The Boys: The Only Man in the Sky

June 6, 2022 2:04 PM - Season 3, Episode 2

Episode 2 starts with the trailer for Not Without My Dolphin.

Crimson Countess kills a Homelander-costumed VoughtLand cast member. Stormfront kills Stormfront. Homelander kills his annual birthday save. Butcher kills former Soldier Boy sidekick Gunpowder. And V24 / Temp V works.

posted by Etrigan (6 comments total)

Incredible, maybe deliberate, timing WRT all the rainbow-washing at VoughtLand. There's also some sadly-well-timed commentary WRT the essential sickness of American gun culture. The one thing that didn't sit well with me was the bit with the suicidal girl. I'm assuming that it's a pisstake on this page from All-Star Superman, and, if so, it's a weirdly specific and oddly sour place for the series to go. I mean, that page may be the single best page of Superman ever written, and do the writers of this show need to go through comics history this finely and do the cynical, gory take on everything? Are we going to get the shitty celebrity version of Squirrel Girl yet? I dunno. I haven't come near to flipping the table yet on this series, but it's not out of the question.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:12 PM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I like how (so far) they're showing Hughie being the crappy one in terms of Starlight working with her old bf from high school. There are a lot of other shows that would show him as being entirely justified in his paranoia.

I definitely think that she's gonna get Supersonic killed though, as she survived her "just make waves" strategy by having a lot of blackmail in the tank. I'm predicting homelander just eye lasers him at some point.

Antony Starr is still killing it as homelander in my books.

MM's ex being very cool and chill with him going out and fighting supes again was unexpected, but maybe being a military spouse gave her a different perspective.
posted by LegallyBread at 7:14 AM on June 7, 2022

It always seems to be with tv shows based on comic books that I have a much better time watching them as someone who never read comic books than people who did.
posted by bleep at 12:04 PM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

So how does TempV work exactly? Just inject it and poof, you're a super man? Does it come with a little instruction manual telling you which powers you're going to get and how to use them? Butcher seemed pretty confident he had bullet-deflecting powers, hell of a way to test that theory. He did seem surprised by the laser eyes but adjusted pretty fast.

Woke VoughtLand hit hard for me. A nasty bit of parody. Not mad about it, it was a fair shot, but also.. ugh.
posted by Nelson at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2022

The one thing that didn't sit well with me was the bit with the suicidal girl. I'm assuming that it's a pisstake on this page from All-Star Superman, and, if so, it's a weirdly specific and oddly sour place for the series to go. I mean, that page may be the single best page of Superman ever written, and do the writers of this show need to go through comics history this finely and do the cynical, gory take on everything?

Talking a suicidal person off a literal ledge is such a classic Superman trope that I don't think it's that weirdly specific for them to take a swipe at the idea. They certainly could have made it a much more precise satire of that particular one, if they'd really wanted to make it obvious.

Plus I think it's kind of the opposite of "go[ing] through comics history this finely" to refer to one of the most acclaimed moments in one of the most acclaimed stories of one of the very foundations of comics history.
posted by Etrigan at 7:41 AM on June 8, 2022

I dunno, Homelander's attitude during the suicide attempt worked for me. It's the red line that the character really can't redeem from. It's all about Homelander, all the time.

Homelander.

Yeah totally, it's distasteful. But this show. What do you expect?
posted by porpoise at 10:10 PM on June 8, 2022