Gen V: Trojan

 "Thanks for the level up, asshole."

Wow. That's how you do a finale. Just ramping up the tension, with Godolkin's murderously Darwinian student auditions also functioning as a way for him to level up his powers so he can finally control Marie, leading to a truly thrilling climax with Marie and her friends vs. Godolkin, showing the power of the collective over the individual... although the way everyone sneaked into there was, yeah...

There's a lot of good character stuff too, though. Emma and Marie bonding over how damaged they both are from past trauma. Marie apologising and healing Cate, showing absolute trust. Jordan forgiving Marie, and dumping her, in one breath. Doug (whose experience with "Cipher" has been truly existential horror) bonding with Polarity over admiration for his late son. Godolkin's joy at being able to eat, drink, have sex and just feel again. Sage's vulnerability when asking him to live with her. Polarity's extraordinary growth as a character.

Godolkin is, of course, a monster. Yet, fascinatingly, his ultimate target is indeed Homelander, whose far right, MAGA-tinged, mentally unstable nonsense he sees as "mediocre"- a reminder that, by and large, those with far right views are not exactly ubermensch.

And the ending, with Starlight, A-Train and the gang joining the resistance just in time for the concluding season of The Boys? Uplifting and magnificent. Here's hoping they all appear, and we haven't seen the last of them.

And yes, The Boys will be replacing Gen V for the blog in this "slot". 

 

Gen V: New Year, New U

 "Nothing good will come of this..."

Gen V is back, and this time it's a very different status quo following the last season of The Boys. Victoria Neumann is dead and the new, intriguing, sinister dean, "Cypher" seems very much to be a staunchly anti-human "supe supremacist" who hates humans. Lovely. He seems very likely to be this season's Big Bad.

But we begin with a flashback to 1967, the origins of Compound V, and the kind of gore we've come to expect from the, er, Boysverse, if "Boysverse" is a thing...?

The new status quo has Emma and Jordan released, exonerated and back in uni. Marie is on the run. Everybody hates Cate. Andre is still dead. So, you know, all is sweetness and light...

It's all very well done, though, reminding us immediately of the characters and what's going on after all the time that's passed. And lots of hints of the MAGA-tinged dystopia we're in, with Cypher talking of the "deep state" and "race traitors". Plus, of course, the targeting, and paedophile accusations, against Starlight's supporters, which is a key plot point, causing Marie to be found first by Starlight (at first, she's refusing to investigate all these new experiments at uni, but we all know that won't last) and then by Jordan and Emma... and with dramatic results for a desperate, distraught Cate who is, in the end, still loyal to Vought... hence the dramatic ending.

So far, I have very high hopes for this season.

The Boys: Season Four Finale

 "I used to freak out whenever I saw blood. Now I barely blink at it."

Wow. That's how you do a season finale. Deeply satisfying, emotionally deep, devilishly clever and with the mother of all twists at the end. And, of course, it's about something. Far right skulduggery while certifyuing a US presidential election on January 6th, plus all the horrible Vought propaganda... yeah, this is not too far removed from realty. Indeed, that scene where Homelander is disgusted at Firecracker's coughing and humilates her for it, despite the fact it's a side effect of harmful drugs she's taking so that he can, er, you know... that total, cold ingratitude: he's Trump, isn't he?

The way this plays out is brilliantly done. Before the devastating endfing we have moments of hope. Yes, Annie is disgusted at Hughie for sleeping with her doppelganger, but she doesn't dump him. And Hughie's speech about forgiving a repentant Victoria Neuman persuades Frenchie and Kimiko to forgive themselves- and, at last, kiss!

But this is bleak, and seems to be leading inexorably to a dystopia, with Homelander's puppet as president. Billy Butcher is dying. The anti-supe virus isn't ready. And yet... the assassin is defeated. And Butcher reveals the power he's unknowingly had... and uses it to kill Neuman, a horrible, yet perhaps necessary act from a man who may be opposed to the baddies, but could never be called a hero. And the failure to persuade Ryan- and his casual slaying of Mallory- is horrible. As is Homelander's casual order to kill everyone on staff who knows too much.

So the ending, with Homelander thinking he's lost until Sage turns up and reveals it's all gone according to her plan, is inspired. Dystopia achieved, and Homelander has a newfound awe of Sage.And... most of the Boys are caught, no doubt destined for internment camps. Annie escapes though. And A-Train is out there somewhere. And then there's Ashley, last seen having taken V and undergoing ba horrifying transformation...

This is utter, utter genius telly.

The Boys: The Insider

 "Necessity is the MILF of invention!"

Brr. That fascist puppet show is the creepiest thing ever. But it's a sign, yet again, of just how on-the-nose The Boys is on the truly terrifying fascism of Trump and all the other MAGA terrorists.

So much happens in this penultimate episode. There's a shapeshifting baddie. A-Train comes good... and reveals himself as the leak: no going back now. Is this a redemption arc? It's chilling, though, when Starlight says he was "born uppity", just before a distraught Homelander fires Sage, who is . But a depressed Homelander is a dangerous Homelander, especially once he sees what Ryan's done on national TV. All this is at once clever plotting and good characterisation.

Then there's Butcher's collapse, Kimiko's connection with Frenchie over their scared guilt for past murders... and her near death. There's MM coming close to leaving for Belize with his family... but deciding to fight the good fight anyway. This seems ominous. Is he going to die in the finale? Alongside, surely, Butcher?

Then there's Webweaver's humiliating death, harsh even for someone as deeply masochistic as him.... and oh, the Deep. It's almost tragic how his octopus lover gently confronts him about Sage, only for him to instictively end up killing her, her last words being that she loves him... and later on he finds out that Sage has also been doing it with Black Noir. Ouch. The Deep has to be quite the most impressive charcterisation of a truly pathetic, contemptible man I've seen pretty much anywhere.

Gulp. Here comes the finale. It promises to be good...

The Boys: Beware the Jabberwock, My Son

 "It's an absolute wonder to me that you've all managed to live this long..."

Oh my. Only The Boys could possibly do flying killer sheep infected with Compound Vi quite like this episode. As ever, this is exquisite.

So many little touches. I love, once again, the little bits of Vought advertising excess, with its tone deaf attempts at diversity and the blatant not to Kevin Feige's public unveling of the next raft of Marvel films.

There's so much more, though. The ending, when Billy Butcher reveals what his real, devilishly clever plan was. The links to Gen V. Homelander's slowly successful corruption of Ryan. Ashley's cold betrayal of the ex-sub whoi dumped her, framimg him and ensuring his horrible death. Seeing Stan Edgar again, and his commentary on everyone. Firecracker really going all out to destroy Annie.

And yet there's real heart here. Frenchie's terrible guilt, and Catholic guilt at that, over all the muders he's committed... and what it spurs him to do. 

But the real, incredible, heart-wrenching tragedy here is, of course, Hughie and his dad, with a tour de force performance from Simon Pegg. The dynamics between Hughie and both his parents here is utterly incredible. 

And yet, even here, there's glorious amounts of gore. Ah, The Boys. Like nothing else on telly, and I love it so much.

The Boys: Wisdom of the Ages

 "Your life is literally in your hands..."

Wow, This is a dark, dark episode. For a start, much of it consists of Homelander slowly torturing, humiliating and killing those who made his childhood so damaging. It's all good character stuff... but damn, it's dark.

But so is everything else. Sage has her own demons, unable to be free from the burden of her genius. So much so... that she gets her toyboy the Deep to give her a te,porary fontal lobotomy so she can dumb down for a while.Wow. And that's only the second grossest moment in this episode. The worst is... you know.

Then there's the dying Butcher, the little worm that's roaming in his skin, and that... explosion or something that saves his life. Frenchie finally confesses to Colin. Hughie does his ultimaterly fruitless little deal with A-Train... and what's happening with his Dad?

And yet... the most distressing part of the episode is how cruelly Firecracker (who at one point say to Sage "You know, when I first met you, I thought you were kind of uppity. But you're one of the good ones"... just wow) ruins Annie's life on television via a six hour hatchet job. Liberals are always held to higher moral standards than fascists, because we have morals and they don't. The asymmetry explains why they succeed, and why we must sometimes compromise on our ethics in order to crush them.

This is darker, more of a downer, than most episodes. But, as ever, besides the grossness and the cynicism is a real moral outrage.

The Boys: We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

 "Elon Musk has more charm than he does. And she's half-android."

This episode proves that, good as the last two were, it's possible to get even better. Such a brilliant, perfect, nuanced piece of television.

There's all kinds of very contemporary subtext here, with Vought and its cronies pushing superheroes as a far right wedge issue. There's a man with a gun who nearly murders some of Starlight's followers because of a crazy, Pizzagate-style conspiracy theory. There's a nod to the concerning transphobia epidemic that's rife today, Sister Sage's sinister Project 25-style plans include plans to remove all books covering "critical Supe theory" and allowing Supes to outrank the police and military. Brr.

Yet the character stuff is deep. Hughie finally gets to see his errant mother as a real human being, who left her child not becaudse of innate evil but because it was the only way to save herself folloeing a suicide attempt caused by post-partum depression. Wow. Sister Sage and Firecracker join the Seven... and, very cleverly, after we've come to realise what a nasty, MAGA piece of work Firecracker is, the rug gets pulled out from under us: she genuinely comes from nothing, and had her life chances ruined by thirteen year old little rick girl Annie... and "People don't change". Wow.

Meanwhile, Kimiko realises she has to face her past and overcome her deomons, while Frenchie refuses to share about him, retreating into getting high, having to face not only that he's killed Colin's family but has murdered so many. It's interesting to see where they're going with this. M.M. struggles with leadership, the new Black Noir struggles with his acting, and the Deep has a love triangle going on with Sage and, er, an octopus.

But the real meat of the episode is the tug of war between an increasingly scary Homelander and the dying Butcher for Ryan. Butcher and Ryan have a truly affecting scene, Ryan clearly seeing Butcher asa flawed, damaged but ultimately good man. Homelander, meanwhile, is casually leaving a trail of human bodies behind him... but what't that multiple personality moment at the end? He has to go "back to the start?"

As ever with The Boys, I've no idea where this is going. But I bleeding well love it.

The Boys: Life Among the Septics

" I swear to God... stupod people who think they're smart make me want to eat my own ***."

Yet again, there's a lot going on here, early in the season though we are. Sister Sage continues to be fascinating- the smartest person on the planet and utterly amoral. She has ber own agenda too, and we start to see parts of it. Despite her obvuous disdain for the subtle racism directed at her, she is ultimately a supe supremacist, telling the Deep to stand up to Ashley because "You're an evolutionarily superior being."

Ironically, she's an interesting comparison to Stormfront and, in the end, similarly fascistic. It's just that her racism is less... old-fashioned. And Homelander quite agrees. Much of the episode consists of Ryan prepping for his first "Solo save" in public, which goes horribly wrong as the "villain" is horribly killed by Homelander. Chillingly, Homelander just doesn't get why Ryan is upset about this- "humans are fragile".

Horrifying though this is, it shows a horrible truth: superheroes never truly save anyone, it's all staged... as A-Train is forced to admit to his nephews. Meanwhile, he's filming his own origin movie which is changing his past to include all sorts of subtly racist tropes... and Will Ferrell. No wonder he's annoyed enough to sneak footage exonerating last episode's two murder scapegoats to Annie and Hughie.

Meanwhile, Kimiko gets drunk, continues to be lovely to Frenchie and maybe, just maybe, confronts her own past. Hughie, meanwhile, confronts his errant mother. And the ongoing psychodrama between M.M. and the dying Butcher continues.

Best of all, as ever, is the social commentary- the subtle and not so subtle racism of MAGA America, and the dangers of conspiracy theories, which are far from harmless and all have dangeroud far right ideology not far beneath the surface. Ah, I love The Boys. I just need to get bleeding well caught up.

The Boys: The Department of Dirty Tricks

 "You know, there were no relations with an octopus..."

Ouch. Three new episodes of The Boys dropped last Friday, showing zero respect for my schedule. Bear with me; I'mll get them watched and up to date as soon as I can, even if it means watching episodes on some consecutive days.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've missed The Boys. This season opener may not have an... explosive moment like the last one, but damn, it's good. So good, in fact, that it even deserves to be bookended by a certain suddenly outdated stone cold classic by the Sex Pistols. But who are the flowers in the dustbin, and who the poison in the human machine, if I may further torture some already tortured metaphors?

So... Homelander, a scarily powerful and unhinged figure idolised by fanatical far right supporters, is undergoing a criminal trial. Meanwhile, a new president has been elected... and is trying to get the CIA, employing the Boys, to kill his vice-preseident, one Victoria Neumann, before January 6th and the inauguration, thereby altering the result of the election. Isn't it great to have such pure superhero escapism, which in no way reflects current events?

Most of the gang see Vicky (and her very, very scary daughter with some truly icky powers) as the main threat... but the slowly dying Billy Butcher is highly focused on Homelander. And they're sort of both right, althgough thankfully not yet in conflict; it seems that Butcher is about to betray Hughie and ally with Neumann against Homelander... but he doesn't.

Hughie's dad has a stroke. Homelander is having a mid-life crisis and is tired of being surrounded by sycophants (ha!)... yet he bonds with Sister Sage, whose superpower is genius... and follows her deliciously evil, utterly amoral plan.Right down to having his biggest fans beaten to death by three of said sycophants for a false flag op. Ouch.

And it seems Black Noir is not quite dead after all?)

The arc with Ryan isfascinating... will he choose Billy or Homelander? Frenchie has an old flame, Colin. Already, there's so much going on. As ever, this is soooo good.

The Boys: The Instant White-Hot Wild

 "My cake hole will remain open!"

This is such a The Boys season finale. There's lots of fighting. There's lots of characters, and lots of character development. So much happens. Deep breath.

Homelander wins, the bastard. He has his son, and ends up as pretty much openly fascist. Billy Burcher loses, with a yrest to live after using Temp V, and having turned against Soldier Boy to save the son who isn't even his son by blood but by love- the opposite of Soldier Boy and Homelander, both products of a cycle of abuse, that seems to be spreading to Ryan. The look on his face at the Trump-Nazi rally is chilling.

Incidentally, any Americans reading this who support Trump, or the Republican party, you're not conservatives, you're Nazis, ok? Kindly *** yourselves. Thank you.

Maevew, the only supe (Annie aside, and yes; they're both women) not to be corrupted by her powers, gets a heroic death and gets to live, sans powers if sadly also sans eye, but her ex is back with her. I think, overall, she has her well-deserved happiness.

The Deep is... ever more tragic and pathetic. MM is a decent man worthy of respect, who loves his daughter and shows the dad he can be, a shining ecxample to all of us who love our little girls so much it hurts. Kimiko and Frenchie are the cutest couple ever. And Annie gets a supremely satisfying ending, loved and worshipped by Hughie and discarding her costume to join the Boys.

And yeah, Black Noir. His death. As Oscar Wilde said of Little Nell, you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.

The Boys: Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed

 "Frenchie, are you high?"

"Well, that goes without saying!"

Well- SPOILER alert- that's quite the ending; Homelander, fast on the way to being discredited by Annie's media-savvy exp.loitation of the right-wing extremist killer's incredible thickness, learns that Soldier Boy- who never, in fact, fought in the Second World War; it was all propaganda- is the Darth to his Luke. Dumf dumf dumf. Well then.

Then we have the beautiful, beautiful romance between Kimiko, newly empowered out of love for him, and Frenchie. Yeah, he's going to die next episode, isn't he? It is the finale, after all.

There's so much more, though. Billy's past, and his demons surrounding Lennie, and a character whose powers are to make you have horrible nightmares until you die of dehydration. Urrrgh. This shows us his guilt about Lennie (his suicide...damn!), about Becca, about surrogate son Hughie... who he is prepare4d to allow to die of Compound V lesions for the sake of killing Homelander (will he die?). Wow.

Then there's the delicious, er, threesome scene between the Deep, his wife and an octopus. A-Train waking up with the transplanted heart of a racist wanker. There's the revelation of what has happened to poor, vengeful Maeve. There's poor MM, cuckolded by an absolute wanker.  

Most of all, threre's Black Noir, the cartoon animals, and the revelations of what happened to psycho stoner poser Soldier Boy.

This programme is one of the best things on telly. Sod it; Stranger Things isn't on any more. It's THE best thing on telly.

The Boys: Herogasm

 "Oh Jesus, your stretching powers!"

Yeah, this line reminds me of a hilarious book called How to Be a Superhero,with illustrations by Steve Dillon. If you remember it- the writers clearly did- you MUST say so in the comments.

Anyway, this is a near perfect episode of television. Not because of all the splendidly filthy Herogasm sexy nastiness... but it helps. It's good to see depressingy exploitative and tool-deflatingly stupid porn, and the whole culture surrounding it, being mocked like this. Top marks for that. Porn is stupid, Erotic stories, generally written by women, are where it's at. Er, anyway...

This is wonderful. Soldier Boy is flawed, damaged, reactionary but honestly so, not like these tiresome modern "warriors" on "woke" who try to disguise the tininess of their penises with their love of Donald Trump (Homelander is, of course, said pathetic orange failure as a human being). One can sympathise with him- as well as damaged, human Butcher and his unfortunate acolyte Hughie- while ultimately acknowledging that Annie is wise, right, and the leader we all need asc she stands up to Neuman and records her devastating resignation speech.

Homelander may survive his pummelling, but surely he's doomed. Yet he's super-powered, and uncontrollable.

Then we have the magnificent opening text, the generally brilliant characterisation, the moving love story between Frenche amd Kimiko. This is sumtuous telly, and this blog post does not, cannot, do justice to it.

The Boys: Last Time to Look upon This World of Lies

 "With great power comes the certainty that you'll turn into a right ****!"

Wow. The Boys does it again. We have the Legend, a coke-snorting retired celebrity monger who may actually be based on Stan Lee. We have Ashley as CEO of Vought, but Homelander, like Trump, finds himself in power (the superpowers are, of course, a metaphor of that), but far too thick to exercise it effectively.

We have the loving but awkward relationship between Annie and Hughie. He, being male, feels he should protect her, hence his increasing addiction to Temp V. Yet he's wrong. She's a supe.She needs not his protection, but his love. And so the gender roles are reversed. Can Hughie be a real man and be the loving man the superhero Starlight needs? The signs are not good.

Homelander, who has always been the villain, takes shape even more as the big bad. His aggressive assault on Maeve- what happens to her? Is she dead?- is a shocking as Maeve herself who, in giving an increasingly unhinged Billy Butcher some more Temp V, and being told that supes like her shoild be destroyed... kisses him. Well then.

And Soldier Boy is loose, in the USA. His relationship with OnlyFans star Crimson Countess has disturbing parallels with that of Maeve and Homelander. Crimson Countess ends up dead. Does Maeve?

This is superb telly, outrageous and nuanced. A-Train's subplot, in which he gets to realise, at last, the true nature of a "supe lives matter" racist supe wanker wjho deserves a good kicking, is perhaps the most interesting. This is bloody brilliant.

The Boys: Glorious Five Year Plan

 "Let's just say that Maeve can bend a steel pipe without using her hands."

Wow. So much happens in this episode... and Homelander is even more out of control. Can anybody stop him? He nonchalantly outmaneovres pretty much everybody who tries to stop him, all while acting as much of a dick as he possibly can, from getting Victoria Neumann to destroy Stan Edgar's career in disgrace, seemingly- although Edgar is not without a parting shot- to killing Annie's ex as a chilling warning.

And yet... this isn't four dimensional chess. Homelander pulls the strings through fear, not cleverness. And, of course, there's a weapon in Russia than may be able to kill him.

Scenes in Russia are as shocking as any featuring Homelander or, indeed, the hints of Ashley's sex life. Kimiko is forced against her will to go on a mission, involving death by dildo to some oligarch, that profoundly shocks her to the point that she and Frenchie agree to leave Butcher. So. naturally- and shockingly- she is killed. That's two deaths this episode.

Oh, and it turns out the Russians'weapon is- Soldier Boy himself, somehow, to MM's disgust.

And Billy is as out of control as Homelander, even dragging Hughie along with him in his addiction to temp V and the powers it brings, very visibly coded as a Class A drug. It's war between the two of them. And neither seems to care about collateral damage...

Superb and shocking in equal measure. It always is.

The Boys: Barbary Coast

 “I. Am. Homelander.”

I realise I could say this about any episode… but where to start?

Let’s start with Grace Mallory’s tale of Soldier Boy and the whole gang in ‘80s Nicaragua, engaged in that all-American pursuit of fighting left-wing movements in Central America in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, and doing so via deals with Khamenei’s Iran and selling cocaine specifically to minority communities. God bless Uncle Sam, Oliver North and Ronald Reagan. 

Anyway, we see the whole team in their, er, heyday, including a Black Noir who speaks(!), and an early example of why supes in any military is such a moronic idea. But the big Soviet supe-killing gun is quite the McGuffin, causing Billy to lose his brown stuff and alienate his son to protect him.

He does this because of his deep desire to kill Homelander, who is increasingly sadistic and out of control, like a cross between Superman and Donald Trump only capable of stringing a sentence together. He brings back the Deep into the team despite the reality TV comprtionion nonsense, just to troll Annie in the worst way possible before announcing that the two of them are an item. He makes the Deep eat an octopus, despite the fact he can hear it begging for its life. Worst of all, he calmly faces down Annie’s threat to release the plane footage by threatening to turn against America. It’s increasingly clear that he’s the big bad.

There’s so much else. The nicely done demonstration of Islamophobia on the reality show. Hughie’s reluctant conversion to fighting dirty. A-Train learning about a supe called Blue Hawk who is responsible for at least one BLM type atrocity. And the, er, revelations about Frenchie’s sexual past. 

Ah, The Boys. You’re dirty. You’re amazing. But I’m not taking you to meet my mother.

The Boys: The Only Man in the Sky

 "A hamburger with a donut for a bun? There really is no God here."

This is a brilliant episode, and one f the reasonds it's brilliant is the sheer complexity of all the stuff that's going on, yet with such perfect character beats, aided by extraordinary performances from the likes of Karl Urban and Antony Starr.

We know that Homelander is a monster, but it gets truly scary when things don't go his way. The scene where he's trying to stop a girl from jumping off a building, then they both change their minds and he makes her jump even though she's changed her mind... yeah, that's dark. As it the fact that his first thought after Stormfront's suicide is that she has to do it on his birthday. But his horribly self-centred monologue at the end is a huge moment. There's so much dramatic tension in wondering what he's going to do.

Meanwhile we get more backstory on Soldier Boy, who seems pretty much the Comedian from Watchmen. All the research done by the gang is fascinating, with Laurie Holden guest-starring as the Crimson Countess, while Gunpowder is a dark, dark character, sexually abused as Soldier Boy's boy wonder as a kid and now grown up into a far-right MAGA gun nut. He dies, of course, but at the hands of a Billy Butcher who has temporary supe powers, the one thing you'd think he'd never do.

The psychology and motivations of Hughie, Billy, MM and Homelander are dwelt upon at length here. This is deep, thoughtful yet deliciously irreverent stuff.

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.

The Boys: What I Know

 "People love what I have to day. They believe in it. They just don't like the word "Nazi", that's all."

Wow. That was even more eventful than last season's crammed finale, and bloody good bit of telly. Where to start?

Of course, it was clear Stormfront was going down. She's the season Big Bad who can be defeated in the end while still leaving Vought and Homelander to do theit nefarious stuff- this time without any of that Nazi baggage, which isn't good for business. But her exposure, and how it's Ryan who permanently disables her as she tries to kill his mum, is dramatic and cathartic. Rebecca's death is shocking (it's not Ryan's fault; she would still have died if he hadn't have lashed out), but she dies reconciled with Butcher after he couldn't bring himself to betray her- and Billy Butcher, the ultimate supe hater, now seems to have a stepson of sorts, even if Ryan is in the hands of the CIA.

Maeve gets redemption, finally using her blackmail footage for good. The Deep's hilarious journey with the not-Scientologits ends hilariously as it's A-Train, not him, who ends up back in the Seven, rewarded for his "initiative" in exposing Stormfront, the new convenient scapegoat for everything. There's a reset button of sorts, at least supeficially, with Annie and Maeve back in the fold, while the Boys are now legal- and official? None of this feels like a stable status quo, though, especially with the shocking reveal as to who exactly was blowing up all them heads.

This was damn good. How long till the next season...?

The Boys: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

 "You're the cuck fluffer!"

It'd the penultimate episode, and it's... explosive. After last episode's revelations we get plenty of rallies from Homelander and Stormfront in which, being Nazis, they cheerfully use the dog whistling slang of Nazi-loving MAGA types today "snowflake", "SJW", etc. Just to drive the point home, we begin with one of Stormfront's online zealots being slowly radicalised online until the point he murders someone, of course from an ethnic minority. It's clear what the subtext is here. And this series was released in October 2020, shortly before, thankfully, Trump was humiliated.

Yet the very final scene has uncomfortable echoes. The Boys, Mallory etc have done their best- including Billy Butcher being quite the unhinged psychotic- to expose Vaught by democratic means... and the congressional hearing is brought to a bloody end by those exploding heads. Is it Stormfront? Homelander? Either way, this ends-justify-the-means assault on democracy very much echoes the terrorist attack on the US Capitol.

Other stuff happens too, of course. Homelander and Stormfront turn Ryan against Rebecca. Butcher meets his dad, played by a fellow cast member from Lord of the Rings. A-Train is having doubts about the cult as that Archer bloke is fair gamed.

Also, Lamplighter self-immolates and so allows Hughie to rescue the now exposed Annie by means of Lamplighter's severed hand. Yep, only on The Boys.

This is gloriously evil telly. And it' actually about something to boot. I love it.

The Boys: The Bloody Doors Off

 "A bigot and a bully..."

Wow. This episode is full of revelations and superb character moments. I mean, scenes such as a bloke dissolving his own face with his own acidic vomit, or MM getting strangled by a bloke's enormous penis- yes, I just wrote that- don't even register.

The bulk of the episode consists of the Boys and Annie following up a lead to a mental hospital in Pennsylvania. Here we learn of the incident, years before, where Colonel Grace Mallory employed Butcher, MM and Frenche to get at Vought via Lamplighter. Her children died horribly, Frenchie had conflicting loyalties, and Lamploghter turns out to be played by Iceman from the X-Men films.

Oh, and Stormfront seems to be behind the facility, which is all about trying to stabilise Compound V. And Annie and Butcher seem to bond a bit courtest of Hughie being badly hurt, and some stupid wanker who pulled a gun on them whinging that "this is a Stand Your Ground state". I've got no sympathy from the psycho whatsoever. 

Also, the Deep and his puppetmasters seem to be doing quite well in getting A-train into the cult. And a shocked Elena sees how Maeve was planning to blackmail Homelander with footage from the plane.

All this is dramatic enough, but we end with a bombshell... Stormfront was born in 1919, is Frederick Vought's widow and the firt person ever infected wirh Compound V. And she's a full-on, hob-nobbing with Himmler and Goebells, Nazi, who worships Homelander as the perfect Aryan ubermensch. Well then,