The Boys receives award from PETA for live octopus eating scene

Season 3 of The Boys is airing now on Prime Video, and it’s getting a lot of buzz for all the things you’d expect: excessive gore, shocking visuals, poignant social commentary, horribly messed up Homelander scenes, and more. However, today the subversive superhero show is being recognized for something a bit different.

Animal rights group PETA has just awarded The Boys with its “Tech, Not Terror” Award for a scene in Episode 3 where The Deep (Chace Crawford) eats a live octopus. If you’ve seen The Boys, you can guess how much of a difficult experience this was for The Deep, who can not only talk to sea creatures but is very close to several. This scene really played up The Deep’s conflict at being forced to eat his octopus friend by the sadistic Homelander (Anthony Starr).

The scene is in the third episode of the season, after Homelander has just welcomed The Deep back into the Seven as a way to mess with his co-captain Starlight’s (Erin Moriarty) head. The Deep thinks everything’s good…until Homelander reveals that the final course of his celebratory welcome-back dinner is his good friend Timothy the octopus, served live on a platter. As The Deep protests that Timothy is his friend and has a family, Homelander does his Homelander thing and makes it clear that eating the octopus is the only way out of the situation. Even The Deep’s wife gets on it, texting him to say he needs to ‘EAT THE F***ING OCTOPUS.’

No octopi were harmed in the making of The Boys

So he does, and it’s gross, and it’s weird, and you feel real bad for Timothy as The Deep swallows him whole. This apparently sat pretty well with PETA, both because the show opted to use CGI instead of a real octopus and because of how much empathy they built for the sea creature. Here’s their statement:

"PETA Awards Amazon Prime Series The Boys for CGI Octopus SceneLos Angeles – PETA is honoring actor Chace Crawford, The Boys creator Eric Kripke, and the show’s special effects team with its “Tech, Not Terror” Award for the cruelty-free and thought-provoking scene involving a computer-generated octopus in the Amazon Prime series’ latest episode.In the scene, Crawford’s character is forced to eat a close friend-an octopus named Timothy, whom the show depicts as an individual with a family, using cutting-edge technology instead of a live animal.In an interview about the animal’s grisly and tragic end, showrunner Kripke explains that the mollusk “didn’t deserve the cruel fate of being eaten raw”-a fate many real octopuses meet, as billons of invertebrates are killed for food each year.“The Boys’ real heroes are working behind the scenes, creating a realistic CGI octopus so that animals can live in peace,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “PETA is celebrating this series for helping viewers see every octopus as an individual like Timothy, not as an entrée or as entertainment.”Highly intelligent and known to caress and kiss, octopuses communicate with each other using patterns and colors. They use tools, can unscrew jar lids, and have the capacity to feel bored. Those held in captivity have even attempted to escape and squirted their captors with water."

All in all, this is a good day’s work for Eric Kripke and the rest of the team behind The Boys. The show’s good at pushing us in unexpectedly thought-provoking directions, and this latest turn is no exception.

The Boys season 3 is airing now on Prime Video. New episodes drop on Fridays.

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