{"id":53157,"date":"2026-05-17T19:17:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53157"},"modified":"2026-05-17T19:17:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:17:40","slug":"whats-up-with-the-cybertruck-showing-up-in-tv-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53157","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Up With the Cybertruck Showing Up in TV Lately?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Recently, in the span of three weeks, three entirely disparate TV shows on two different networks\/streaming services had a surprising connection. One is a superhero series, the other a shocking (former) teen drama, the third a faux-reality comedy. Both in tone and execution, they couldn\u2019t be more different. Yet when <u>The Boys<\/u>, <u>Euphoria<\/u>, and <u>Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat<\/u> needed a go-to sight gag to indicate their characters are absolute loser villains, only one car could do: the Tesla Cybertruck.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Does driving a Cybertruck make <em>you<\/em> an absolute loser villain? That\u2019s up to [gestures] society to decide, as well as you, the reader of this article. But on TV at least, the trend is clear, with a relatively minor number of exceptions.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">In fact, Tesla\u2019s boxy monstrosity has been the subject of mockery on TV for a while now, including appearances on HBO\u2019s <u>The Righteous Gemstones<\/u>, <u>Netflix\u2019s Nobody Wants This<\/u>, FX\u2019s <u>It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/u>, and kicking off this big, bad year for Elon Musk\u2019s brainchild, <u>Chad Powers<\/u> on Hulu. It\u2019s the latest in the long line of quick and easy jokes to pervade television, but the preponderance and specificity of this particular trend points to a larger shift in cultural conversation that you may be able to intuit yourself.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"><\/p>\n<figure class=\"jsx-313219616\"><img alt=\"null\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"progressive-image article-image article-image-full-size jsx-1809694635 jsx-2338608387\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><figcaption data-cy=\"caption\" class=\"caption jsx-1762799490 jsx-479945570 article-image-caption\">A total obsession with the Cybertruck emerged on the It\u2019s Always Sunny episode &#8220;Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><\/output><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">We\u2019ll get to that in a second, but to lay out A Brief, Incomplete History of the Cybertruck on Television, let\u2019s actually start with a little timeline about the Cybertruck itself. First introduced as a prototype in 2019, the truck hit the streets in 2023, but arguably didn\u2019t become a flashpoint for cultural conversation until Musk became a prime booster of the Trump campaign in 2024.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">TV production schedules, though, take time. For example, the first big salvo in TV\u2019s War Against Cybertrucks wouldn\u2019t air until March of 2025, in HBO\u2019s Righteous Gemstones. The fourth and final season was filmed between May and October of 2024, so by the time the fourth episode, \u201cHe Goeth Before You Into Galilee,\u201d aired, we were already well into both the Cybertruck era and the era of Trump 2.0 con Elon \u2013 making the appearance of the vehicle perhaps more pointed than it was meant to be back when production started.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The episode in question kicks off with a long tracking shot of all the characters unloading their various cars, ending with a kicker: the reveal of a Cybertruck parked on the water. It\u2019s a bit of a head-scratcher until the very end of the episode, when we discover the truck belongs to Baby Billy (Walton Goggins), easily the worst and most huckstery of an entire clan of hucksters. He\u2019s a character who constantly buys into (or sells) pyramid schemes and scams, so you can draw your own conclusion about what the show means to indicate, given he eschews the massive Escalades of most of the rest of the clan for the Cybertruck.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Soon after in July of 2025, FX aired the It\u2019s Always Sunny episode &#8220;Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation.&#8221; (The 17th season of the series was filmed from October through December of 2024). An extremely loose parody of HBO\u2019s Succession, the episode found the Paddy\u2019s Pub gang drinking water (probably for the first time) and, along with glimpses of a few corporate clips on YouTube, going all in on business speak and wearing fleeces. That included a total obsession with the Cybertruck, which found them spewing catchphrases like \u201cI love that truck. I\u2019m furious that all cars don\u2019t look like that,\u201d and in a backhanded compliment, \u201cIt\u2019s like a rhombus on wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">Both Chad Powers and Tulsa King make jokes of Cybertrucks, then prove they\u2019re actually pretty cool in retrospect.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While the Cybertruck in It\u2019s Always Sunny is more of a plot point than a throwaway gag, it\u2019s clear that the show sees the vehicle (which Glenn Howerton\u2019s Dennis effuses about the sexual aggression of) as the epitome of everything wrong with silicon valley\/corporate culture. It also tracks that the unequivocally terrible Gang at the center of the show would become obsessed with it, while other characters like the much-lumped-upon Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) would be less enthused. When she finds out they\u2019re giving away a truck in exchange for winning a slap fighting championship, Charlie (Charlie Day) proudly clarifies \u201ca <em>Cyber<\/em>truck\u201d to which she replies with a withering \u201ceh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The Fall of 2025 was a big moment for the electric crew cab, appearing on three different TV shows between September and October. On Hulu\u2019s Chad Powers, the vapid former football star played by Glen Powell drives a Cybertruck, which the show tells us only adds to his general douche-osity. Still, the truck is more than a one-and-done, as it becomes not just a place for Chad to have some awkward backseat sex, but also ends up getting a character to the hospital after a health scare. Similarly, Paramount+\u2019s Tulsa King straddled the line in a <u>third season episode<\/u> that found Tyson Mitchell\u2019s gangster purchasing one and touting its bulletproof hull, as well as that it\u2019s \u201chow a gangster\u2019s supposed to roll,\u201d while Martin Starr\u2019s marijuana dealer shoots back, \u201cYeah, in Blade Runner. Real life we don\u2019t drive around in a refrigerator.\u201d Later on, someone tries to shoot up the Cybertruck with a tommy gun, and indeed, the bullets can\u2019t pierce the exterior of the car, saving lives.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The third series is Netflix\u2019s Nobody Wants This Season 2, where one of the characters delightedly scratches a Cybertruck that almost ran over a baby in a stroller, while Adam Brody and Kristen Bell\u2019s characters look on in horror. That\u2019s not even to mention episodes of Apple TV\u2019s <u>Platonic<\/u>, which found Seth Rogen\u2019s character pairing the rise of Cybertrucks with the ruining of a Los Angeles neighborhood, or an episode of Apple\u2019s Loot that depicts D\u2019Arcy Carden\u2019s con-man Ashlee <u>rolling in a hot pink Cybertruck<\/u> with the license plate \u201cSPAGHET\u201d while chugging energy drinks and singing (badly) to System of a Down. But let\u2019s take a little step backwards to talk about the first two, since there\u2019s more meat to dig into there.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DR009ihDU20\/embed\" height=\"710\" width=\"612\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While Chad Powers was filmed pre-election, Tulsa King was post; and the connection between both shows is that inasmuch as a TV series has political leanings, both series lean more right than the left-leaning series mentioned above. Chad Powers frequently throws around the r-word, is set in a conservative football town, and features broad gay stereotypes, among other characters. Tulsa King is part of the Taylor Sheridan Extended Universe (TSEU), and Sheridan has purposefully been obtuse about his politics, even leaving Paramount (<u>reportedly<\/u>) over being told to infuse his shows with <em>more<\/em> politics. Both series make jokes of Cybertrucks, then prove they\u2019re actually pretty cool in retrospect.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Trucks, we might want to point out, do not have feelings; but owners of truck companies do, and Musk has proven time and again to be overly touchy about how people treat his vehicles, while telling others to have a sense of humor and stop being so sensitive. It\u2019s hard not to view the disparity between how Tulsa King and Chad Powers treat the rhombus on wheels as bridging a political divide, or at least passing an olive branch over to the other side, while still getting some laughs about how silly the mode of transportation looks. It\u2019s also not unimportant to note that both of these shows have characters who err toward being losers, but are not necessarily villains driving the Cybertruck\u2026 In a certain sense, the truck goes on a similarly redemptive arc in both cases as do the characters who drive it (with the lone exception being a wild, nihilistic swerve in the closing minutes of Chad Powers, but that\u2019s another article entirely).<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Digression for Cybertruck positivity over, that brings us to the impetus for talking about this at all: the past month or two of Cybertrucks on TV &#8482;. Prime Video\u2019s <u>Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat<\/u>, the second season of the faux-reality show, introduced its corporate stooge villains from a private equity group called Triukas driving \u2013 what else \u2013 a Cybertruck. A little over two weeks later, HBO\u2019s premiere of <u>Euphoria Season 3<\/u> found Jacob Elordi\u2019s Nate Jacobs \u2013 moving from a high school uber-male to an over-his-head and way-in-debt real estate developer with a doomed wedding on the horizon \u2013 driving, you guessed it, a Cybertruck. And to cap things off, three days later the third episode of the final season of <u>The Boys<\/u> featured an extended sequence with the biggest loser on the series, The Deep (Chace Crawford), driving a Cybertruck that, to add on the embarrassment, was blasting Limp Bizkit.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"><\/p>\n<figure class=\"jsx-313219616\"><img alt=\"null\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"progressive-image article-image article-image-full-size jsx-1809694635 jsx-2338608387\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><figcaption data-cy=\"caption\" class=\"caption jsx-1762799490 jsx-479945570 article-image-caption\">On The Boys, The Deep even has a customized license plate for his Cybertruck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><\/output><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">The short-winded explanation here is that the makers of TV think the Cybertruck looks dumb, and believe only dumb people drive the car. Is that actually true? Maybe, maybe not, but it\u2019s an easy visual indicator that tells you everything you need to know about a TV character in a simple way, whether they\u2019ve got hot pink paint or merely pilot the silver, basic model\u2026 The Cybertruck, as far as these shows are concerned, is an exemplar of crass taste and poor decisions, a modern car that looks like, to borrow a popular meme, it hasn\u2019t finished rendering. There\u2019s also clearly the post-election correlation of the Cybertruck with Elon\u2019s connection to DOGE, government gutting, and the political divide between those who support MAGA and those who do not. Not to make broad, unsupportable statements, but for the mostly liberal-leaning Hollywood it seems likely that one could equate a character driving a Cybertruck with the word \u201cbad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">But perhaps more than that, it\u2019s an easy punching bag because, like the DeLorean before it (which was made cool by Back to the Future, though arguably was used as a joke \u201cfuture\u201d car there, too), it\u2019s not selling well. At all. A recent report from <u>Bloomberg<\/u> revealed that not only have Cybertruck registrations fallen over 50%, but 18% of sales both in the final quarter of 2025 and first quarter of 2026 have been to Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX. Meaning Elon\u2019s Tesla is essentially selling cars to itself.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">This raises (and perhaps answers) another question: Why is Tesla allowing the Cybertruck to be constantly mocked on TV? It could go back to that old adage that all press is good press if these are media tie-in deals or product placement; in which case, Tesla has approved of the use of the Cybertruck. You could posit that the same people who miss the not-at-all-subtle idea that Homelander (Antony Starr) is the villain of The Boys might see The Deep driving a Cybertruck blasting \u201cRollin\u2019\u201d and think, \u201cCool, I gotta get me one of those.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">The short-winded explanation here is that the makers of TV think the Cybertruck looks dumb.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Far more likely, these shows have just gone ahead and purchased or rented Cybertrucks themselves, which they\u2019re allowed to do under the umbrella of free speech. Per a report from the <u>LA Times<\/u>, generally car companies don\u2019t like to do product placement deals when those driving the cars are villains, or the cars are wrecked in stunts. With the exception of Tulsa King, one would think Tesla would be hesitant about letting out the Cybertruck to be driven by, say, a homicidal, sexually abusive fish-man.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Ultimately, like the hucksters, con-men and villains who drive Cybertrucks on TV, there\u2019s the underlying thread that perhaps the truck isn\u2019t all it\u2019s cracked up to be. As Dee admits late in the episode on It\u2019s Always Sunny, \u201cI gotta come clean\u2026 I think the truck is ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Whether you think it\u2019s ugly, or the coolest thing on four wheels, for now, at least, it\u2019s an easy way for writers to let the viewers know: This character sucks.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><em>Tesla did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this article. Representatives for The Righteous Gemstones, It\u2019s Always Sunny, and Jury Duty declined to comment, while nobody on Nobody Wants This wanted to do this.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"poll-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<section class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"\/><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><em>You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky <\/em><em>@azalben.bsky.social<\/em><em>, or find him regularly yapping on the <\/em><em>Comic Book Club podcast<\/em><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/want-an-easy-tv-villain-give-them-a-cybertruck\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, in the span of three weeks, three entirely disparate TV shows on two different networks\/streaming services had a surprising connection. One is a superhero&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22898,1816,2551],"class_list":["post-53157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-cybertruck","tag-showing","tag-whats","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}