Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. It’s Homelander’s birthday and he is really going to enjoy his party… well, that’s a lie, despite the name of this week’s episode, “The Only Man in the Sky,” this is the one where everyone falls, they seem to hit bottom and everything is going to get worse from here… well, maybe except for The Deep, let’s dive right in!
1. Chimps Don’t Cry
Frenchie and Kimiko go to Voughtland to find Soldier Boy’s old-time lover, Crimson Countess and ask her some questions, of course, the Female is more interested in riding the attractions and enjoying the shows, but Frenchie makes her focus on the job, and they start to interrogate the super until she manages to escape and ends up killing an employee in front of innocent children.
It wasn’t fault of Kimiko, but she was involved in this happening, and is deeply affected by the fact that two little brothers will never be the same ever again, just like her and her late brother. We already know that, but she has more humanity than the superheroes themselves, and might be the only character that deserves redemption.
Also, that little nugget of trivia is awesome: chimps are incapable of crying, a very apt analogy of the heroes owned by Vought, they get their own playground or habitat, but they aren’t happy, they just can’t cry.
2. MM’s slow downfall
As we saw last week, MM is retired, but we should be seeing a happy man coming back to his life with his family, instead, his wife left him, and his daughter barely trusts him. Marvin doesn’t have anything under control, not even his OCD. The news of this mission, finding Soldier Boy, who seems to have a strong connection to his father, is slowly torturing him.
Everything falls apart for Mother’s Milk when the fire alarm turns on and he reacts violently to the simple task of turning it off, Janine is so afraid of her father that she takes a little step back that breaks him. He has to go and save the world one last time before being able to commit to his family a 100%, and his ex knows, so she gives MM permission to go yet another time.
3. Can’t even open a f*king jar
Hughie’s ego is gone, after becoming a leader for The Boys and “proving” that there’s a “right way” to fight supes, everything falls apart, his girlfriend is stronger than him and is “rekindling” her relationship with an ex; his boss is a supe and not only that, but she’s the mysterious “head-popper,” and he can’t even open a fucking jar without cutting himself.
And worse, he goes to Red River, an Orphanage for children with powers, and discovers that Nadia a.k.a Victoria Neuman was adopted by Stan Edgar, so, the person in charge of every superhero in the world, and the person in charge of “policing” their actions are family, so change won’t ever be achieved by following the “righteous” path.
4. Butcher “Supes-Up”
Butcher’s mission this time is to go and find Gunpowder, Soldier Boy’s former sideckick, he’s the exact representation of any gun-adoring psychopath, an obsessed Christian white supremacist that seems to have an erection every time they smell gunpowder. This critique hits harder this week after a massive call for action after the multiple mass shootings reported in the United States, 246 so far in the year. A gun with a bible verse about war would sound like the ridiculous things that this show uses to mock society, and yet, it’s real.
We are seeing, a beat down Butcher, uncapable of enjoying his life and suffering alone, Ryan made a little Lego-animated short with his mother’s last voicemail, and while the kid uses it to cope, it clearly broke an already broken man.
Anyways, Butcher survives his first encounter with Gunpowder, and just when he seems about to change, admitting to Hughie that “there’s a better way,” Hughie accepts that his way, the Butcher way is the right one, and injects himself with temporal V to become a super and kill Gunpowder.
Continued below5. The moment everything changes
This episode has what I think it is the most important scene on the show so far, it is a breaking poin on the series, truly, things will be different from here, of course I’m talking about the “All-Star Superman” scene.
This book has one of the most important pages in the entire of comics history, maybe you haven’t read the book, but you know about the brief scene in issue #10 where Superman saves a suicidal teen, this little story itself has even saved lives.
So it’s specially striking to see Homelander have his own… let’s call it “All-Star Homelander moment.” Just when a girl seems about to jump from a building, Homelander congratulates for being his birthday “save,” but then, right at that moment, we discover that Stormfront killed herself and this is where the switch in Homelander’s head is turned off, he forces the girl to jump.
Later, Homelander takes the mic on his birthday celebration and gives a speech to the entire world where he reveals what the really thinks: Superheroes are gods, and he is the perfect god, nobody deserves to be saved, regular people are not heroes”, he is the hero, it’s about damn time to have the respect he deserves and he’s either gonna get it or take it.
Nothing will be the same in The Boys, ever again.
BONUS: Monique Milk’s boyfriend seemed specially excited by Homelander’s speech, I’m sure that won’t be a problem for the future, right?
Oof, this was really heavy, what an amazingly depressive episode, I mean, for good, I deeply enjoyed it, it might be my favorite so far. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 303, “Barbary Coast.”
