The Boys: The Instant White-Hot Wild

July 8, 2022 6:21 AM - Season 3, Episode 8

The season finale opens with a family reunion.

"Son, when you're as strong as we are, accidents happen, uh, things break... and sometimes they are the things that you love the most."
"You put the world's deadliest nerve agent in a ten-dollar bottle of Starlight's Wish?"
"Where is Maeve now?"
"You really are the spitting image of my little brother."
"Go sell your menthol vapes and your fast cash shops and all of that. But just stay out of my life!"
BAD
"Soon you'll be in the sweet embrace of C-C-C... Christ the Lord!"
"No, my cake hole will remain open!"
"That's sort of treason."
"The most important shit of my life, and I'm counting on coked-out Eurotrash. Shit's baffling."
"Hi, Grandpa."
"Yeah, so, the Sikorski's actually reserved for SVPs and higher. Sorry, Ashley."
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
"You're like a walking Hallmark card. Enough."
"The suit never gave me any power."
"That's how Americans do it!"

posted by Etrigan (58 comments total)

Wow. They didn't completely clear the boards, but I didn't expect Noir to be one of the people who went down. (Although it occurred to me that he could have simply stuffed his guts back inside of himself, since his healing seems to be nearly Wolverine-level, albeit with scars.) Glad that Maeve wasn't fridged (and she could be re-powered with V, probably), nice of the Ashleys to grow a tiny conscience, good that Annie quit Vought. On the other hand, not only was Homelander not depowered, but he's corrupting Ryan as well. And Neuman... hmm.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:33 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fuck Todd.
posted by Ruki at 9:52 AM on July 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

I will purchase a Homelander hat to eat if Noir doesn't show up again alive.
posted by Etrigan at 10:32 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

This season ended up with very little changed from the start. In that it's a bit of a waste as far as moving the story goes. And yet, it was fun to watch.
posted by kokaku at 12:35 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Underwhelming. I’m getting tired of this show finding increasingly obvious ways to put the main cast at loggerheads for the middle of the season only to have them magically united by the end.
posted by adrianhon at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2022

Not underwhelming at all to me. Loved it. Antony Starr is such a great actor.
posted by Pendragon at 3:30 PM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm going to be so mad if Antony Starr's acting ends up giving Homelander a redemption arc because he and Butcher see the politician played by a woman of Lebanese descent as the greater threat.
posted by Etrigan at 5:31 PM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm a little bummed about Noir, I really appreciate the background, especially literally having lost a chunk of his brain. But gut wounds, while extraordinarily painful, is survivable with lots of antibiotics.
posted by porpoise at 5:39 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I loved it. I found Hughie's ability overcome the temptation of temp v facile, but for the rest of it? I enjoyed every damn second.

SB will definitely show up again and I suspect Noir will as well. I mean if dude can survive his brains leaking from his skull, his intestines shouldn't be a problem.

I loved that Ashley literally has her own Ashley now.

I called SB turning on HL because he's "weak" although it was much faster than I thought.

I like seeing MM take Frenchie's advice and being open with his daughter about her heritage and that supes can sometimes do bad things.

Starlight can "fly" now and I'm hoping she'll work on "powering up" naturally as it seems to make her more of a threat.

God damn Todd. I worry what this means for MM's ex wife and daughter.

So now we have a supe potentially in the white house-one who seems to be allied with HL.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:11 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about this show as more "allegorical" than "hamfisted," and that it makes regressive cry, but while I understand the narrative and the message - I almost expected/ want SB to goad HL into attacking him in from of Ryan. Then kill HL, and raise Ryan correctly/ less badly than all the broken hypermacho people were, to break the cycle.
posted by porpoise at 6:44 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

> I will purchase a Homelander hat to eat if Noir doesn't show up again alive...

I'm a little bummed about Noir, I really appreciate the background, especially literally having lost a chunk of his brain. But gut wounds, while extraordinarily painful, is survivable with lots of antibiotics...

I mean if dude can survive his brains leaking from his skull, his intestines shouldn't be a problem...

My guess is that BN won't be returning. He only survived SB's attack with severe brain damage. I had the impression Homelander crushed his heart: him taking BN's mask (implying that after the attack, he came back and removed it from the dead man's face) sealed the deal.

The Boys is (at least in part) about the slow, torturous and dangerous work of removing fascists.* In the past it took most of a season to successfully eliminate a headline supe, but the pace has picked up of late: with QM de-powered, Starlight resigned and BN's death, "The Seven" has been reduced to three, which (with Vought's supporters fully embracing his literal "I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue" moment) only increases Homelander's control over the corporation and his fans.

* The obvious (and AFAIR, so far overlooked) strategic move is to take out Compound V / Temp V manufacturing, since it provides Vought the ability to endlessly churn out supes.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 7:51 PM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm going to be so mad if Antony Starr's acting ends up giving Homelander a redemption arc because he and Butcher see the politician played by a woman of Lebanese descent as the greater threat.

They're obviously setting it up so that Homelander will run against her, redoing the Kang vs. Kodos arc!
posted by Apocryphon at 12:40 AM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I absolutely loved the season, but not the finale. I can’t with the “Soldier Boy is Homelander’s father” thing, I find it so ridiculous. It makes no sense to me that all these people apparently knew who someone’s sperm donor was in 1980, especially since that means that everyone knew that Vought was breeding children and then raising them like lab rats. Like, what?! I thought it was a secret that that’s where Homelander came from. And while I wouldn’t be literally ripping anyone’s guts out over it, I find it pretty wild even within the show’s dystopia that it was such public knowledge (at least among Payback) what Vought was doing with Homelander (and presumably other babies/kids who “didn’t work out so well”) while he was growing up. Any member of Payback could have put a stop to it at any time if they’d just gone public!

Also, if Homelander’s background is now something that’s common knowledge within the show (no idea when or how that happened, but fine) then why would the Boys not go public with that? The Compound V injections were already a huge scandal and breeding babies just to experiment on them is so much worse. Vought is the big bad anyway, and if Butcher is still laser-focused on Homelander, well, Homelander was saying “if Vought falls, I fall,” so it really can’t hurt.

Homelander would probably never be interested, but can you imagine the lawsuit that he could file against Vought, Stan Edgar, etc?! As scary and horrible as Homelander is, I’d be like, “please can I take your case?” bc it seems like a total slam dunk, this shit is bananas.
posted by rue72 at 5:56 AM on July 9, 2022

all these people apparently knew who someone’s sperm donor was in 1980

You mean the supe who could read minds, and one other person that he could easily have confided in?
posted by andrewdoull at 6:41 AM on July 9, 2022 [5 favorites]

I liked this ep a bunch, particularly Maeve managing to kick Homelander's ass one on one, but I'm not yet feeling the idea that Neuman is some kind of ultimate threat they need to unite against? Because why? She popped some heads and a few of them didn't even deserve it?

That just makes it Tuesday for these supes.

Even Starlight, basically held up as the conscience of the show, straight up murdered at least one guy. So why precisely is Neuman such a threat? Homelander, yes, because he is raging narcissistic baby man who also could murder ten million people in an hour or two. Neuman shows absolutely no such inclinations and actually seems to have done a lot of good. Apart from, you know, her sideline popping heads once in a while.
posted by Justinian at 8:30 AM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

She's a protege of Stan Edgar, so I think it is warranted to be concerned about her, besides the whole murdering people in cold blood thing.
posted by Pendragon at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2022 [7 favorites]

I had the impression Homelander crushed his heart

That was my initial impression; go in under the ribcage and rip out BN's heart (which would be fitting?).

But, HL doesn't drop/ throw anything away - his hand is dripping blood, but isn't holding anything (?).

And BN's small intestine is out and severed. With his heart torn out, the fade to black would have been much much quicker.

So, dunno?

Didn't catch BN's mask bit.
posted by porpoise at 10:07 AM on July 9, 2022

I guarantee you one thing about Noir's status: If the writers wanted Noir to be Officially Ain't Coming Back Dead, then Homelander would have presented the rest of the Seven with his head instead of his helmet. They might not have a plan to bring him back, but they definitely haven't taken Nathan Mitchell's contact info out of their Rolodex.
posted by Etrigan at 10:17 AM on July 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

I loved that Hughie’s contribution to the climactic fight was not to take Temp V and start throwing punches, but to support and literally empower Annie. Nice mini-arc for the season.
posted by ejs at 10:21 AM on July 9, 2022 [15 favorites]

He sets the helmet down before he rants at Ashley, Deep, And A Train about how BN was better than them and he doesn't NEED them. The helmet is a clear part of his threat to them. Since this is a Kripke show, I don't really accept anyone is dead even if they are dead. There's always a way to bring them back if necessary. Zombie Noir is not out of the question.

I am glad the Maeve/Butcher one night stand remained a one night stand and didn't become a thing.

Part of the grim world of the boys is yes killing just one person does make you the moral center of the show when most of the supes we've seen are totally fine with murdering people as collateral damage, like A train. The exceptions to that were the supes we saw auditioning for the 7 like SuperSonic. But of course, the truly virtuous end up getting killed off too quickly to be of any real use. And that's the challenge to know sometimes you have to do terrible things to be effective and survive but not succumb to just doing them all the time. That's the line the Boys have to walk.

Neuman is pretty clearly going to be a serious problem. She still maintains her public image as a nonpowered person and was the person that Hughie took a job with to "fight supes the right way." Yet now she's aligned herself with HL who is currently enjoying the perks of being able to publicly murder someone. Plus she pretty clearly learned from Stan Edgar so there is some sort of plan. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure she's up to no good.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:26 AM on July 9, 2022

I enjoyed this season but didnt love the end. My problem is that the show has been pushing hard the angle "Yes we should stop Homelander, but not at any cost!" And in the final fight the "right" thing for Maeve to do was to jump out with SB rather than have Homelander go down with the rest of them.

And emotionally, I think it made sense for a lot of the cast; Butcher with Ryan, Hughie realising that he doesnt have to win through pure physical strength, I liked that.

But this season, even more than the previous two, Homelander was portrayed as a horrifying monster who is extremely close to snapping and just killing... everyone. Almost every episode was dedicated to him doing something absolutely terrible to someone. Where does he have to go now? I love Starr's performance, but I dont understand where the character can go.

I dont think they would, but if they even think of doing a repentence arc for Homelander I would drop this show so hard...
posted by Cannon Fodder at 11:35 AM on July 9, 2022

I have to wonder why Soldier Boy didn’t flinch from his mission to kill Homelander at the very end. Surely Butcher’s deal with him doesn’t hold much weight. Maybe he just couldn’t break his cycle of abuse?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:43 AM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

most of the supes we've seen are totally fine with murdering people as collateral damage, like A train.

Yeah, it was a tragic yet understated moment when Reggie was yelling at A-Train to get out because he doesn’t want a murderer in his house with his kids—A-Train’s been a murderer since season 1; Blue Hawk is just the first one Reggie knows about.
posted by ejs at 11:59 AM on July 9, 2022 [5 favorites]

The final scene with Todd leading the cheers for Homelander's brutal public murder of a Starlight fan was probably the single most disturbing scene in this entire series, for me at least. That kind of monstrous glee at the death of another human being is Truly Chilling.

Also: what is the deal with Todd? I don't remember any explanation of how he and Monique got together; it also seems odd that she'd marry such an obvious superhero fanboy given what she knows about superheroes from her time with MM.


I think Noir is gone for good, sad to say. Speaking of whom, was the flashback earlier this season the first time we got the reveal that he was, in fact, African-American? I remember his nut allergy from the end of S2, but I don't remember if what little we saw of his mangled face was enough to indicate skin color. Anyway, it was a surprise to me.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:14 PM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

Maybe he just couldn’t break his cycle of abuse?

Yes, he even says that Homelander was, just like him, a fucking disappointment.
posted by Pendragon at 1:55 PM on July 9, 2022

Also: what is the deal with Todd?

I think of him as an analogue for guys who are radicalized ("red-pilled") through social media.
posted by Pendragon at 1:59 PM on July 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

I get that, I meant more along the lines of backstory that I may have forgotten. His presence & the storyline with MM seemed the weakest of the season.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:25 PM on July 9, 2022

It could just be a case of someone pairing up with the direct opposite of their ex. But it does seem Monique remarried very quickly offscreen, yeah.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:38 PM on July 9, 2022

Todd seems like a decent stable dude. I can see how Monique would dismiss his love of HL when he's doing so much else right (up until now). Todd seems like just a regular dude grading papers and holding birthday parties rather than MM's chaotic life.

I did love the scene with A-Train being denied his redemption. Imagine how his brother would feel if he knew about SuperSonic as well as all the regular people who died as collateral damage. Reggie was right that what A Train really wasn't about him.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:46 PM on July 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Fuck Todd. When MM hit him all I could remember was Butcher's Dad saying "Some c***s need a slap, don't they?"
posted by yonega at 7:26 PM on July 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I love Starr's performance, but I dont understand where the character can go.

Well, to guess blindly (and FWIW I know nothing plot-wise about the comics), the Seven are functionally a nonentity now: even Deep looks to be ruined publicity-wise. That suggests the soon-to-be-VP, and all her resources, as the new monolithic-enemy-faction—but of course the Stormchasers will continue to escalate, because the show spent so much time establishing them and not much has really happened there yet.

I'd guess HL hides Ryan in his secret Fortress of Homelanditude, promising to spend all his time with him and play baseball and shuck corn or whatever, but HL can't actually do that: he'll be too seduced by the Stormchasers' adulation, and start getting drawn into that movement, genuinely and operationally. One way or another, this leads to Ryan getting radicalized (to me the most chilling moment of the finale was that look on his face), and Butcher will find out about that. So, long story short, the next season is a battle for the soul of the nation and of Ryan.

Or, all that is what they want us to assume, because half the fun of this show is its surprises.

p.s. fuck todd
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:08 AM on July 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

Well, to guess blindly (and FWIW I know nothing plot-wise about the comics)

We are so far afield from the comics that getting into any recognizable plotline would more or less require a time jump 80 years into the past to restart the entire premise of the show differently.
posted by Etrigan at 6:09 AM on July 10, 2022

Black Noir getting dispatched so easily was a bummer- sure, it was a nice Game of Thrones-type subversion of his arc, but it’s also the subversion that leads to less stuff happening. Here’s hoping Black Noir comes back so we can see him have a deep and heartfelt conversation with Kimiko.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:31 AM on July 10, 2022

So, long story short, the next season is a battle for the soul of the nation and of Ryan.

We may be in Kid Miracleman territory. (Or Brightburn, if that's more your thing.) If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that nobody would go there in a live production intended for mass consumption, but things have gone too far with The Boys for me to say that now.
posted by SPrintF at 10:25 AM on July 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

We are so far afield from the comics

Here’s a question for people who have read the comics: if I like the show, should I read the comics?

I’ve actually read a few early issues, and while I can accept the edgelord intentions, the Boys themselves were too loathsome to want to spend more time with. Comics!Butcher trained his dog to rape other dogs, for chrissake.

On the other hand, I remember reading some article lauding The Boys for eventually making Very Important Points About Society or something. Also, someone commented in a previous week that Black Noir’s arc in the comic was great and they were sad the show wasn’t following it.

The show has been great about taking all the gross things from those first few issues and making them nuanced and interesting, like the question of using V to fight supes (in the comics I read, they were doing it from the get-go, with no reflection or consequences). If I were to read the comics, would there be nuance eventually pushing through the shock value?
posted by ejs at 11:23 AM on July 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Comics!Butcher trained his dog to rape other dogs, for chrissake. Wow thanks for the heads up on that. I'll be giving the comics a miss.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:50 PM on July 10, 2022

If I were to read the comics, would there be nuance eventually pushing through the shock value?

No.

Every single change made from the comics has resulted in a better story. There are a few major beats that the TV writers have more or less made impossible that they maybe could have done some interesting things with (in particular, I'm thinking of Noir's origins and Herogasm), but there's so much chaff around them that I don't very much miss what could have been.
posted by Etrigan at 12:57 PM on July 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

Someone else who votes no on the comics. I gave up on the series about two-thirds of the way through, and I never do that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:03 PM on July 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

The only 'nuance' I thought might have been included is that in the comics, Kimiko is referred to as THE FEMALE.
This is meant to be an obvious reference to her protective yet feral violence, via the Kipling poem The Female of the Species is More Deadly than the Male.
That, and Herogasm is a bigger deal, and makes fun of a trope. It's a common situation in comics for there to be an "Oh the Justice League didn't show up because they were off in outer space fighting some cosmic threat this week".
Not actually off-planet at those times, but having a secret Vought sponsored fuckfest on Diego Garcia or somewhere.
posted by bartleby at 10:34 PM on July 10, 2022

If you're interested in comics exploring the 'what if a Superman figure went bad' from a comic book perspective, you might want to read Mark Waid's two limited series, Irredeemable and Incorruptible about The Plutonian (I demand that you insects love me!) and an archvillain (Looks like I'm going to have to kill him. Because I'm the bad guy, right?) respectively.
posted by bartleby at 10:45 PM on July 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I dont understand where the character can go

Final battle with Ryan, ultimately resulting in Ryan killing and replacing him, would be my guess. That would make Homelander's death a simultaneous complete win and total loss for Butcher, which fits nicely.
posted by flabdablet at 3:44 AM on July 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

That would by my prediction as well. Meet the new Homelander; same as the old Homelander.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:00 AM on July 11, 2022

>This season ended up with very little changed from the start. In that it's a bit of a waste as far as moving the story goes. And yet, it was fun to watch.

This is somethign that occured to me about the series in general. For all the subverting the superhero genre set dressing it actually hews pretty closely to standard comic story telling orthodoxy for the most part -- do what ever you like as long as you put the toys neatly back in the box at the end of the story arc. Watchmen and before it Marvel/Miracleman were meaningful comments on superhero comics not just because they foregrounded the violence or moved towards psychological realism (though that's part of their legacy) but IMO primarily because time was a thing that mattered.

But yeah, I'm still enjoying this, it's silly, gory fun.
posted by tomp at 5:45 AM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

The only 'nuance' I thought might have been included is that in the comics, Kimiko is referred to as THE FEMALE.

This is definitely a thing that I'm glad they never touched -- I'd much rather a main-cast female character have an actual name, especially in a story that leans heavily (especially during S1) on the patriarchy and its toxic effects. The good guys don't need to be doing the same thing.

That, and Herogasm is a bigger deal, and makes fun of a trope. It's a common situation in comics for there to be an "Oh the Justice League didn't show up because they were off in outer space fighting some cosmic threat this week".

It's another thing where they'd have to go back and reboot the whole universe of the show, because one of the other things about Herogasm is that the superheroes and supervillains all team up against the "cosmic threat". This also gives Vought the opportunity to script face/heel turns, rebrand or even recast characters, end or reset ongoing plot arcs, etc., because it's all a big ballet orchestrated by Vought.

But in the TV world, there are no supervillains. We only ever see the supes engaged in combat against normies. I presume this is a conscious decision by the writers, but it's always struck me as odd.
posted by Etrigan at 6:28 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Kimiko is referred to as THE FEMALE in the credits through most of her first episodes after her introduction, even after we learn her name. So that nuance was actually there in the show as well.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:40 AM on July 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

If Garth Ennis wrote it, you can rely on it having all the nuance of a shitty 12 yr old boy.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:21 PM on July 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Re-watching the season over the weekend (just finished episode 6), and a few random thoughts/observations:

1) In ep. 1, the Termite was in his lover's dick, not his ass, as I'd thought first time around -- just not watching closely, I guess, as I was watching it with my 77-year-old mother who has dementia, so I was more entertained by her reactions (she thought it was hilarious). Anyway, dude must have gone all the way up the shaft!

2) One of the Russian experiments on Soldier Boy that MM watches involves them shooting him in the mouth with a machine gun. So... where did the bullets go? They didn't go through him, they didn't ricochet out of his mouth, so he must have swallowed them and eventually pooped them out?

3) If Kimiko says that Frenchie's arms felt like bendy straws when she had powers, Queen Maeve couldn't have been feeling all that much when she had sex with Butcher (it was at least 24 hours after he had powers, right? It certainly seemed that way in narrative time). So Butcher maybe had a little juice left in the tank? Or is Maeve really good at faking it (lots of practice from her time with Homelander, I'd imagine)?

4) "Love Sausage" seems to have handled his reintroduction to the world after being sequestered in Sage Grove quite well. Although, it makes me wonder why Vought/Stormfront kept him around as a test subject if his only power is a prehensile/expandable dick. Although I guess that's useful for a superhero ubermensch?

5) Did nobody from Vought look into what happened with Crimson Countess after she accidentally exploded a Vought-land employee in front of a huge crowd of people? Also, she tells Sir_Cums_A_Lot_779 that she's worked out a deal with the primates from Dunstan Checks In and Outbreak -- does she have a secret super-power of being able to communicate with primates the way The Deep can with sea creatures? Is that why she's obsessed with chimps? Or is she just a celebrity weirdo?

6) Did Annie not think to look for Queen Maeve in the same security block in Vought Tower where she and her mother were imprisoned in S1?

7) That fight scene at the end of ep. 6 is awesome - the action all tells a story and does it so well that even knowing exactly how it turns out, I still felt a rush of suspense and adrenaline watching it the 2nd time.

8) Even though it's mostly C-listers, as MM says, I imagine the Herogasm organizers probably reach out to some top listers in the hope that one might show up. It makes sense that Homelander would NEVER go to something like that -- Vought would never allow the invitation to even reach him, and he would find it disgusting anyway. Queen Maeve probably gets an invite, but despite her advertised predilections for multiple partners, she'd probably find it too tacky as well. A-Train probably gets an invite -- in my head, he showed up there independently of Homelander sending The Deep because he knew that Blue Hawk would be there. So the fact that The Deep didn't know that it was Herogasm means he probably has never been invited (before during or after his times in the 7) which suggests that even most of the loser superheroes don't take him seriously or want him around.


Have some thoughts on the last 2 eps as well, but I'll wait until I've watched them again.
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:13 PM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also, she tells Sir_Cums_A_Lot_779 that she's worked out a deal with the primates from Dunstan Checks In and Outbreak -- does she have a secret super-power of being able to communicate with primates the way The Deep can with sea creatures? Is that why she's obsessed with chimps? Or is she just a celebrity weirdo?

From what little we see of her and her place, I took it as just a weird obsession of hers totally unconnected to her powers.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:16 PM on July 12, 2022

Me too, but I find amusing the idea of a Vought marketing team trying to figure out how to integrate her chimp-speak powers with her red laser beams and giving up, just telling her to keep it quiet.

Favorite detail of Paul Reiser's performance as The Legend: every time he mentions a famous woman he had sex with, he looks over at Hughie to see if he's impressed.

Noted again the laziness of Annie being able to so easily steal Compound V when in S1 Annie had to blackmail Gecko to steal 1 vial. They could have said something about fewer security staff following Homelander's purge of anyone who isn't a team player. On the other hand, Maeve being able to get Temp-V seems more believable, just because she has more experience sneaking around the tower.

Weird disconnect between the end of Ep 7 & Ep 8. Soldier Boy tells Homelander that "the situation has changed," teasing him betraying Hughie and Butcher, but at the beginning of the next episode he's already told them the truth and agreed to kill Homelander. Felt like they could have milked that for more, building up to Soldier Boy's eventual rejection of Homelander.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:58 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I liked the comics, the show is roughly 5-40 times better than the comics. I do agree that they are taking the best themes, about how to fight fascism and the shit parts of masculinity, and making them both more explicit, better written, and with characters that are 1000x better.

And there's about half of the comics that have just been thrown in the trash and that is good and no one should ever have to read that shit ever again.

there's a bit of the comics plot that they have not worked, but it's pointless to read it, because it was weak satire about W Bush during Iraq War II. which at the time was considered interesting because of how incredibly popular that war was. and there's bits about the Falklands and the UK. but very small bits.

But again, John Bolton was on the TV today explaining how he knows how to start coups, reminding us all how stupid Iraq II was and how we are all doing incredibly worse in 2022 for not having jailed people like John Bolton for war crimes of the early 2000s. so don't read the comics.

the show is going to take the same premise, I mean they have already made the "superheroes in government" premise 100 times more meaningful and relevant to the current day.

The comics wouldn't have written a Todd, or a Ryan character, or have made that last, incredibly disturbing scene. Fuck Todd.
posted by eustatic at 9:33 PM on July 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Finally finished this season and eh, I sure hope they get something new and fresh the next season. SuperSonic could have been that, with a genuine and sincere desire to do good, but that's not the way this show went. Instead our big new thing was Soldier Boy and I just found both the actor and character really boring.

One thing that had me giggling this last episode is how hyper-masculine this show is. It's literally called The Boys, so that shouldn't surprise me, and I'm OK with that in concept. But it's such a cartoonish version of masculinity. This really came out with the fatherhood theme bouncing around this season: Homelander and Ryan, Soldier Boy and Homelander, Butcher and his piece of shit father. All just shallow characterizations of the fatherhood role, it reminded me a bit of that Very Special Season of Arrow when all the showrunners had kids the same year and decided to write what they knew. The exception to this was MM and Janine, his humiliation at his daughter seeing him violently lose control, his tender explanation after. But that only worked because Janine is a girl and MM has his shit together in a way that transcends his masculinity.

Starlight and Maeve should have been the counterbalance to all the overwhelming boyzone stuff. But somehow both end up being framed entirely in terms of men. We're left with Ashley being the most interesting woman on screen (IMHO).
posted by Nelson at 6:46 AM on July 15, 2022

We're left with Ashley being the most interesting woman on screen (IMHO).

Which one?
posted by Etrigan at 7:32 AM on July 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

The one with all the screen time for three seasons, obviously.

But Also Ashley is interesting. Maeve very improbably survived a 60 story fall with a Soldier Boy explosion going off next to her, causing her to lose her powers mid-air and mid-explosion. Afterwards we see her being pulled from the rubble by some people in a van. Wasn't that Also Ashley, a Vought employee? If so how did Maeve get free of Vought to recover anonymously in the safehouse? Is Also Ashley a double agent?
posted by Nelson at 8:00 AM on July 15, 2022

Afterwards we see her being pulled from the rubble by some people in a van. Wasn't that Also Ashley, a Vought employee? If so how did Maeve get free of Vought to recover anonymously in the safehouse? Is Also Ashley a double agent?

No, I'm pretty sure that was Kimiko with Frenchie.
posted by wilberforce at 4:54 PM on July 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is a small thing but one thing that's bugged me about Kimiko is her sign language. I keep watching it and sometimes it looks like a real signed language and sometimes it just looks like the kind of vague gestures ignorant people do in imitation of how signers talk.

Turns out it looks weird because it was invented by the show in consultation with an ASL coach. This article frames why they did it that way

the series felt it was important to distinguish it from typical ASL for purposes of her character dynamics with the Boys. Fukuhara said, "It is completely different from ASL. One of the reasons was because if she was able to speak ASL, then we would think that maybe M.M. or someone in the Boys would know how to translate that, and we really wanted it to be something special between Kenji [Kimiko's brother] and Kimiko and the language that was created among necessity and survival."

I'd be curious to know how folks in the sign language community feel about it. To me (not a member) the intent seems well meaning enough but the result sometimes falls flat.
posted by Nelson at 7:55 AM on July 16, 2022

I really don’t want next season to revolve around that little shit, Ryan. Unless he goes very, very bad immediately and stays that way.

This show is immensely stupid, and I accept that. But actually kill some main characters, okay? Maeve apparently didn’t need to sacrifice herself to Soldier Boy’s man-baby explosion because it just, idk, hurt her a little bit. Everyone in that Vought TV studio would have just shook off the blast, it seems.

Kill off a bunch of main characters, and focus on some other ones in Season 4–that’s what I wanted set up by the the finale.

Still enjoyed the finale and season. It just could have been better.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:27 PM on July 16, 2022

nice of the Ashleys to grow a tiny conscience

The person watching Maeve survive on the monitor with Ashley was Anika, the only analyst to survive The Deep's purge (and the Almond Joy fan). I don't think we know whether Ashley's Ashley survived getting out of the building.
posted by straight at 3:39 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I guarantee you one thing about Noir's status: If the writers wanted Noir to be Officially Ain't Coming Back Dead, then Homelander would have presented the rest of the Seven with his head instead of his helmet.

Dropping a severed head on the table would have been unnecessarily gross.

So Noir being alive is the only possible explanation for why it didn't happen.
posted by straight at 3:42 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]