Summary: Hughie has a good working relationship with Neuman but is weirded out when a man named Tony keeps calling her Nadia and trying to speak with her. The Boys work for Neuman now and they try to crack down on Termite. They capture him guilty, but Neuman cuts a deal to let him go. Butcher is angry, and lets it out on Hughie. Hughie sees Tony following Neuman again and he follows. He sees Tony attack Neuman and get killed by her. Dawn of the Seven airs with Stormfront as the villain. Homelander's stock has gone down and he does damage control PR stating he was unaware of Stormfront's beliefs. He gets angry with both Deep and A-Train. He meets with Stormfront but refuses to adhere to her beliefs, wanting only what's best for himself. Maeve meets with Butcher about Homelander and gives him some V24, a new temporary Compound V that Edgar has developed. She also gives him a file about Soldier Boy. Butcher and Homelander have a conversation about their future and their desires. MM is living his new family life, but Monique has moved on and is with someone else. As a result, MM continues to do his work against supes on the side.
The Good: This episode is mostly about catching up with all of the main characters, but it still does a good job of being entertaining and progressing the story. Hughie's new job seems to be going well for him mentally, but you can tell that it has caused a divide with The Boys. They all like him well enough, but he feels like an outsider through all the work that they do. He's not one of them anymore, he's a government official, and this especially rubs Butcher the wrong way. But credit to Butcher, he appears to be turning a new leaf. The old Butcher would have been far more abusive, violent, and manipulative towards Hughie, but now we see that he has much more patience, and his profanity towards Hughie has become almost endearing instead of hostile. It's nice to see Butcher finally developing after what he went through last season. I was thoroughly surprised to see that he genuinely cares for Ryan and spends time with him, and this has evidently softened him up a lot. But Butcher still has that fire within him when it comes to supes. He is softer when interacting with others, and he no longer feels the need to murder supes at every turn, but he will still do anything and everything to bring them down. The group effort to capture Termite is tremendously entertaining with a lot of creative action (Termite trying to crawl up Frenchie's ass and being pulled out by Kimiko is remarkably funny). There is one moment in there that has scarred me (see: The Bad), but overall I enjoyed this stuff. Then we get to Homelander. Homelander is in a bad place right now with his stock rapidly falling after the Stormfront Nazi connections came to light. We know from previous seasons that Homelander is nothing if he doesn't have constant approval and if he isn't the most important man in the room, so we can see his frustration when nothing is going his way. The constant PR that forces him to denounce Stormfront grates on him, and it is frustrating for him to see his fellow supes in The Seven going higher and higher up the ranks while he has tapered out. This led to a few fantastically funny scenes. His intimidation of Deep is clever, an amusing callback to a season 1 scene, and it made me chuckle when Deep remarks how well that interaction went. Even better was Homelander threatening to kill A-Train after fat-shaming him and overhearing when A-Train muttered "f*ck you man" to himself, which was simultaneously funny and terrifying. Then it all explodes when Edgar tells Homelander that he is sharing captaincy of The Seven with Starlight, and that there is nothing he can do to stop this from happening. With Maeve holding him in check, Homelander is genuinely left without any options and is forced to contend with the will of everyone around him. Antony Starr delivers another perfect performance in this episode, conveying Homelander's growing frustrations with his current life, and with Vought specifically with how they control him and (from his perspective) abuse him. This leads to a fascinating confrontation with Butcher, where Homelander seems to be asking him arch-nemesis for help in taking down Vought, who he seems to recognize as an even bigger threat than Butcher. It's amusing to see him sell the idea of an alliance to Butcher before clarifying that this is no alliance at all: he absolutely still wants to murder Butcher and he knows that Butcher wants to murder him. Instead they want to destroy Vought to set up scorched earth for a final battle between them. Of course Butcher will accept, he's too much of a sick bastard not to. I'm excited to see how the show handled this story going forwards. I thoroughly enjoyed how this episode pulled back the curtain further on Edgar, Neuman, and Vought as a whole. We can clearly see that they have quietly achieved everything that they wanted and are in the perfect position for world domination as a pharmaceutical company. Edgar's motives are finally revealed to us in a fantastic scene when he admits that he does not want to produce supes anymore; they are too problematic, too powerful, and too obnoxious to deal with (Homelander is the perfect example). Instead, Edgar simply wants to make his product more profitable, and what could be better than his new V24 invention, a temporary Compound V that ensures that humans will not be revered as gods or celebrities like supes currently are. Instead, this is a product that will make Vought tons of money without any of the drawbacks of creating supes. Furthermore, V24 will have to be purchased consistently from Vought due to it being temporary, so it is a fantastic business move. Seeing Edgar reason all of this out is remarkable, and we can see that he's a ruthless businessman through and through, willing to do anything and everything to make sure that his pharmaceutical products take over the world. Amusingly, he has decided that he doesn't need supes anymore, and he has installed the perfect business to take care of that: Neuman's internal supe affairs office. Here, he has a reliable group that can start removing supes from society when they become too dangerous (while pardoning the supes who are still useful for him with brand recognition and marketing, like Termite) which I'm sure he intends to eventually turn into a unit that will start exterminating the Compound V supes so that they will not get in the way of his new product. Edgar's plan is fantastic and it is fascinating to see him put it into action. But he still has a Homelander problem to sort out. We see him taking steps already by demoting him, but I'm sure that he knows he needs to do a lot more if he wants to get rid of Homelander, currently the biggest threat to his plan. I can't wait to see what Edgar has planned, and I can't wait to see if Homelander will be stubborn and powerful enough to overcome it. It was gratifying to see the final version of Dawn of the Seven. The constant jabs at Disney and the MCU are a continual delight, and there were some genuine laugh out loud moments this time around. Stormfront being replaced by a blonde, blue-eyed actress was extremely funny, as was her constant German dialogue. I also got a chuckle out of Black Noir being played by a stuntman not only in the movie but in real life as well (he's in a coma apparently). The Bad: That Termite scene was one of the most horrific things I've had the displeasure of watching. I didn't need that scene to be included, and I certainly did not need to see it as in-detail as it was. I've said this before with "The Boys", but it is entirely unnecessary to have so many scenes in a show that only serve the purpose of grossing out or shocking the audience with something utterly outrageous. This scene added absolutely nothing to the story, but it has lingered in my mind like a traumatic memory. It's criminal that I remember this one moment more than any of the other good scenes in the episode. This scene did not need to be here, and it puts a bad reputation on the entire episode. Of all the stories that were introduced in this season, Hughie and Starlight's feels the most uninteresting by far. Are we seriously doing a love triangle story? This feels incredibly frustrating, especially with how season 2 was primarily focused on Hughie winning back Starlight, which had great pay-off by the end of the season. But now we seem to be focused on a cheesy melodrama story that might see these two drift apart again. I'm not interested in a Ross-Rachel will-they-won't-they in this show, and I don't like how much focus the show continues to give to creating needless drama between the two. I hope this storyline heads in a more positive direction. This show is still taking shortcuts with its writing at a few points. I can excuse Butcher getting access to Maeve's video of Homelander since they have an alliance (of sorts) currently, but I can't excuse Maeve being able to sneak out the top secret V24 from Vought and giving it to Butcher. It's also hard to believe that Homelander did not see Butcher hiding the V24 vials and growing suspicious with the timing of his arrival. He can see through walls, I'm sure he would have been watching Butcher from the moment he touched down, at which point Butcher was holding the V24. The Unknown: Who was Tony? What is his history with Neuman? What did she do to him in the past? Why did they want to kill each other? Who was Neuman before she joined the US government? What is Red River? Kimiko dreaming of singing was amusing. Will we see her express herself more? It seems like she hasn't got together with Frenchie, but appears to be attracted to the girl playing the piano. Is she lesbian? Deep's new book is a funny development, but why did he write it? I can't imagine that he had the willpower or intelligence to do this himself. Who is in his corner watching his back? Will Edgar be successful in rolling out V24? Will it leak to the public like Compound V did? Who is he going to test the V24 on? Are we going to get a love triangle with Hughie/Supersonic/Starlight? Please give us something better. Will Starlight accept her new role as cocaptain? How will she handle this role if she does? How will Homelander react? Will the others take issue with it? Is Butcher going to leak Maeve's video eventually? How did he get it? Will we see Butcher use the V24 at some point? Or will his pride prevent him from using it? Will he give it someone else, like Hughie? What happened to Soldier Boy and Payback? What is BSL Red? Is that just a red herring, or is it something real? How did Stormfront regrow one of her arms? Was Vought able to do some kind of special healing on her, or is this just an inconsistency? What does Hughie do now that he knows the truth about Neuman? Will he start working against her? Will he tell The Boys? How will he handle having knowledge of this terrible secret? Has MM found any important information about Soldier Boy? What happens when his family finds out what he has been doing? Will Butcher eventually square off against Homelander? Will they potentially work together (to an extent) to take out a common enemy in Vought? How will everyone else feel about this? Best Moment: Edgar speaking with both Starlight and Homelander was fantastic. The co-captain offer was a huge surprise and it put Starlight and Homelander in very interesting situations. Antony Starr steals the show as always with his pent up anger, and his petty attempt to maintain dignity when he was asked to leave. Edgar's calm and collected mannerisms are so fun to watch in contrast to Homelander's fury, and it's very satisfying to see him openly trash Homelander after he leaves, proving that he genuinely does not fear the man; Homelander is a pawn in the game, all things considered. Character of the Episode: Homelander. Conclusion: Barring the horrific Termite scene, I really enjoyed this season premier. It introduced some new mysteries and storylines, it pulled all of our main characters back into the fold, and gave us a few great character conversations as the cherry on top. It's just that there's the one scene that I can't get over; the Termite scene is "The Boys" at its disgusting worst. Hopefully we get fewer scenes like that as season 3 goes on. Score: 64
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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