Tradition dictates that superheroes should be spandex-clad bastions of moral superiority - so why is television's current roster of costumed vigilantes dominated by the flawed, ambiguous, and downright awful? Back when superheroes were restricted to the pages of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons, the likes of Clark Kent, Peter Parker and the X-Men were ethically sound. Even characters considered antiheroes operated within a defined code or turned their "flaws" into a positive - Bruce Wayne getting over his parents' deaths by punching people in the face, for example. The notion of superheroes being righteous and just continued once Marvel and DC began propping up movie theaters, from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, to Brie Larson's Captain Marvel, by way of Christian Bale's Batman.
In more recent years, however, a fresh trend has emerged, with popular TV shows gleefully blurring the lines between good and evil, eschewing the clearly-defined superhero/supervillain dynamic of yore. Jupiter's Legacy, where the offspring of former heroes fall into a melee of drugs and debauchery.
With modern TV offering so many subversive superheroes, what's behind the phenomenon, and why is it so prevalent here in 2021? More than anything else, the impact of so-called "superhero fatigue" can't be understated. Since the turn of the millennium, comic book movies and TV shows have poured from Hollywood at a staggering rate, and there's still no end in sight as Marvel and DC prepare their next wave of releases. The vast majority of these - the MCU, Arrowverse, most of the DCEU - comply with the traditional notion of a superhero. Characters might experience inner conflicts and moral challenges, but their core goodness is rarely in doubt, and the distinction between hero and villain remains explicit. As the superhero genre edges closer to saturation, audiences become hungry for a more refreshing angle, and TV shows such as The Boys and Invincible stand out as exciting reinventions among the throng of PG-13 do-gooders. The small screen is only too happy to accommodate the mature content that inevitably comes from such despicable creations.
While the rise of super-shady superheroes like Watchmen in 1986, proving interest in morally questionable superheroes is much older than the current renaissance would suggest.
Massively ahead of its time, Watchmen doesn't necessarily reflect the 1980s comic book landscape as a whole, but Moore's legendary graphic novel does demonstrate how superheroes can provide social commentary on real-world issues. The likes of Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan acted as a stark warning that leaders and public figures shouldn't be idolized or trusted at a time of deep political turmoil. "Who watches the Watchmen?" and all that.
That the current wave of amoral superheroes coincides with the most volatile political climate since Invincible, Jupiter's Legacy, etc., is a damning indictment of the era in which these stories are being written.