A lot is going on in the Prime Video superhero satire series "The Boys," so some fans might not have noticed that its alleged New York City setting isn't all that authentic. Though they thankfully don't try to sell us on the idea that the main city in "The Boys" is New York too hard and it's more of an assumed given based on the setting in the comic books, it's pretty clear that like many other shows and movies, the fictional NYC onscreen was definitely not filmed in New York. In this case, it wasn't
even filmed in the United States!
While the southern U.S. city of Atlanta has somewhat regularly stood in for New York, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for "The Boys," the filmmaking team behind the series decided to head to the Great White North, primarily filming in and around the city of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada. It's kind of a bummer that Toronto so often has to stand in for New York and can't be its own city onscreen more often, but at least it provides the perfect backdrop to all of the mayhem thrown at us by "The Boys" showrunner Eric Kripke. Whether deep in the city, out in the suburbs, or even in the woods somewhere, the Canadian filming locations behind "The Boys" help cement the often bizarre series in a sense of reality.
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Vought Tower Was Filmed At A Real Toronto Landmark
The most recognizable location in "The Boys" is Vought Tower, where the superhero team known as the Seven live and work, and the most important decisions at Vought International are made. The massive tower has a big, weird 7 on the sid,e but has impressive architecture, with a beautiful base surrounded in steel and glass. While the tower itself is digitally generated, the base is not, and it's actually Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall, an especially classy music venue. The gorgeous design of the real-world base is reflected in the rest of the digital design, and honestly it helps make the whole thing feel a tiny bit more real.
Not only does Roy Thompson Hall serve as the exterior base for Vought Tower, but interior scenes were filmed there as well. Fans might recognize the interior from the very first "X-Men" movie in 2000, which filmed there as well, but now it's probably going to be more famous for being the base of Homelander's home base. While the rest of the Vought Tower interior sets, like the Vought offices or Homelander's apartment, are shot on soundstages, there are still elements of the building's architecture present, including exposed beams and lots of floor-to-ceiling windows. But what about the rest of the show's locations?
Toronto And Its Surroundings Provide Perfect Settings For The Boys
Toronto has become a major film hub for movies and television in recent years, in part due to tax incentives, and "The Boys" makes full use of the Ontario capital. Other major show locations, like the cultish Church of the Collective that brainwashed The Deep (Chace Crawford), or the nightmarish Sage Grove facility where they experimented on mentally ill supes, are also based in real Toronto settings, using the Scottish Rite in Hamilton and the Southwest Center for Forensic Mental Health Care as filming locations.
Occasionally, filming takes place outside of Toronto, but it doesn't seem like they ever go too far, staying in Ontario. For example, the brutalist Soviet facility where Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) is being held is actually the Ontario Court of Justice, just outside of city hall in the smaller town of Brantford, Ontario, and The Deep's hilarious water park meltdown in season 2 took place at the Wet 'n' Wild Toronto park in Brampton, Ontario.
We'll have to wait and see what other Toronto locations appear in the show's fifth and final season, debuting sometime in 2026. All we know is that it's going to get bloody.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
