Why is [REDACTED] blowing up people’s heads in The Boys?
By Dan Selcke
In the season finale of The Boys, we finally learned who’s been popping people’s heads like grapes, and it was the last person we expected.
The second season of The Boys premiered on Amazon Prime Video last month, and pretty early on, it presented us with a mystery: who is going around popping people’s heads?
We got our first exploding head in the premiere. The Boys were talking to their contact in the CIA, Raynor, when her head mysteriously went kablooie:
Later on, the Boys arranged for a high-profile witness to testify against Vought, the immortal mega-corporation that had made and then exploited most of the world’s superheroes. But just as he was about to give his testimony, his head popped like an overripe melon, and the heads of several other people in the room soon followed. That included Shockwave, a superhero working for Vought.
Finally, in the season finale, we learned who was behind the head-popping: Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, who popped the head of Alastair Adana, the leader of the Church of the Collective.
Yikes, that’s a lot of popped heads. I hope you didn’t watch those videos all at once.
Is Victoria Neuman working for Vought?
I don’t think this was an answer many people saw coming, and it raises a lot of questions. Why would Victoria do this? She spent the season crusading against overreach by Vought and its superheroes, but her actions prevented the full truth of the company’s from coming out. She exploded Raynor’s head right as she figured out what was going on at Vought (we never got a chance to hear what she had to say), and she popped heads in the courtroom right before Dr. Vogelbaum exposed some of their dirtiest secrets. And recall that the courtroom incident freaked people out so much that the government was ready to allow Vought to go into mass production on Compound V, the formula it uses to create superheroes, so people could defend themselves against super-attacks.
And then, Victoria popped Alistair’s head right as he offered to give her dirt on several superheroes, presumably including some who work for Vought. If you think about it, pretty much all of the head pops benefitted Vought in some way, so my working theory is that Victoria Neuman is working for the company but posing as someone who fights against it so Vought can have eyes on both sides of the conflict. After all, how would she have gotten head-popping superpowers in the first place if she wasn’t exposed to Vought’s Compound V?
If this is true, it’s a pretty diabolical plan, and something I can believe that Vought’s crafty CEO Stan Edgar was involved with.
Or she could be out for herself, acting for reasons unknown. In any case, Hughie better watch himself now that he’s joined her campaign team. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for The Boys season 3 to fine out more.
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