Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. In this episode, named “Glorious Five Year Plan” the team visits Russia, and I know that every week I don’t know how things could get any worse, but things keep getting little worse every time! Let’s dive right in…
1. “#BLM is my favorite hashtag”
As we have been seeing for a while now, now that A-Train cannot run, he is out of the race (sorry) for popularity, and now he is trying to look more appealing talking about race-relationships. There’s a hero brutally murdering black people in their neighborhoods and he tries to bring it to the table but he is so out of touch that that his attempt at a denouncement ends up being minimized by The Deep.
In fact, he is so out of touch that they recreated that infamous Jenner-Pepsi ad that got mocked endlessly by the world (seriously, how the hell was that produced without nobody stopping it beforehand?). I see a man struggling to reconcile his privilege with the reality and suffering of his community, and the question is, will he get redemption? Because, in reality, he is “being woke” to keep that privilege, to keep his popularity, but I don’t know, maybe that’s the beginning of true change in A-Train.
2. Exactly what you are (a gun)
Last episode, Kimiko said to Ryan that she hates her powers, and now that the team traveled to Russia to find whatever killed Soldier Boy, they have to do a favor to Frenchie’s old boss, Nina. And by “they” I mean that Kimiko (thanks to Butcher) has to use her powers to kill an oligarch.
She is understandably angry to be seen as just a weapon, used only to get things, but ultimately accepts and easily kills the rich pervert and his goons, but then something bad happens, she is shot by one of the rich man’s sex slaves. When she wakes up, she only sees a bunch of girls scared of her, even thought she “liberated” them from the man, they still are horrified by her.
So, what can Kimiko be? Does she have a future in her life where she could only be human, preferably with Frenchie? Or is she destined to be a gun and only a gun? Well, we don’t know, but she does know something: she wont be able to be free from her powers until she is free from Butcher’s orders.
3. Stan’s last stand
Early in the episode, we see Stan Edgar visiting Nadia/Victoria Neuman, and he asks her to give Homelander a punishment through her powers as the head of the FBSA, maybe some fines to make him understand who has the power.
But then, at the moment of the press conference, she reveals that Homelander is “cooperating with the Bureau” for an investigation of Stan Edgar’s (very known) crimes. She betrayed her own father figure, but her reasoning is clear: Victoria has to protect her daughter, no matter what needs to be done. She even injects her child with Compound V, to maker her a super and protect her from the world (and Homelander.)
And speaking of him, Homelander is now unhinged, nothing can stop him, he has taken the reigns of Vought and is going to turn the enterprise that Stan intended to be a military company, into what he knows best: a business solely focused on Superheroes, and no one will stop him.
That includes Starlight and Maeve, who tried to form a team to stop him, but it ended on Alex/Supersonic being brutally massacred by Homelander himself, nothing will stop him, not even hope. (By the way A-Train snitched on Alex, so, no redemption for him.)
4. My idiot brain is getting fucked by stupid
But not only Homelander got a new job, everyone gets a new job, and that includes Ashley, who started as an assistant to the heroes, scared to death of Homelander, and now she is the new CEO of the company. She won’t ruin that chance. She is also obsessed with power, even if she gets it by licking the boots of whoever’s needed.
She might be one of the saddest characters of the show, because she reflects the reality of humans. She will suck up to Homelander and step over other people if it needs that she will thrive, or maybe even just survive.
Continued below5. There’s no team to hold together anymore
In the last part of the episode, we see The Boys breaking into a Russian lab… that ends up being a military compound. There, they discover some of the experiments that the reds have been doing, that includes Jaimie the super-hamster, that violently helps them against the army that attacks them; it is also revealed that Hughie took some of Butcher’s temporary V, and he very much enjoys it. But the biggest revelation ends up being that Soldier Boy is still alive!
Well, to be honest, we all expected it, they wouldn’t cast Jensen Ackles only to have him do flashbacks. Well, he emerges from the pod, Captain America: The First Avenger-style, he knocks Kimiko out, badly harming her with some kind of weaponized radiation, and leaves.
So, there’s no weapon, Hughie is clearly going to get addicted to temporal V, Kimiko might die and what’s worse, there’s yet another seemingly invincible superhero running around, and this one’s radioactive! I want to ask, how could it get worse? But I know it will.
And that’s it for this episode, it was packed with stuff, I felt like being punched again and again, but I just love this show and everything that it throws at us. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on 3×05, “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies.”
