The Boys Meets Fleabag In 16-Part Hulu Fantasy Series With Rare Rotten Tomatoes Score

Published Sep 6, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT

Arielle Port started as a TV producer, developing content for Netflix (Firefly Lane, Brazen) and Hallmark (The Santa Stakeout, A Christmas Treasure) before transitioning into entertainment journalism. Her love of story went from interest to lifelong passion while at The University of Pennsylvania, where she fell in with a student-run web series, Classless TV, and it was a gateway drug. Arielle Port has been a Writer for Screen Rant since August 2024. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and more importantly, her cat, Boseman.

Superheroes are the face of modern fantasy storytelling. For decades, fantasy dominated the cultural imagination with stories about magical other worlds and characters navigating realities far removed from our own. But superheroes have increasingly filled that role, creating expansive worlds where the impossible is treated as ordinary.

The Boys is arguably the biggest superhero TV show yet, as it moves away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s bright tones and signature quips into something much darker, bloodier, and more cynical. The first three seasons of The Boys were its creative peak, as the series' later seasons became increasingly dark and repetitive. However, shortly after The Boys season 3, Hulu released a superhero show that incorporated a similarly heightened world but kept the stakes grounded, using its characters' unique powers to fuel episodic stories about everyday problems.

Hulu's Extraordinary was a brilliantly original series by first-time TV creator Emma Moran. Extraordinary is set in a world where everyone develops a superpower at 18, except 25-year-old Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who is still waiting for hers. Its irreverent, raunchy comedy turns bizarre powers into the backdrop for low-stakes stories about relationships, insecurity, and the general chaos of being in your 20s.

Moran brings a fresh and irreverent perspective to Extraordinary, much like Phoebe Waller-Bridge did with Fleabag, finding comedy in the messy, unfiltered realities of being a young person. Even if the series didn’t break through in a saturated fantasy streaming market, critics and audiences loved it, as its perfect 100% average Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and 90% audience score prove.

The superpowers in Extraordinary are often hilariously specific. There's a man who can make anyone orgasm with a single touch, a man with a 3-D-printing anus, and a dentist who can make people hear different music based on how they perceive her. Jen's mother can control technology, though she doesn't really understand how to control her power. Jen’s therapist can literally take her inside her own mind, turning talk therapy into a physical journey through her psyche.

Then there's Jen’s roommate and best friend Carrie (Sofia Oxenham), who can channel the dead, an ability she initially uses for practical matters like wills and legal disputes. Carrie's ability can be funny and useful, but it also becomes surprisingly heartbreaking when she uses it to help Jen maintain a relationship with her father beyond the grave.

What makes Extraordinary's powers so entertaining is how ordinary people actually use them. Extraordinary understands that having a superpower wouldn't necessarily make someone a hero. Sometimes, it will just make your already complicated life considerably stranger.

Extraordinary uses superheroes as a setting rather than the entire point of the story. In this world, everyone has a power, but the abilities are often highly specific, unreliable, gross, or just plain useless. The heart of the show is still its messy, relatable characters and their relationships, making it feel refreshingly different from heavily serialized superhero stories.

Viewers experience this world through Jen, a 25-year-old who still hasn't developed a power, and her equally chaotic flatmates. For example, Kash (Bilal Hasna) mostly uses his ability to rewind time (but only by 10 seconds) to undo things he says that upset his girlfriend, Carrie; he's definitely not saving the world, even if he does like the idea of becoming a hero.

Extraordinary is an original world with no existing lore to catch up on. There are no movies to watch as homework or decades of continuity to memorize. With just 16 episodes across two seasons, it's the kind of show viewers can throw on and immediately enjoy, without needing to know anything about the superhero genre beyond the basic premise.

Extraordinary arrived at a difficult time for superhero entertainment. Superhero fatigue was becoming a real concern in the early 2020s, while The Boys had already established itself as the dominant irreverent take on the genre. Extraordinary premiered just six months after The Boys season 3, which was itself a major critical and audience success.

That made Extraordinary a tough sell despite its critical acclaim. Unlike The Boys or Marvel's many projects, it wasn't connected to an established franchise or recognizable IP. Disney was also becoming more selective about its streaming investments, making it increasingly difficult for smaller original series to justify the cost of another season.

Extraordinary was ultimately canceled in January 2025 after two seasons, despite both seasons earning perfect scores from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney never publicly gave a specific reason for the cancellation, but with the launch of Marvel TV programming just a year later, it likely didn’t want the competition.

The cancellation is especially frustrating because Extraordinary had found a way to make the superhero genre feel genuinely fresh at a time when audiences were increasingly ready for something different. For all of Extraordinary's strengths, it still didn't get a third season, an unfortunately ordinary fate for an extraordinarily original show.