Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. After last episode’s ending, where Homelander showed his true colors to the world, in this week’s “Barbary Coast,” we finally properly met Soldier Boy and his team during a mission on Nicaragua in the eighties, and as expected, back then, superheroes were also assholes. Let’s dive right in!
1. Little Nina
While The Boys go to question Grace Mallory, Frenchie receives a call and goes on a solo mission. He meets Cherie, his former love interest, and she reveals that she owns drug money to Little Nina, she asks Frenchie to flee with her, but notably, he is not in love with her anymore, and he won’t leave the Boys.
He is later captured by Nina, and they have a tense conversation but at the end he leaves unharmed, when he later meets with The Boys, Kimiko tells him that she hates Butcher and she also asks him to flee with her, and I thought for a moment that he seriously contemplated the opportunity, after all, I believed that he was committed to care for her, even rejecting Cherie because of Kimiko.
When Butcher arrives and asks Frenchie to set up a meeting with Nina, he seems genuinely scared of her, but he folds and accepts to set up the meeting, because whatever interest he has in Kimiko and her safety, he is ultimately committed to Butcher and his cause.
2. Operation Charly, but with Supers
The Boys pay a visit to Mallory, and they update her on the situation with Victoria Neuman, but the main reason they visit is to discover Mallory’s secret: what was she doing in Nicaragua with the Payback and Soldier Boy.
We have a series of very tragic flashbacks to the eighties, Mallory tells the (real life) basics of the operation: the CIA supported the right-wing Contras against the leftist Frente Sandinista, they (allegedly) funded the operation by directly trafficking drugs, and dropping it in minority neighborhoods in the US (again, allegedly).
And if that was a complete mess, imagine what would happen if supers were involved! Soldier Boy and the Payback arrived against Mallory’s wishes, accompanied by a young Stan Edgar, on Vought’s first approach at their “Supes at the Millitary” plan, of course everything is derailed by them, a supe named Swatto kept flying and he revealed their position.
When the enemy attacked, the Payback, racists as they are, started killing every person of color they spotted, killing indiscriminately both friends and foes, Mallory lost her entire team, and the Russians took the (apparently) dead body of Soldier Boy.
3. I’d prefer to be loved
Meanwhile, Homelander is having a great time. After his breakdown, his numbers are up, and he discovers that being himself is going to make him more loved that faking being a noble hero. He forces Starlight to welcome The Deep back in the Seven.
Now he is empowered, and nothing will stop him, when Starlight threatens him with revealing the video of the flight where he let them all die, he responds with a worse threat, when she reveals that he is a monster, he will act as such and will destroy the government, New York and everything he pleases, his reasoning is chilling: He prefers to be loved, but being feared is also acceptable.
Then he does two more very disgusting things:
4. RIP to a real one, Timothy
Now that he is back in the team, The Deep celebrates by having sex with his new wife, but he is actually enjoying that an octopus is watching him, very depraved stuff if you ask me.
Later, Homelander invites them to a dinner, everything seems right except for a little tension, and then, he reveals the main dish: Timothy the octopus, and forces Deep to eat it alive, and even his wife tells him to do it, subtly revealing that she is still influenced by her past in the cult.
The Deeps eats his own friend, while begging for its life, he hears Timothy’s screams while crushing it, we are not supposed to have empathy for a sexual predator on a fake redemption tour, but the idea of putting in your mouth something alive that you don’t want inside of you is weirdly karmatic, and traumatizing, it’s a kind of monstrous “poetic” justice that only Homelander could come up with. And not even his wife in on Deep’s side.
Continued below5. The performance of a lifetime
This episode began with a scene from Annie’s infancy, she is on one of those creepy beauty pageants, and as she ends up her performance of Britney’s ‘…Baby One More Time’ clenching her fist, a reaction to having to do something she doesn’t want to do.
Later in the episode, she asks for help from Hughie, and she tells her to stay in the Seven “for the cause”, he essentially leaves alone in a very dangerous situation, and just when she is feeling supported by Supersonic, Homelander “reveals” to the world that they are dating, and despite Annie’s shock, she kisses him, clenching her fist again, forced to keep the charade.
BONUS: I didn’t even talk about the secondary effects of the V in Butcher, or his betrayal of Ryan, but, hey, It’s his cause, and he is willing to lost the remains of his family to see Homelander fall.
And that’s it for this episode, I particularly enjoyed the flashback in Nicaragua, a sign that heroes have never been good people. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 3×04, “Glorious Five Year Plan,” we are going to Russia, baybee!
