EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains spoilers for the season finale of Hulu’s “Furious.”
Viewers who tuned into Hulu’s “Furious” might be forgiven for experiencing a sense of déjà vu: A billionaire with the initials J.E. is revealed to have sexually abused teen girls trafficked to him by a close female accomplice. His crimes, long covered up thanks to money and a network of powerful people, lead to a resolution in Monday’s finale that might breed, well, a little fury.
“Furious” creator Elizabeth Meriwether insists the Jeffrey Epstein case was merely a backdrop for her true goal of creating a show about the women hurt by men like him. “It was definitely in my mind, but I was never thinking like this is the story of that,” Meriwether said. “There’s a lot of predators to choose from in terms of things in the world that are news stories that have happened recently.”
“Furious” may not be a series explicitly about Epstein, but it’s among several recent TV shows and films that have taken obvious inspiration from the scandal to different degrees. On HBO’s “Industry” this year, a leading character began trafficking young women to the rich and powerful, following an arc that the show’s creators have said was directly inspired by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. There were also two separate movies chronicling the downfall of (former prince) Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the scandal, Netflix’s “Scoop” and Amazon Prime Video’s “A Very Royal Scandal,” released in 2024 — the same year director Zoë Kravtiz released “Blink Twice,” a film about young women trying to escape being sexually abused on a billionaire-owned private island.
