDSM is invariably portrayed as pathetic or deviant; Tek Knight is both and Hughie gets a firsthand seat.
Like Batman, Tek Knight has a revolving door of sidekicks
Hughie is able to infiltrate Tek Knight's party because he's disguised as Web Weaver (a Spider-Man parody, down to the full body concealing costume), a supe auditioning to be Tek Knight's new sidekick. The main qualification is a willingness to be Tek Knight's sex toy; Tek Knight's last sidekick, Laddio (Reid Miller), is chained up in his Tek Cave in a red gimp suit, having apparently displeased him somehow. Once Hughie, Annie (Erin Moriarty), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) subdue Tek Knight, Laddio gets revenge by giving them access to all of his mentor's bank accounts. The only way to torture a masochist like Tek Knight for information is to send his millions off to Black Lives Matter and the Innocence Project.
The "Batman" movies do their best to portray the Dark Knight as a grim loner (the last time we got a proper live-action Robin was in 1997). However, the comic Batman has gone through six Robins and four Batgirls; these days, the Bat-family is consistently about a dozen vigilantes strong. Batman is practically a benevolent Fagin figure, taking in troubled young orphans and running an army of costumed child soldiers.
Tek Knight running through his sex object sidekicks and then discarding them parodies not only the modern glut of Bat-children, but also longstanding queer readings of Batman. In 1954, child psychiatrist Fredric Wertham penned "Seduction of the Innocent," a book attacking the comics industry by claiming, for one, that Batman and Robin's dynamic promoted homosexuality to children.
Wertham's words triggered a moral panic. Before you rush to respond with how Batman is totally straight... stop and consider. Remember, the best Batman of all — Kevin Conroy — was gay. Of all the awful things Tek Knight does on "Gen V" and "The Boys," his sex life doesn't rank at the top. I just wish the show realized that.
"The Boys" is streaming on Prime Video.