The Boys Trailer Flagged For Content 20 Million Times, Probably Because Of The Octopus
When you see a trailer online or in a theater, it typically opens with a green slide that says, "This trailer has been approved for Appropriate Audiences by the Motion Picture Association of America." Commonly known as a "green band trailer," these are the previews that are deemed suitable for most audiences. For the trailers that venture into more R or NC-17 rated content like coarse language, violence, nudity and/or sexual content, or gore, those are considered "red band trailers" thanks to their red slides from the MPAA. Simple concept: Green means go for the general public and red means stop.
Well, when it comes to a show like "The Boys" on Amazon Prime that is non-stop red band trailer content, that one red flag telling people that it's not suitable for most audiences apparently isn't enough. In fact, it looks like a few million red flags isn't enough.
Deep blue sea
Following the release of the recent trailer for the third season of "The Boys," fans have been sharing their excitement for what's being called the "most messed up" season of the show so far. So much so that, if the series' official Twitter account is to be believed, the video has been flagged for content 20,093,031 times.
Everyone's raving that the Season 3 teaser is "deeply unhinged" and asking "what the f*ck did we just watch?" pic.twitter.com/6focVp819c
— THE BOYS (@TheBoysTV) March 19, 2022
It's currently uncertain what those content warnings could have been for. A little bathroom sex? Maybe. Some bodies bursting with buckets of blood? That's a possibility. What about when a character breaks another's arm by, as our own Danielle Ryan puts it, "turning his elbow into a knee?" Yeah, that's pretty brutal. Thinly veiled MAGA substitute fascists? They get on TV easy enough as it is. It's definitely not the beans. But all of those things pale in comparison to the octopus.
For context, disgraced hero The Deep (played by Chace Crawford) can be found in the teaser trailer having sex with someone. Mid-coitus, he looks up at a nearby fish tank and seductively eyes up the octopus that lives there. Clearly, he's looking to take a page out of Aquaman's playbook (according to Peacemaker) by porking the porpoise, so to speak. If his desire to insert himself into a cephalopod isn't enough to warrant all those red flags, then maybe the image of him doing it to an octopus' mouth when it looks like this makes up the difference.
Yeah, if I had to look at this picture in preparation for this article, then you did too, dear reader. But to cleanse your palate, here's the red band teaser trailer in question.
The third season of "The Boys" starring Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Anthony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, and Giancarlo Esposito, plus newcomers Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, Laurie Holden as Crimson Countess, and Sean Patrick Flanery as Gunpowder premieres on Amazon Prime Video on June 3, 2022.