The Boys: Payback

 "He's trying to get in my ass!"

I'm not sure there's much I can say about THAT particular CGI-heavy scene that is a twisted parody of Fantastic Voyage with added sexual bizarreness and gore, but... yeah. It pretty much epitomises The Boys. There's no point thinking "don't go there"; it will. That's why we love it.

Although I will now never think of the Atom or Ant Man  in the same way again. Ahem.

Anyway, as a season opener this is a masterpiece. It introduces and develops an impressive number of characters and threads with wit and aplomb. It's all logically developed, too, in ways that work perfectly with the characters. So Billy chafes at having Hughie as his boss, while Hughie seems happy and contented reducing supe killings by 60% working for Congresswoman Victoria Neumann... until he discovers, at the end, that she has a past, and incidentally that she makes heads explode.

There's so much going on, though. The animosity between Homelander and the gone-to-seed A-Train, who no longer runs. The fact that Edgar wants Starlight to be co-boss of the Seven with Homelander, pissing off the infantile superman and poisoning the rather good sexual dynamic between Annie and Hughie. It's the temptation of power: will she be corrupted? Will she use it for good? Hughie certainly could have reacted better, particuarly as the ex (from a reality show to audition the next member of the Seven, a delicious concept) is so wet.

Fascinatingly, though, we have Homelander trying to connect with Billy of all people- going clean for his son- after visiting a hospitalised and permanently disabled Stormfront who unrequitedly worships (and, er, hand jobs!) him as an ubermensch ("No one suffers like you do" uttered by a paraplegic half-blind Nazi). We also have a director who gets off sexually on being humiliated on how shit a director he is, and... yeah. Welcome to a new series of The Boys, ladies and gentlemen.