The Boys' New York City Vought Tower Is Actually One Of Toronto's Fanciest Places To Listen To Music

Although "The Boys" is famous for its over-the-top violence and supe-related sexual mayhem, what it should be most famous for is its absurdly non-New York depiction of New York City. The show's first four seasons were filmed in Toronto, and the final season will be filmed there too; this isn't a new practice for American TV, but rarely has a show put so little effort into disguising what it's doing. Even "Scream VI," a movie whose setting was easily identifiable as Montreal to any Canadian viewers, put more effort into the New York aesthetic than "The Boys" has.  

Perhaps the coolest example of "The Boys" shamelessly showing off Toronto is with the Vought Tower. In the show, the tower is an imposing skyscraper, with a top floor that the Supes in the Seven can use to gaze down at the city. Most of the building is fake, but the base of it is Roy Thompson Hall, which is used for orchestra concerts, lectures, movie screenings for the Toronto International Film Festival, and more. When Homelander isn't using the building to torment his co-workers, some sophisticated musician will be using it to perform for a fancy audience. Do you know how sometimes we'll hear violin music when Homelander has a mental breakdown? Well, maybe that's just an RTH concert playing downstairs. 

The Vought Tower has the real Roy Thompson Hall as its base, and then the show digitally plopped a giant tower on top. It's like RTH is wearing a giant top hat. The Vought Tower is featured in the picture above, and you can see what the real RTH looks like here. 

Not only did the show use RTH's exterior for establishing shots, but they filmed many of their scenes inside the Vought Tower in the RTH as well. It's inside the building that RTH becomes most familiar; Marvel fans might recognize it as the same location where Professor X confronted Magneto in the first live-action "X-Men" movie in 2000. Fans of "The Expanse" might recognize it as the futuristic location of the U.N. in the 2350s. 

RTH has an imposing, futuristic aesthetic to it that's irresistible to a lot of filmmakers. When it comes to "The Boys" wanting to establish the sheer power of Vought International, few other buildings could've done the trick.

The rest of "The Boys" will make use of Toronto landmarks like David Pecaut Square or Yonge Street, and even the trees in the background of some shots will give the show away as not really being filmed in New York. Still, the show does make some attempts to disguise itself. In those season 1 scenes within what's supposed to be the New York subway, the production team took the time to put some NYC-specific signage on the Toronto's Lower Bay Station. Eagle-eyed New York commuters could probably tell this wasn't their subway, the Boys were walking in, but it looked close enough not to break the immersion. 

And of course, you can't really blame the show for not filming at an actual New York subway station, as that'd be pretty expensive. The Lower Bay station was the more reasonable choice, since it's been out of use since the '60s and is now mostly used for training new Toronto train operators. The station may no longer be deemed fit for passenger use, but it's been kept in just good enough condition to make for the perfect filming location for any movie/show involving a subway. You may not have thought you were familiar with Lower Bay Station, but if you've seen movies like Guillermo Del Toro's "Mimic" or Gary Fleder's "Don't Say a Word," you definitely are. 

In the end, Toronto's a pretty great location to base a show's production around. Yes, the bad weather can often complicate things (as was the case with filming Will Ferrell's season 4 cameo), but when you take the tax incentives and the sheer number of cool, New York-esque locations, the city's a no-brainer. Toronto's been the not-so-secret home of "The Boys" for four seasons now, and it's served its role well.