Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. This week’s episode is named “Good for the Soul” and it was all about faith and sacrifices. Let’s dive right in.
1. Faith Expo
The plot of this episode centers around a faith-based event named Believe Expo, spearheaded by Ezekiel and featuring Homelander and Starlight as guests, and I think this may be the most important episode so far. It’s an in-depth analysis on the world of The Boys and how faith is used in that world as a culture maker and a weapon of mass control.
Here, it is explained how Christianity is a fundamental part of Vought’s plans to make their heroes accepted by the world: superpowered people are sent from God, to deal with the problems of the world and to be the best examples of God’s plan on Earth.
The best example of that is Homelander, whom, disobeying his orders, gives a Bush-like speech in which he calls himself sent from God to protect the United States, and after the attack that America suffered with the plane crash, the only think that should happen is for them to send Homelander to war, to protect the God-chosen land of America. You know, that classic justification “God wants us to kill people before they may or may not hurt us.”
2. Sacrifices
Another element of Christianity is heavily featured here: Sacrifice. We see Queen Maeve keeping her mouth shout about the plane crash, dealing with grief all by herself to the point that she gets drunk and visits her ex. A-Train kills Popclaw because, despite him telling her that she loves her, Compound V is way more important than any relationship he might have.
Madelyn goes to the pediatrician after rescheduling three times, and not only that she has to deal with a jealous Homelander while taking care of her baby. And speaking of him, he feels forced to sacrifice his relationship with his boss due to her “great idea” of having a baby.
Of course, all these and the next sacrifices in the next couple of thoughts are meaningless, they all brought those problems on themselves, they have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but their justification is that they are doing the best for the interest of a superior being, not God, but Vought.
3. Ezekiel
Anyways, the Boys have a mission, they went to Believe Expo to talk to Ezekiel, because that’s the name they got from the lead in last episode, and Hughie is the one to act. Butcher makes him ask to Starlight for tickets to the VIP experience, where he will blackmail Ezekiel with a video of him making out with two men in the bar of the first episode.
When he is at the meeting, Homelander comes in, and he knows him! And he baptizes Hughie as a kind of treat to keep his distance with Starlight? Well when the time to blackmail Ezekiel has come, his phone is still soaked, and he has to improvise. He tells Ezekiel that HE is one of the men he nailed, and he has to give him info on V if he wants silence, that works and they go to follow the next clue.
4. Compound Baby
Turns out that there’s a network of distribution of Compound V through all the country, disguised as polio Vaccines, and when Butcher and Mother’s Milk get to a hospital, they discover the truth: they are using Compound V on babies! That thing that they are chosen by God is absolute bullshit, Vought makes super babies and sells the idea that supes are the result of divine intervention.
And here’s the last sacrifice Vought makes; they have to inject babies with V in order to keep their façade to keep the world oblivious to their truth. I mean, of course I’m only talking bullshit they are absolute villains and all they do, they do it for fucking profit.
5. Starlight
Here’s the real sacrifice of the show, Starlight goes as a guest to Believe Expo, and after a long day of lying to people, after lying to young people looking for answers, she is forced by his Princess-by-proxy mother to appear in the stage, where she breaks and tells the world the sacrifice she has been wrongly making for the good of Vought and not the world.
Continued belowShe reveals that she is scared in the world, that she doesn’t know how to deal with the world, she is only human, and that she was forced to give oral sex to someone, all those sacrifices to keep her image of a good person, of a super hero; to keep Vought’s image intact.
And after feeling disappointed by Hughie, he comes to her, tells her that she was brave for doing that and they make peace with each other, you know, until she discovers that he is lying to her.
BONUS: The cover is blown! They know who Frenchie is and soon the whole team is going to get discovered. Also, Kimiko is immortal? But we will talk about this in the next episode.
And that’s it for this episode, I know that I say this every week but this was my favorite so far, it was a great exploration on belief and how the economic powers bend faith for their benefit, by the way, fuck megachurch pastors and televangelists. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 106, “The Innocents”.
