TV Review: 'Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death' Charts Tony Huge's Moral Devolution
When I started Hulu's new docuseries Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death, I didn't expect it to fit so neatly into the true-crime genre. The title suggests a cautionary tale about cosmetic enhancement taken too far, but the story heads somewhere much darker. Looksmaxxing is part of the picture, but this three-hour docuseries is really a portrait of one man: Tony Huge.
Get Huge brings viewers into Tony's world mainly through "Elon Muscular," one of its three central interview subjects. Raised without a father and struggling with suicidal thoughts since his mid-teens, Muscular was 19 when Tony reached out to him online. He dropped out of school and joined the self-styled "Dr." Tony Huge at his compound in Pattaya, Thailand, where the experimental health guru, who has no medical training, turned the scrawny teen into a muscle machine. But the real hook is a death. In January 2023, YouTube biohacker Leo Rex, known to his followers as "Leo & Longevity," was found dead at Tony's mansion. His death remains unexplained, and it hangs over all three episodes.
The first episode traces Tony's close, increasingly possessive friendship with Leo, and how it soured once fallen fitness influencer Connor Murphy arrived and became Tony's new best friend. The second episode digs into the online speculation surrounding Leo's death, giving plenty of airtime to suspicions about Murphy, who also sits for interviews, before stepping back to tell Tony's origin story. That history changes the questions you'll want to ask about Leo's death. Super Beast, Tony's former chemist, walks through the rise of Tony's Enhanced Athlete supplement business, Tony's departure from the U.S., and a string of deaths the series connects to people who fell out with him. Attorney Robert Tauler adds his account of the harassment campaign he says followed his lawsuit against the company.
The third episode asks the question the whole series has been circling: was Tony responsible for Leo's death? The series can't answer it, but with another tragedy unfolding in the background, it argues that this dangerous scene will keep thriving as long as audiences keep watching. This is also where the subtitle finally feels earned, as young looksmaxxer Androgenic enters the story and shows how far Tony's followers are willing to push themselves.
Director Stacey Lee was welcomed into Tony's world and chronicles part of his story as it happens, filling in the rest with behind-the-scenes footage from his web videos. The synth score by James William Blades and Ian Graham gives it an eerie edge, especially in the final moments, when the music and the story come unraveled together.
Each episode plays as its own complete chapter rather than a story cut off at an arbitrary runtime. The non-linear structure puts the viewer in the role of a detective, especially if you come in knowing nothing about these people, as I did. That same structure is the series' biggest weakness, though. Because so much of Tony's backstory is held until the second episode, the first can be hard to get into. Moving more of that history up front would have given newcomers something to hold onto.
There's also a fair question about how much of a platform the series hands its subjects. Tony gets plenty of room to explain himself, and some of the footage from his circle is clearly made for views, with at least one scene in the final episode turning out to be staged. Lee mostly lets the contradictions speak for themselves, and that restraint largely works, but viewers hoping the series will push back harder on Tony's claims may come away wanting more.
One of the most revealing stretches comes when Tony talks about his legacy. He lives with a group of Thai girlfriends he calls his harem, and he has three daughters. In his most emotional moment, he cries over the death of his father, who looked down on his ambitions. Then, without missing a beat, he talks about needing a son to pass his biohacking knowledge to, as if his daughters don't count. He seems to be repeating his father's mistakes in plain sight.
On the other side of that coin, Tony briefly and flatly mentions the loving home his mother gave him, then turns around and lays out deeply misogynistic views of women, shopping for breast implants for his girlfriends and dosing them with injections he says keep them happy. None of it deserves admiration from the Gen Z men his brand actively targets.
Tony Huge's brand promises evolution through biohacking, but what emerges from Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death is a story of moral devolution. It isn't a broad-strokes look at toxic masculinity. It's about one pioneer's specific version of it and how he justifies it, rejecting the label while filling his mind and body with literal toxins. It's a cautionary tale for the next Tony Huge, and for the young men lining up to become him.
I give Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death 4 out of 5 stars.
Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death premieres Tuesday, November 10th, on Hulu.