Hello again Folks! Well, it’s been over a year and a half, but we finally have new episodes of The Boys, but hey! At least it isn’t Stranger Things, those mfers took almost three years to give us another season!
I’m really glad to have this show back, as I have (probably) said before, this is one of the best shows right now, not only is it a parody and a critique of the superhero genre, it also is a damning reflection of current America and its many obsessions.
So, let’s get started, this episode is named “Payback” after the superhero team (no, not that one) and the thing both Butcher and Homelander crave.
1. Dawn of the Seven
We begin this season with the premiere of Vought Studios’ Dawn of the Seven™, #ReleaseTheBourkeCut, and a year has passed from where we left off, Vought and Homelander are on a redemption tour, doing damage control on the mess Stormfront caused.
Things are weird, Hughie out in the open with Starlight, in the premiere of her movie, being photographed by paparazzies! Homelander is restrained, and the whole situation seems to be a little… less tense? As the episode progresses, we learn about the new status quo of every character, and things are definitely different now.
By the way, it’s funny to me that, just after seeing her as Clea in Multiverse of Madness, we get to see Charlize Theron as a n*zi bitch, impersonating Stormfront in the movie. She doesn’t care, whether it’s a superhero movie or a parody, she will appear on anything.
2. Terminate Termite
One of the biggest changes in this year is that The Boys are now the enforcers of the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, a new agency run by congresswoman Neuman, and Hughie is their boss, they have to wait for his green light to act on cases.
Frenchie, and the Female infiltrate a party of a superhero that can get tiny, and he accidently kills his lover while inside his dick, one of the most disturbing images in the show so far, and we are talking about a show that last season killed a whale!
Meanwhile, Marvin a.k.a. Mother’s Milk got out, but the life with his family hasn’t get better, it’s even worse, now that his ex is dating a guy who dresses as Homelander, and he clearly hasn’t left the job behind, keeping up with his own investigations.
And of course, Billy Butcher is having the worst time of his life, just by mentioning that he has to obey Hughie is enough. But he has the same hatred for supers as always and he feels restrained by federal oversight, but he is planning a big hit…
3. Uptown Girl
Hughie is cool now, he works for Neuman at the FBSA catching criminal superheroes, saving 60% more lives, he is happily dating Starlight, coworkers admire him for helping take out Stormfront, and he seems to have a very good relationship with his boss, what could go wrong, am I right?
Even the Billy Joel music that he hears is the happy, upbeat song, but there’s and undertone, a relationship between an Uptown Girl and a Backstreet guy tends to be doomed, and Hughie is very insecure, so he might mess up badly with his jealousness and bad choices. Ultimately, this is not peacetime, is the calm before the wartime gets worse.
4. “I’m the master race”
One of the weirdest thing to see is Homelander being “castrated” as he says, he has to obey Stan Edgar, he goes on every TV station apologizing for “not knowing” that she was a white supremacist, Starlight is appointed cocaptain of The Seven, he doesn’t know where his son is; and his girlfriend is alive, but is very damaged after her defeat, and is obsessed with creating an army of übermenschen, he can’t even get a proper handjob.
One of the most meaningful scenes of the episode comes when Butcher arrives to his apartment and Homelander visits him, they both are limited, tied up, but they are wild beast, and the idea of fighting with each other seems to give them both an emotion and objective to focus their miserable lives, and now, Butcher has temporal V, maybe a way to have a fair fight with his nemesis, so we will look forward to their eventual final encounter.
Continued below5. Nadia
Speaking of Hugie’s life on the verge of falling apart, he starts to notice a guy trying to reach to “Nadia”, his boss Victoria Neuman, and starts suspecting she has a secret (which, of course, we the audience know).
And everything comes to a conclusion when the guy asks Neuman to reveal the truth about “Red River” and she ends up killing the man, she has a secret and Hughie knows, but it would mean the demise of the entire FBSA.
BONUS: I think that there’s a metaphor for the game Butcher gives to Ryan, Connect 4. Right now, I can’t think of anything but I’ll keep you posted.
And that’s it for this episode, it works as a reintroduction to our heroes (and villains) and we got great action scenes and disturbing and bloody moments, I’m very happy that The Boys are back.
What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 3×02, “The Only Man in the Sky.”
