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The Boys has been forced to add a disclaimer to the start of its season four finale due to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump,
Amazon’s Prime Video series released the gory show’s penultimate season finale on Thursday (18 July) and, weeks ago, the episode’s title was revealed to be ”Assassination Run”.
However, this has been changed to “Season 4 Finale” after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate the former US president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday (13 July).
Trump was bundled from the podium surrounded by the Secret Service just seconds after a bullet scraped his ear mid-speech.
A plot in the final episode of The Boys season four finale sees the show’s lead characters, led by Jack Quaid’s Hughie, attempting to block an assassination attempt on President-Elect Robert Singer (Jim Beaver), orchestrated by villainous superhero Homelander (Antony Starr).
At the start of the episode, a disclaimer now reads: “Viewer discretion advised. This episode contains scenes of fictional political violence. Any similarities to recent events are completely coincidental and unintentional. Prime Video, Amazon, MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Television and the producers of The Boys oppose, in the strongest terms, real-world violence of any kind.
Earlier this week, Channel 4 pulled an episode of The Simpsons it was due to repeat after the attempted assassination.
An episode titled “Lisa the Iconoclast” was due to air at 1pm on Sunday (14 July) – a day after the attack– as the network continued to run episodes from its seventh season. But the episode was abruptly replaced by another instalment from a later season.
Daily Show host Jon Stewart revealed he had to cancel plans to broadcast the show from Milwaukee in Wisconsin, where the Republican National Convention is currently taking place, due to the incident.
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“We dodged a catastrophe, but it was still a tragedy,” the late night presenter said, before paying tribute to Comperatore.
Meanwhile, Tim Robbins criticised conspiracy theories drawing parallels between the incident and his film Bob Roberts
The Shawshank Redemption star wrote, directed and starred in the 1992 political drama, which follows a conservative politician running for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania as he stages a failed attempt on his life to increase his public support in order to win the election.
Writing on X/Twitter, Robbins spoke out against the speculation, saying “To anyone drawing a parallel between my film Bob Roberts and the attempted assassination of Trump, let’s be clear. What happened yesterday was a real attempt on a presidential candidate’s life.”
