Eric Kripke’s The Boys has set a precedent for featuring the most absurd, diabolical, audacious, and boundary-pushing elements into its already wackadoo narrative. With each new season, the show has consistently pushed the boundaries of creativity and done the most unhinged, unthinkable stuff completely out of the blue.
While its infamous Herogasm episode certainly occupied a high place for the most shocking things The Boys has featured, it wasn’t even the most complicated scene. Instead, one scene from season 4 was the most complicated one to shoot, which involved a deep dive into the complexities of science.
The Boys Season 4’s Most Complicated Scene Which Involved a Lot of ‘Scientific Research’
Eric Kripke and The Boys’ team have gone above and beyond the traditional norms to bring some of the most unhinged and jaw-dropping scenes. And crafting such breaking-the-fourth-wall scenes is no easy job for it often involves loads of scientific research and countless hours to execute everything flawlessly.
One of these such scenes is the death sequence involving Supernatural star Rob Benedict’s supe, Splinter. A unique supe who can multiply himself into endless clones, executing the clone fight involving him in episode 2 of The Boys season 4 was an enormous task. However, before the clone flight, the team did a deep dive into science, particularly ‘scientific videos showing how cells replicate,’ to make Benedict’s supe a reality.
Stephan Fleet, the series VFX supervisor, later described the clone fight sequence as hands down the most complicated thing to do of the whole season in a recent interview with IndieWire.
Anytime we’re going to do anything, be it cloning or an octopus, we always do a lot of research and try to find these nuggets of truth to build from. So, even if we’re doing a clone, we’ll look at something like cellular mitosis as a concept for it
States Fleet as he revealed how difficult it was to match everything perfectly. The scene, thus, involved, a lot of stunt choreography and then digitally capturing them, recreating them on the computer, and then shooting them again with actors to capture specific angles. An arduous process, it furthermore took 4 days to shoot the entire thing.
The Boys Season 4’s Clone Fight Featuring Splinter Was a 4-Day-Long Shoot
The Clone Fight featured in the second episode of The Boys‘ fourth season first involved creating a motion control shot featuring Splinter and his many clones at a truther convention. Total one minute and 30 seconds long, the shoot involved dancers rehearsing the entire thing and Rob Benedict (who played all the clones in the episode) later having to replicate them.
Taking a whole 4 days to shoot, the short sequence took over 8 hours of rehearsals and then another 8 hours to shoot.
Everything had to be matched… Ultimately, that show ended up being like 95 percent real with just rotoscoping and placing the characters and about 5 percent of CG to tie it together.
States Fleet as he revealed that this arduous process ultimately helped introduce the most bizarre thing in the most natural way. Despite the challenging shoot, Eric Kripke and and his team did not back down, highlighting their unparalleled commitment towards the show and the lengths they will go to maintain the show’s trademark blend of shocking realism and outlandish fantasy.
The Boys can be streamed on Amazon Prime.
