Hughie is able to infiltrate Tek Knight’s party because he’s disguised as Web Weaver (a Spider-Man parody, down to the full body concealing costume), a supe auditioning to be Tek Knight’s new sidekick. The main qualification is a willingness to be Tek Knight’s sex toy; Tek Knight’s last sidekick, Laddio (Reid Miller), is chained up in his Tek Cave in a red gimp suit, having apparently displeased him somehow. Once Hughie, Annie (Erin Moriarty), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) subdue Tek Knight, Laddio gets revenge by giving them access to all of his mentor’s bank accounts. The only way to torture a masochist like Tek Knight for information is to send his millions off to Black Lives Matter and the Innocence Project.

The “Batman” movies do their best to portray the Dark Knight as a grim loner (the last time we got a proper live-action Robin was in 1997). However, the comic Batman has gone through six Robins and four Batgirls; these days, the Bat-family is consistently about a dozen vigilantes strong. Batman is practically a benevolent Fagin figure, taking in troubled young orphans and running an army of costumed child soldiers.

Tek Knight running through his sex object sidekicks and then discarding them parodies not only the modern glut of Bat-children, but also longstanding queer readings of Batman. In 1954, child psychiatrist Fredric Wertham penned “Seduction of the Innocent,” a book attacking the comics industry by claiming, for one, that Batman and Robin’s dynamic promoted homosexuality to children.

Wertham’s words triggered a moral panic. Before you rush to respond with how Batman is totally straight… stop and consider. Remember, the best Batman of all — Kevin Conroy — was gay. Of all the awful things Tek Knight does on “Gen V” and “The Boys,” his sex life doesn’t rank at the top. I just wish the show realized that.

“The Boys” is streaming on Prime Video.