'The Boys' Are Back For Season 5 Deep Dive Review
Season Five Premiere – Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite
One thing about waiting for literally years between seasons of a show you like is – it builds up A LOT of anticipation! So let’s just say I was really excited to finally watch the season premiere of the fifth and final season of The Boys. I’ve been watching since the very beginning – I’ll give any show a chance that has Eric Kripke’s genius attached to it, and I was captivated by The Boys from the start because of its eerie reflection of what was already happening all around us. The comics began the tradition of calling out things that are wrong with our society, but by the time the series aired, the reflection started to seem less like fiction and more like reality. Season 5 was mostly written well before the last election and there’s no way Kripke and company could have known how disturbingly close to home some of the story lines would hit right now – but I’ve said more than once that the man is eerily prescient. As I watched the first two episodes, I can’t even count the number of times I started swearing out loud “OMG how could they be so spot on?!” or “This is impossible, Kripke how did you anticipate THIS??” It’s certainly not a good thing that a show meant to be an over-the-top parody of all that’s gone wrong in modern (especially American) society ends up feeling so realistic and relevant, but it makes me feel better that someone else is seeing it too. That’s a first step to maybe stopping it, right? Right??
And yes, that’s a theme in the show too. You see why I love it so much?
Homelander’s Crisis Continues
The season premiere kicks off with spectacle, which is fitting for The Boys. It’s a full on mega church moment as Homelander appears at the Vought shareholders meeting to the religious ecstasy of his followers – I mean, shareholders. Promises of a safer, more God fearing nation…. Does this sound familiar yet?
Meanwhile, Starlight disguised as a Firecracker backup dancer is hacking into the system – suddenly the footage of Flight 37 appears onscreen, Homelander callously threatening the doomed passengers as he looks horrified in the present. His eyes start to glow, and then Sister Sage shakes her head to calm him down. I immediately thought, they’ll probably just say it’s AI – and sure enough, that’s what they do. Remember, this was written years ago, but they get it right anyway, solidifying people’s willingness to not believe what their own eyes see if it’s an inconvenient truth. Memes making fun of the “AI altered footage” hit the internet; Homelander points out that he has seven fingers in the altered footage. How did they know that would be such a thing?
Peter Thiel gets a shout out as calling Sage for advice, the little bits of reality name dropped just making it all more eerie. She’s fine with the ongoing conflict the leak caused. Homelander, predictably, is not. What he cares about is being worshipped – he’s more pressed about the unflattering memes about him than how his ratings are. In fact, he says, posting those kind of critical memes should be a crime. (Yes, I was yelling about how spot on the show is once again at this point). Homelander can’t stand being disrespected, his fragile ego too brittle to withstand it.
“I need people to be devoted to me,” he whines. I can’t help but feel bad for him even as I’m horrified by him. He’s so DAMAGED.
Homelander continues the psychological crises that plagued him in Season 4, knowing everyone around him has their heart rate skyrocket when they’re near him because they’re all afraid of him. His handy dandy little maternal fixation with Firecracker has dried up too (as did her milk once she stopped taking the drug that was damaging her heart to make her lactate).
Homelander isn’t too happy with the other supes who are still loyal to him either. The Deep has a podcast because of course he does, along with Black Noir version 2. He’s all about the “men’s lives matter” and staying away from women because “bitches like Starlight make you weak”, claiming he’s never felt manlier. Later he spreads his bare legs for an overhead camera to sell his red light for the perineum contraption, which if you recall was a real thing on the internet for a while with guys out there sunning their perineum. Homelander calls in the Deep and Black Noir after the Flight 37 video debacle, demanding to know why they let Starlight get away and haven’t found A Train or Butcher, sliding his hands around their throats as he hovers over them like a predator. The stage manager who was working the shareholder meeting sits dead (and decapitated) beside him as a visual warning. Antony Starr is very very good at making Homelander very very scary – the fact that he’s unhinged combined with all that power and the sadistic desperation is a terrifying combination. Apparently the stage manager liked some Starlight posts, and that’s why he’s dead.
(Hits almost too close to home right now, but spot on once again).
The Deep doesn’t hesitate to offer up his phone to have his social media posts checked, sycophantic to the end (or at least so far). He’s not pleased with Noir not backing him up, reminding him that he’s not the real Noir, he can talk! Noir remains both silent and mysterious. Ominously so.
Back home, Homelander stands in front of the capsule holding his bare-chested underwear-clad sleeping father, which is in his living room. He sighs. (Yes, that description is relevant. To all of us Ackles fans at least…)
Getting the Gang Back Together
Meanwhile, Hughie, MM and Frenchie are imprisoned in an internment camp – yep, there I am yelling at my screen again – an almost too spot-on concentration camp reflection with the “Freedom sets you free” slogan above its iron gates. My father was in the Rainbow Company that liberated Dachau and I’ve heard his firsthand stories of what he saw there, and just the similarities catapulted me from snickering at the show being a mirror to feeling nauseous. (Which is exactly what anyone should be feeling at that image). American flags are everywhere, including on the prisoners’ shirts along with a Homelander image. MM takes bets for fighting other prisoners and Love Sausage sadistically beats up a prisoner with his ridiculously long penis. Just another day on The Boys. Hughie befriends another prisoner who’s on the verge of giving up, channeling Viktor Frankl and his concentration camp-penned treatise about finding meaning and hope in even horrific situations. “If you lose hope,” Hughie says, “you’re not gonna make it.”
We quickly realize just how little humanity Butcher has left in him when he pays a visit to his ailing-but-still-alive father, recalls his abuse of Lenny and then thanks him for “all the times you knocked the shit outta me – it made me who I am. It made me you.” Then he hugs him – to death, I think.
Let’s not forget how dark this show is willing to be. I hate their dad for what he did to Billy and Lenny, but wow, that was brutal. It plays up the parallel between Butcher and Homelander, who also went back to kill his abusive “parents”, the scientists at the lab who tortured and raised him.
Kimiko’s in Manila baking cookies when Butcher breaks in and tells her Homelander plans to kill Frenchie MM and Hughie in 72 hours, and she needs to help him save them. She is clearly no Butcher fan but she also cannot not try to save Frenchie. Kimiko and Butcher then reunite with Annie, the latter surprised to hear Kimiko speak. “Fuckin’ speech therapy and therapy therapy and lots of Tiktok,” Kimiko explains. They all know Homelander is setting a trap for them, but they’re all in to try to save their friends anyway. Annie figures out that Butcher’s motives aren’t quite the same as hers and Kimiko’s, however – he mostly wants Frenchie alive to finish the supe-killing virus, driven with a John Winchester-level single focus on revenge against Homelander.
Meanwhile, Annie asks for Reggie’s help to break Hughie, MM and Frenchie out since the former A Train has been helping them out for a while, but A Train says he can’t, he’s got a family to protect. (I knew right then he would appear at the eleventh hour and come through for them, which is probably my only quibble with the season premiere – I enjoyed A Train’s story arc tremendously but it was predictable. In some sense, I guess that’s okay – his redemption arc was convincing enough that you could predict that he would do the right thing in the end).
I loved seeing Reggie with his big brother again, and knowing the two of them worked it out. “Mom would be really proud of you,” he tells Reggie.
I enjoyed his confrontation with the Deep too, who rides in on a cranky shark. The Deep accuses A Train of always thinking he was better (and of sending him 2000 octopus fleshlights) and threatens that sooner or later he’ll get Reggie’s family. Reggie replies that he can see how terrified The Deep is of Homelander – that he’s pathetic.
Fear is a theme of this episode. The things it makes us do; the things it keeps us from doing. Pretty damn relevant in a time when we’re all living in fear and speaking up can have real consequences. Many of the characters struggle with balancing their fear versus the price they pay in sense of self and shame when they swallow their ethics and comply when they know it’s wrong. Homelander struggles too, with the fact that making people afraid of you doesn’t make them love or respect you, only fear you. Ultimately that’s not all that fulfilling – it is not, in fact, what he longs for.
The Wild Cards?
That question is relevant for some of the other characters too, sometimes surprisingly. Ashley has always been one of my favorite characters – human and occasionally relatable even when she was desperate and willing to do horrible things to selfishly save herself. She’s the Vice President now, and engaged to new character Our Father (Daveed Diggs), CEO of Samaritan Industries and channeling every mega church televangelist ever plus earrings. The two have an initiative to abolish DEI, because as Ashley asks, “Isn’t white a color too?”
Later she gets more real with Sister Sage, saying anyone who smashed a window and protested is in a camp and now they’re adding everyone who posts something defamatory about Homelander.
Ashley: We’ve purged the CDC FDA HHS USPS, arrested Chappell Roan, and now he wants us to detain American citizens?
(I had to pause at this point to yell again about how prescient Kripke is and how much I hate that a dystopian show is getting it so damn right)
Sage and Ashley are interesting in their complexity. They are smart, and strategic. And fucked up. They’ve prioritized self preservation but their eyes are wide open into what’s really happening and just how unhinged Homelander has become. Sage thinks she’s smart enough to control him; Ashley is constantly strategizing how to stay alive and afloat (and maybe become President).
The Showdown
Hughie hangs onto hope in the camp; MM has largely given up on it, pronouncing them dead men walking no matter what they do. He’s proven right at least temporarily when Hughie returns to his bunker to find everyone slaughtered and Homelander reading his journal and ridiculing him like he’s a toxic parent mocking his son’s diary.
Butcher recruits a supe called Worm to dig a tunnel into the freedom camp. Worm has been downgraded after Vought Studios “replaced all their writers with AI” so he lost his job (pause again to exclaim about the AI relevance…) Worm is thus disgruntled and Butcher uses that to encourage him to help them in order to stick it to Vought for putting him out to pasture. What follows is a typical The Boys scene, vaguely or explicitly sexual and intended to make everyone go ewwww, which are never my favorites possibly because I was never a teenage boy – anyway, Worm pulls off his pants to show rather shocking wormlike lack of genitalia and then bends down to inhale the dirt and expel it through his bare ass sticking up in the air. In he goes, dirt spewing from his ass. The others follow him into the tunnel, grimacing. Worm is a writer, and makes the best of the situation – “okay if I use this for a story line?” I kinda don’t mind him and am weirdly relieved he doesn’t die. Yet.
They bust into the camp only to find Hughie, MM and Frenchie on their knees and Homelander welcoming them.
He knows about the virus, and he’s just found out Mother’s Milk’s nickname and is awkwardly kinda into it. Kimiko snarks at him and he lasers her in half. Literally.
Some of the press with the actors before the premiere teasingly asked when Homelander and Butcher are gonna kiss, which to anyone in fandom isn’t even an odd question, but interestingly this episode does have a poignant scene between the two. Starr and Urban are both so good that it ends up nuanced and powerful as Homelander senses the “viper’s nest” that Butcher has made of his heart to be able to confront him.
“It’s beautiful what you’ve done to yourself, what you’ve become. And you did all that for me. That is devotion. You’re the only one that’s ever challenged me. There’s a part of me that will be sad to see you go,” Homelander admits.
Antony Starr is so good at complicated emotions that you believe every word – there really is a part of him that doesn’t want his enemies to be gone, but secretly wants them to love and respect him instead.
Starlight appears, lighting up the room and blinding half the camp, Frenchie and Kimiko kiss amidst the violence, Hughie tries to save his fellow camper friend, and MM sees his opportunity to finally take out Love Sausage, strangling him with his own giant dick. Starlight saves Frenchie first as she and Butcher agreed, much to Hughie’s shock. Homelander kills Hughie’s friend and then grabs him, taunting Billy to come save him – and then, as I suspected, A Train shows up. He lures Homelander away from the rest of them, and we’re all rooting for him now as he flees through the woods at super speed. A young woman is on the road, so I also expected he would get a chance to atone for Robyn in the pilot and he does, slowing down to avoid running through her and careening into trees instead so that Homelander catches him. A Train knows he’s about to die, but he laughs in the face of it.
“What was I so afraid of? You are a fucking nothing, just an empty fucking suit. Take away those powers and what are you? Pathetic, weak, sniveling loser.”
He’s still laughing as Homelander snaps his neck.
That’s the end of the season premiere, and I admit to being emotional about A Train’s demise. At the same time, I really was rooting for him to have a redemption arc and for it to be somewhat believable, which I think it was. One of my favorite chapters in the book I co-edited on ‘The Boys’, ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes’, is all about A Train and how the author, as a black man, feels about the character - and how much he hoped for a redemption arc. We got that, and I’m really happy about it. I need my favorite shows to make me feel, not just amuse me or disgust me or give me a jump scare or an ewwww. This episode did that – it’s that depth that drew me to it in the first place.
Episode 2 – Teenage Kix
Homelander and the Return of Soldier Boy (All the Daddy Issues)
The service for A Train is turned into yet another spectacle and opportunity to blame something on Starlight and the Starlighters, who Oh Father insists are possessed by literal demons who are turning little boys into little girls with garden shears. (Had the trans phobia rhetoric already amped up two years ago or is this prescient too?) Firecracker announces that local supes can now apprehend Starlighters before they commit any more violence, aka when they’re not doing anything at all.
(Brief pause for me to yell at my screen about the 100% accurate real life parallel that I’m horrified to see playing out on the daily)
Homelander stays behind after, addressing A Train’s casket in the empty church. Starr makes him so fascinating, the psychologist part of me cannot get enough of trying to figure him out (hence the whole writing an entire book on the show and the characters). Homelander is genuinely distraught at how things went with A Train. His version of love is contingent on being adored and on 100% loyalty, which never works out for him, so he keeps getting disappointed and heartbroken again and again. It’s his own fault but it’s also the fault of the corrupt politicians and scientists who destroyed his ability to have anything like a healthy relationship.
“You left me no choice,” he tells A Train’s casket sadly. “I like to think of myself as the big brother you never had… I counted on you, I loved you… but here we are. Why does this keep happening to me? I guess the strongest men are the most alone. You wouldn’t understand, nobody does…”
Then you can see realization hits him, of who might. (Starr, like Ackles, does not need any words to be eloquent). Who else is there who is just as strong or almost as strong? And just as isolated and alone? Could it be the guy in stasis in his living room??
Sure enough, Homelander stands in front of his father and slowly turns the lever and opens the door, dramatic violin music playing. Cut to Soldier Boy dressed in a ridiculous shirt and his underwear waking up on Homelander’s couch. (The fandom: why did he change his dad’s underwear? They were gray before…. Never change, fandom.) Soldier Boy wakes up as cranky as he was when we last saw him awake in Season 3 – and just as gorgeous. Thank you for letting Jensen Ackles grow his hair out a little for this role, it is much appreciated.
Homelander assures a combative Soldier Boy that he doesn’t want to hurt him, that he was in deep freeze in a CIA black site and he just found out that morning – which Soldier Boy is smart enough to not believe.
Soldier Boy: You just found out this morning, but this (capsule) just happens to be in your room? Did you fuck me? Is this some kinda incest thing?
Homelander protests with an appalled “No!”
The whole exchange is gold, with both Starr and Ackles embodying their characters and their beyond-complicated relationship. Homelander wants Soldier Boy to find Butcher.
Soldier Boy: Find him yourself!
Me: lol
Homelander insists he can engineer a proper comeback for Soldier Boy, who the world has been told is a Russian spy, prompting an indignant “I’m not an ass felching commie!”
He also offers to make Soldier Boy number 2 in the Seven, betting that his dad hates Butcher (who betrayed him) more than he hates Homelander. Homelander says that haltingly, reluctant to speak the words “more than you hate…hate me…” because he still wants his father’s love and doesn’t want to believe he could be hated. Soldier Boy considers, sitting there rather provocatively in his undies. Homelander brings him his shield, glued back together – he hands it over expecting gratitude or a pat on the head or the kind of response every son longs for from his father.
Soldier Boy: Looks like a fucking kindergarten ashtray.
Delivered to perfection, and you can see it cuts deep, the same way Ben proudly came to show his own father his triumph becoming a supe and got derision instead. Soldier Boy is such an asshole he keeps making me feel bad for Homelander, of all people! (But really they’re both victims themselves in a long line of abuse and dysfunction).
Sage meets with the puppet President, urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act to arrest anyone who posts anti Homelander content and assuring him that they have 50,000 data points on every user (short pause to scream at the universe once again for making this so realistic).
Only problem? They’ll need to triple the amount of freedom camps (another short pause because SERIOUSLY??) The President protests that the treasury is running dry and that people get twitchy at rounding up their neighbors (while they do it), but they revolt at higher taxes (third pause and this time I’m yelling so loud I think I woke up my own neighbors). Also the President wants immunity, and my throat is so sore I need to take a break.
In walks Homelander – with Soldier Boy suited up beside him. Like a kid eager to show off his accomplishments, Homelander tells his dad that the president “works for us – for me”. He announces that Soldier Boy is now number 2 in the Seven and he’ll need a pardon, that they’re going in a new direction – competence. Soldier Boy glances at his son, taking it in.
The president acquiesces, and Homelander tells him Soldier Boy could probably use a drink, instructing him to get it; Soldier Boy of course picks a Manhattan, a great throwback to the 50s. The president asks Homelander if he can get him a glass of milk and you can see his humiliation as he tersely says no, he’ll also have a Manhattan. Just like daddy. (Ben used to steal Manhattans from his own father – can you say intergenerational transmission of trauma?)
Soldier Boy: Damn. Since when can supes teabag the president?
Homelander: Since me.
Later, alone in his living room, Homelander stands in his father’s now empty capsule. He holds one of his restraints and lifts it to his face, inhaling the scent of his father, then stands quite literally in his footsteps.
Sister Sage interrupts him, but it’s a disturbing and poignant scene, making it clear both how fucked up Homelander is and how intense his longing for a father is and how many ways it could go – something Soldier Boy senses too, hence his ‘did you fuck me’ question. (Fandom’s surprise at this was surprising – have we forgotten his reaction to mother figure Madelyn’s breast milk and how much that was conflated with something sexual? Freud would have a field day with this show, just saying. Which is why there’s a whole book on it with lots of psychologists’ takes on the complex characters, along with the insights of the actors who portray them).
Sage confronts him about his attachment to Soldier Boy, asking if he told him about the supe killing virus. Homelander says no.
Sage: So when he gets infected and he dies, you won’t go to pieces, because it was a tactical decision, right?
Close up on Antony Starr’s expressive face and the grief and horror Homelander can’t entirely hide. And yet, he didn’t warn him.
The Quest for a Supe Killer
The boys reconvene in a secret lab in an abandoned elementary school, where we find Sameer is alive and finalizing the supe-killing virus! They need to test it, since they don’t know if it will work, or if it will harm humans too. They decide to test it on a supe named Rock Hard which obviously was going to be this episode’s ewww segment that again would probably work better if I’d ever been a teenage boy. Apparently “hot cum bursts out of his mouth” and he’s nearly indestructible and no one gives a fuck about him. Yep, teenage boy history definitely helpful.
Annie is on board even if the virus kills all the supes in order to save humanity, her guilt eating her up inside. Kimiko is not, and Frenchie is determined to protect her. Hughie assures Annie that whatever she had to do, he gets it, it’s okay. Perhaps in an almost-the-last-day-on-earth kinda thing, both Kimiko and Frenchie and Annie and Hughie decide this is a good time to get it on and tear each other’s clothes off.
The two ships met with varied reaction in the fandom, some rooting for Hughie and Annie from the start and some not as invested, and some thrilled that Frenchie and Kimiko are finally a romantic couple while others were conflicted. I’m in that second group – I thought their intense platonic relationship was unusual and compelling, and was sort of hoping it would stay that way. (Then again, I’m a huge fan of Supernatural centering an intense and world-saving platonic relationship, so…)
Their test on Rock Hard does not go well. On the way we see two of the Kix Kids terrorizing a terrified woman who’s accused of being a Starlighter, dragging her off to a freedom camp in front of her crying child. (Prescience off the charts…) One of the Kix Kids (Countess Crow) is still in the house; MM overhears her saying that she’s being forced to do what she’s doing and tow the Vought line and wants to save her, likely because she reminds him of his daughter. He eventually lets her go without telling the others.
Rock Hard turns out to be more rock mountain than rock man, apparently because he watches volcano porn and then ejaculates all over himself and it hardens into a larger and larger mound. (More teenage boy ewww – I can just barely resist going into psychoanalytic mode about the Freudian adolescent guilt nightmare of having the evidence of your every orgasm literally worn on the outside so everyone can see and having it eventually immobilize you).
Hughie calls A Train a true hero, solidifying his redemption arc since A Train’s story started with the horrific death of Hughie’s girlfriend as he ran through her. Butcher cynically says this “listen to your heart bollocks” is gonna get Annie killed, and Hughie asks in return if there’s any part of Butcher left that’s still human, saying he’s the one who might get Annie killed. They’re interrupted by a car accident – and a shield through their car window.
Everyone is shocked to see Soldier Boy alive and well. He shoots Butcher, who isn’t injured, and realizes he’s “one of us now.” Soldier Boy is pissed.
Soldier Boy: We had a deal and you sold me out, put me back in a fuckin’ box! Because I was gonna kill some dumb kid? Where is that fuckin’ brat?”
(His grandson – ouch).
Butcher tells Soldier Boy about the virus that Homelander didn’t mention, saying that everyone fucks him over – Butcher, Homelander, his old crew – because “you’re a dumb fucking twat.”
What he’s not is easy to kill, emerging from the hole left by a car landing on top of him to the two Kix Kids. The girl exclaims “Soldier Boy!” and gets a smirk; the boy exclaims “you’re a dead socialist!” and gets a punch in the face. The boys lure Soldier Boy to the Kix Kids house where Hughie has the virus ready.
Soldier Boy: How is a useless cock gobbler like you still alive?
Hughie: All your insults are about blowing dudes – you’re kinda obsessed.
Me: hahahahaha
Soldier Boy grabs the virus in a jar and pronounces “not today, you semen swilling butt pilot” – and then the Kix Kid starts to choke and vomit black goo, and so does Rock Hard. Soldier Boy looks around, alarmed, to see the boys with gas masks on and another vial dripping the real supe killing virus. His face (handsome handsome face) starts to disintegrate as he screams “no!” and falls down, realizing he’s been tricked, face covered in boils.
Later we see MM watching the video of Soldier Boy’s literal downfall, satisfied as Soldier Boy groans and writhes on the floor in agony.
Me: Oh no, poor Soldier Boy!
(I know, I know – I wrote an entire very long chapter in Supes Ain’t Always Heroes about my conflicted feelings about the character and why it’s not my fault. It’s Ackles. He also has a chapter all about how he crafted Soldier Boy).
The Wild Cards
Ashley and Sage meet up again, Ashley at first towing the party line with a fake bubbly endorsement.
Sage: He’s not in the building.
Ashley: Oh thank fuck. Why are we doing this?
Sage is happy because “all the rich white folks hang on my every word”, her own need to make up for the traumas of her childhood and adolescence a motivation for self-serving decisions. Ashley challenges her.
Ashley: That chair isn’t a pedestal, it’s a chopping block.
She points out that they’re arresting innocent people while Sage sucks down a taco. Later, alone in her limo, Ashley pulls off her wig to expose her nearly bald head, the trichotillomania obviously even worse, and vents about her supe power.
Ashley: Do I get laser eyes? No, I get a fucking brain reading tumor, this is junior year all over again!
The said tumor, which Kripke says they refer to as Back Ashley or “Bashley”, serves as a sort of conscience for that morality and ethics that Ashley has had (and suppressed) from the start. It tells her that going along won’t get her what she wants, as she argues back that it’s why they’re still alive. “First they came for the communists,” it reminds her, saying that she used to want to do some good in the world. Ashley protests that she tried, but there’s nothing she can do.
(More screaming at the screen here about reflecting reality, along with some sobering thoughts the impact of fear and so many of us tempted to throw our hands up and say there’s nothing we can do right now in reality.)
Bashley: Homelander is batshit and they know it, they will follow you.
Ashley: I’m not a leader, I’m a Vice President…
I kinda love how the show has externalized Ashley’s superego and given it a (literal) voice. Poor Ashley – Colby Minifie is so good, she’s definitely up to the challenge of embodying both parts of the embattled VP.
That ending!
Sameer gives them the good news that humans are immune and not carriers of the virus.
Frenchie wants to run away with Kimiko to try to protect her from it, but she says no, they have to stay – innocent people are being rounded up, and this is how they make amends. Frenchie agrees then, that they have to get up every day and keep going.
(Supernatural fans everywhere: Always keep fighting!)
Hughie tells Annie that neither of them is fine and shouldn’t be, but he’s not letting her die.
Hughie: I’m gonna keep fighting, and if you can’t, then I’m gonna fight for both of us. Just don’t turn into fucking Butcher, okay?
Butcher returns home to Terror, apologizing for being late, a glimpse of a little lingering humanity.
A haz mat team wheels out the dead supes, including Soldier Boy in a body bag, as Homelander watches. The Deep, ever one to not read the room, tells Homelander it was a good idea, sending Soldier Boy to test the waters – pretty fucking strategic.
Homelander, eyes brimming with tears, sounds broken, saying “I told him to report back, I told him not to go in alone, why would he do that?”
He confronts the Deep, says it should have been him, his laser eyes glowing. The Deep pisses himself, terrified, and makes a quick escape.
Homelander goes over to his father’s body bag, sobbing.
“Not you, not you too…” He hits himself in the forehead repeatedly, overcome with loss and grief and self hatred. “Why does everyone keep leaving me? I’m sorry….”
He walks away slowly, and behind him, we see Soldier Boy in the body bag sit up.
Pretty sure just about everyone was spoiled for the fact that Soldier Boy wasn’t permanently dead, but I admit I inappropriately laughed at the way he slowly sat up – amplified by Chumba Wumba playing in the background and in my head “I get knocked down, but I get up again…” already playing on repeat.
Gotta love this show and its music cues.
One more detail that made me grin when people on the internet more observant than me noticed it: the banner on Firecracker’s show includes the news that Mr. Marathon, facing prison, accepts a court-ordered stay at global wellness Malibu. Mention of Jared Padalecki’s character makes me even more excited about the Supernatural reunion coming up in episode 5, also rumored to be the best and most unhinged episode of the season!
So where does that leave anyone? How will Soldier Boy be feeling about what Homelander kept from him, or how Butcher and company once again tricked him? What does it mean for the supe killing virus that it apparently does not kill all supes? Will everyone want to make Soldier Boy into a lab rat once again?
I cannot wait until next Wednesday to find out! You can catch The Boys here now.