Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Boys. This week’s episode is named “The Self-Preservation Society”, where our heroes’ cover is blown, and all the pieces are set in motion towards the end. Let’s dive right in.
1. Becca Butcher
In this episode we finally meet Butcher’s wife, Becca. This episode began with a party at Vought, where she works as the director of Digital Marketing, where Billy meets Homelander. Then, after missing for a while, Mallory visits Butcher and reveals that Becca was seen leaving a room where Homelander was.
This is the detonator for Butcher’s hate of supers, particularly Homelander, whom, he believes, raped his wife, and Mallory take this opportunity of rage to welcome him to the earlier, CIA-funded team of The Boys.
An important thing of these scenes is that Becca is seen entering and exiting the room by, it seems, her own will, which implies that maybe she wasn’t raped like Butcher believes, but instead she had an affair with Homelander. It seems that she disappeared because she cheated on her husband, not as the victim of a super, which, therefore, implies that Butcher has a coping barrier on, as stubborn as he is, he will never accept the fact that maybe his wife cheated on him. At least that’s what I thought.
2. At the Seven’s table a.k.a. “Not you Noir, you are doing great”
Homelander orders (is he allowed to do that?) a meeting of the five members of the Seven, where he reveals that Hughie is part of a team that killed Translucent and blackmailed a bunch of supes, so, naturally he believes that Starlight is helping him destroy the team, but Maeve comes to her rescue and, oh god, I seriously thought she was going to die! This is a punch in the guts to Annie, she just had sex with Hughie and their relationship was going on the right path, what is she going to do now?
A-Train feels hard the potential betrayal of Starlight and is especially angry because Hughie played him good, he had him in front of his nose and thanks to his arrogance he didn’t even notice when he was coming out of Popclaw’s apartment! And he wants revenge, so he goes to Hughie’s apartment to kill his dad, but Hughie saves the day with his cleverness and resourcefulness —and a little bit of brute force from Kimiko—, proving why he was a perfect addition to the Boys.
Finally, I’ll take a little bit of time to talk about Deep, because either his life is a tragedy or karma is a bitch. Stationed in Ohio, he goes on his usual spree to get sex, but ends up being sexually assaulted on his gills, then, when he tries to save a lobster in a grocery shop, only to get it killed. I think the writing team is giving him a plot to show us how predators deal with the world, they feel less valuable to a society that often does nothing to make them feel otherwise, so maybe his could be a redemption story after all.
3. The Boys are Burned
Oh shit! A-Train is in Hughie’s home! That can only mean that the whole team is compromised, so they get Hughie’s dad and Mother’s family to the safehouse, here they can only wait for their final demise, because Butcher is hellbent on getting a deal from the CIA that involves justice against Homelander.
Butcher kills Mesmer and feels forced to see for his team, so he accepts Raynor’s deal and the CIA comes in to protect the team and their family, and they have proof to finally go against Vought.
This is a big step for Butcher, he is the guy who never concedes, so this action either means that he is maturing, or he is going lunatic… which, judging for the last scene, seems that it’s going to be latter.
4. John and Vogelbaum
So, why is Billy Butcher going after the Seven? Homelander has this question, which leads him to a hunt for information. He remembers that he had sex with Becca and goes to visit Vogelbaum, his “father” in the lab where he was raised.
Continued belowHe learns that she was pregnant, and the baby died right after having been born. They had a discussion and Vogelbaum tells Homelander that he is his greatest failure in a lifetime of science. Ooff, that must be really hard to hear, especially if you are a supernatural, god-like being, that your father considers you a failure. No wonder why he is a spectacular villain.
5. Hughie and Annie’s relationship
As I mentioned before, Annie and Hughie’s relationship seemed to be going on the right path, they made love and their relationship is growing stronger, even when she doesn’t know where he lives or what is his work.
And all that went to the drain when Homelander reveals what Hughie has been doing. How can she deal with the fact that she was being lied to, even manipulated? And, after a lot of attempts to communicate with her, she finally talks to Hughie, she gives him a chance to redeem himself.
He goes and explains all that we already know, that no baby is born super, Vought is injecting them with Compound-V and lying to the whole world. And she seemed like she was understanding Hughie’s motivation to withhold that information, only to be shot with a non-lethal round by Butcher, betrayed twice!
BONUS: The CIA has finally everything they need to go after Madelyn and Vought, and they do, putting her against the wall, in an excellent scene with a lot of tension between the two women, it seems that Raynor has everything to win and then, a super-villain appears in a military operation. Damn! The supes are needed on the army now.
And that’s it for this episode, overall, it was a very tense episode, setting us perfectly for the finale, what will be the fate of The Boys now that the Seven know who they are? Will Vought end up unpunished after all their crimes now that there are super-villains? What will the team do now that their funding is probably cancelled? I’m eager to talk about all of this!
What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on the season finale, “You Found Me”. I was watching the show one episode per week, but I couldn’t resist and watched it already, all I can say is this: EPIC!
