Well, folks, here we are at the season finale of The Boys, and It was an amazing piece of action and an emotional roller coster, seing how it resolved all the threads and set up the next season, maybe “What I Know” will make this show a “classic” in the future.
1. The Boys are going to kill everybody
Well, every option they have tried trough the season has failed, and now, our main characters are ready to go to war against the Seven even if they don’t survive, we saw Frenchie preparing a bunch of traps for the supes while making his relationship with Kimiko stronger.
But Hughie is wondering, going after the Supes means that they are the villains, no? Of course he is wrong but he has some points, mainly, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to do what’s right? And, how willing are they to become “villains” to the world?
2. Maeve won’t help
When you discover that you are part of a systemic problem, that you enabled and even helped bad people get what they wanted, what can you do about it?
To avoid said confrontation against the Seven, Hughie and Starlight go on a hail-mary mission: Maybe Maeve is willing to tell her story to the world, but she tells them that she is tired, and the world doesn’t need one more person revealing secrets to the world.
Of course that changes when she discovers that Stormfront is a literal nazi, and that changes something in her, not only is she willing to fight now, she is going to beat out the crap of a Nazi, and she is not going to be submissive to Homelander. We have an all-new Maeve.
3. Becca meets the Boys
After losing her son, Becca goes to Butcher for help, and she finally met the whole team, who are thrilled to know her in real life. At first Butcher makes a deal with Stan Edgar, he knows that Vought’s contingency against Homelander is Ryan and they need to protect him no matter the cost. Sadly, that cost is high, and it was set buy Butcher himself: the kid goes into hiding, Becca stays.
Here we have one of the meanest motherf*ckers in comic book history, forcing his own wife to a life apart from her son, but Butcher is in love, always has been and always will be, so he breaks the deal and decides to hide Becca and Ryan together with help from Mallory.
4. Stan Edgar and A-Train
Weirdly enough, this show proves that the good guys are not always that good, and the bad guys could have brief moments of redemption, we saw it in Deep’s journey this whole time, but in this episode we got two great examples, the ones aforementioned.
A-Train has been struggling with the idea of being forced to retire, and he is confirmed that it is because Stormfront is forcing them to retire him, so, he chooses to look for Stormfront’s files and gives them to Hughie and Annie. Nobody could come back from being revealed to be a Nazi.
Meanwhile, Stan Edgar agrees to work with Butcher because it will mean that he still has a protection against Homelander, but he is also annoyed by the idea of working for a Nazi, but, you know, money is money and this is one sacrifice he can make in the name of money.
5. It’s all about love
So, what was the main force moving every character on the show? Love.
Hughie revealed that his mom left, so, that means that he clings to everything he can, whether it is Billy Joel’s music or an unredeemable sociopath that recruited him, he loves everyone around him because that’s the good thing to do.
Of course, Butcher is doing a really big sacrifice, he promised his dying wife that he is going to look after the son she birthed, the product of a violation no less; and yet, he does, he choses to honor his wife’s memory, because otherwise she would have died for nothing.
But not only our heroes are the ones doing things for love, Stormfront did all she planned to honor her late husband and the Führer. And Homelander took his son because he says that he loves him, but the reality is that he needs to be loved in order to be happy, so, when Maeve threatens to show the footage from the plane crash he didn’t prevent, he is only left with one person to love him: himself, masturbating at the top of a building.
Continued below6. About the (literally) mind-blowing final twist
We are beginning to see a trend of stand-ins for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in new TV shows, but they tend to be written… let’s say a little bit antagonistically. As an example, we have congresswoman AYC from Netflix’s Space Force and more clearly Congresswoman Neuman here, who is revealed to be the one with the ability to explode heads.
I believe that, maybe, the writing teams are mistaking being antagonistic with being confrontational, on Steve Carell’s comedy show I might understand why, it is a show about a military division created by a republican president, and here I was actually surprised, I didn’t even thought that she would become so important for the future of the series.
My point is, I feel it a little troubling to depict one of the most proactive and youngest congresspersons as a nuisance, as an obstacle for our main characters. I sure have confidence that the writing team of The Boys will do a great job with this character, you know, I would prefer a thoughtful commentary instead of a simplistic parody.
And that’s it for this episode, overall, I loved that it closed every storyline of the show (and teased some more for the next one), one could say that this is was an eight-hour movie with a satisfying conclusion to every character… except for Homelander, of course, but I suppose he is only going to become worse next season.
What did you think of this episode? What did you think about the season overall? Did the show finally earned “classic” status? Is it the best superhero TV show in Amazon? Well, only if you don’t count the gloriously heartwarming and beautiful love letter that is The Tick… but it comes close!
Thank you all for reading these pieces made with a lot of passion and love for the medium, I’ll see you next year for the third season, meanwhile, I’m coming soon with a new set of review/recaps while waiting for The Flash’ seventh season.
