The Boys: Queen Maeve’s Codename Reveals Her DC Superhero Inspiration (Not Wonder Woman)

The Boys is best known for its satircal analogues to almost every conceivable major superhero, especially those from the big two companies, DC and Marvel. Queen Maeve, of the Seven, is often reduced to being the Wonder Woman stand-in of the group – but a closer look at her character reveals inspiration from another DC hero: Amethyst.

Known as the “Princess of Gemworld,” Amethyst was clearly and inspiration for Ennis’ creation, Maeve, who is known by the similar moniker, “Empress of the Other World.”

Rather than satirizing singular heroes, Garth Ennis’ The Boys was particularly successful because it targeted types and tropes prevalent in the superhero genre, exposing them to a harsh, uncompromising critique.

Related: The Boys Artist Claims the Seven AREN”T a Justice League Parody

Queen Maeve was a member of the Seven for the majority of The Boys run – until her apathy finally reached its limit, and she attempted to take down Homelander. Unfortunately for Maeve, this latent act of heroism resulted in her death. Given her prominent role on the premiere superteam in the Boys world, the character is most frequently compared to Diana Prince, DC’s Wonder Woman. In fact, there is another DC hero she has a great deal in common with, Amethyst While Maeve’s otherworldly status is a fiction of the Seven’s extensive propaganda, it is clearly modeled after Amethyst, more-so than the Justice League’s Amazonian.

The larger issue with over-emphasizing the comparison between Maeve and Wonder Woman is that it is reductive of Garth Ennis’ larger satirical project in The Boys. Rather than take aim at individual characters – especially those with as long and storied a history as Wonder Woman – Ennis’ focuses his criticism on concepts, especially those he finds silly, or inane, which have nevertheless become pervasive in comic book stories over the course of his career, and despite his best efforts to counterprogram what he sees as the prevailing shortcomings of the genre. By mixing-and-matching elements of different existing characters, Ennis adds more dimensions to his argument.

As with any adaptation, Amazon’s The Boys in some way traffics in reduction of the original material – this can be for the better at times, boiling the comic’s story down to its most essential, most exhilarating components, but it can also simplify the conversation around the franchise. By leaning into the Wonder Woman comparison for Maeve, the series can perhaps more easily communicate with a larger audience-base; the trade-off, however, is that the greater context of her connection to other characters, like Amethyst, can be lost in the shuffle, altering what precisely The Boys is intended to reflect about the wider state of the medium.