The new season of The Boys, Amazon’s blackly comic superhero saga, is true to form. Within the first few minutes alone you’re likely to exclaim in surprise at a casting coup, grin at the takedown of Marvel’s storytelling cliches, and recoil in shock at a scene of superpowered pleasure gone bloodily awry. The show, in gleeful and galvanising ways, is a lot. And if you think the audience for the hit series has a strong reaction, imagine what it’s like for the actors.

“The show is quite distinct in ways that I and certain people love, and quite distinct in ways that my grandmother doesn’t,” says Erin Moriarty, who plays caped crusader Starlight. “People often ask about the positive reception, which has been amazing, but there is also the situation where my lovely neighbour, who is very old, asks what show I’m working on and I reply The Boys and her eyes widen and she goes, ‘Oh, that was not for me’.”

A scabrous satire that’s become almost as successful as the superhero industry it feeds off, The Boys is a study in riotous excess. In the show, heads explode, superheroes run amok without oversight, corporations protect their depraved stars, power is explicitly connected to perverse self-interest, fight scenes are drenched in gore and institutions are invariably flawed. The narrative is equal part disturbing and hilarious.

“Art is not meant to be for everyone. It should be polarising. If we did not have a strong reaction that would be a bad thing,” says the 27-year-old Moriarty, whose character has super-strength and fires energy bolts. “Nothing has been or is off limits and that’s very liberating.”

The Boys centres on a group of renegade operatives and vigilantes opposed to “supes”, led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), trying to take down the leading superheroes, such as the all-powerful Homelander (Antony Starr), and the company that created and somewhat controls them, Vought Industries. It amounts to a scathing critique of corporate popular culture and American political nationalism, while lining up hedonistic misdeeds

But the extremes don’t have an impact without a centre to anchor the show. On The Boys it’s Moriarty’s Starlight, who reached the superhero elite of serving with the sociopathic Homelander and his team as a conservative Christian convinced she was fighting for good. There’s also Jack Quaid’s suburban dude and unlikely Butcher recruit, Hughie Campbell; both supply the personal repulsion and moral struggle that makes the storytelling resonate. In a setting where craziness proliferates, Starlight and Hughie supply the emotional gravity.

“Starlight’s just trying to do her best and knows that she’s an honest, earnest person in a world that is corrupt,” Moriarty says. “She’s living her truth – which is that just because you’re earnest and honest and not willing to play that corrupt game, doesn’t mean you’re weak. It’s the opposite in that you’re strong and trying to make the world a better place. When we met her she thought that would happen by joining Vought, now it’s through taking down Vought or taking down Homelander, who she thought was the epitome of superhero good.”

The show’s creator Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revolution), did not hesitate to pitch Moriarty into demanding circumstances. In the very episode of The Boys, upon Starlight’s arrival in New York City as Vought’s latest star, her jaded superhero colleague The Deep (Chace Crawford), coerces and sexually assaults the naïve 20-something. The workplace crime and Starlight’s subsequent struggle with trauma made the #MeToo movement a focus.