The first three episodes of The Boys season 3 are here! Let’s review ’em:
Episode 301: “Payback”
The Boys is back, and right away, it wants us to know that it’s the most vile, disgusting show on television. I’m just going to get it out of the way (trigger warning for the grosses shit you’ve ever heard): within the first few minutes of the episode, a superhero shrinks down to a tiny size, goes inside a willing man’s penis to massage him from the inside, gets a tickle in his nose, sneezes, turns normal-sized again involuntarily and explodes out the guy’s crotch, leaving him an oozing corpse on the bed. And did I mention that The Boys made a whole set to simulate the inside of the guy’s dick? The Marquis de Sade could never.
This is the show we’re talking about. I imagine the writers in a room trying to crack each other up pitching the wildest, most depraved ideas they can, and then writing up the one that has them doubled over on the floor, whether from laughter or vomit. I see it, and I respect it, and I’m here for it, even if I had to stop eating dinner during this scene. Don’t you want to watch a show that inspires an intense reaction?
That said, for however much the show delights in imaginative debauchery, scenes like that are only the means to shock you into watching the rest of the series, which actually…wait for it…has something to say. The Boys is a drama, a comedy, a superhero show, but first and foremost it’s a satire: of the superhero-obsessed movie industry, or capitalism run amok, of the media, of politics, of everything. Come for the depravity, stay for the commentary.
Homelander: Still crazy after all these months
And The Boys has a lot of targets. We pick up around a year after season 3, which ended with our heroes taking down the Nazi superhero Stormfront and making an extremely unstable truce with the psychopathic Homelander (Antony Starr), who has the powers of Superman and the morals of Ted Bundy. Homelander is on a press tour to play down the whole I-fell-in-love-with-a-Nazi thing, telling everyone he just “fell for the wrong girl” and dismembering her in effigy on the big screen in the hilarious Avengers sendup Dawn of the Seven…
…even though Stormfront (Aya Cash) is convalescing in Homelander’s house and giving him creepy white supremacist handjobs with the one limb she has left after being blown apart by Homelander’s son in the season 3 finale. This show just piles sick on top of sick.
Obviously, Homelander has learned nothing from the events of the last two seasons and is more convinced than ever that his superpowers mean he is worthy of being worshipped and adored, something Stormfront is reinforcing. And he’s just going to get more unstable now that Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) has promoted Homelander’s enemy Starlight (Erin Moriarty) as the co-captain of the superhero team the Seven.
Every scene that Homelander is in crackles with energy because you never know when he’s going to snap…but you know he will eventually. He might be my favorite TV villain of the past several years.
Billy Butcher vs Homelander
That said, the heroes are no joke. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is still working with Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) to take down misbehaving superheroes, this time at the behest of their former associate Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), who is working under congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) at a recently established governmental agency responsible for overseeing superhero activity. It’s great to see a character like Hughie grow beyond the scared lost kid he was in the first season, and the new dynamic is fun; obviously the bellicose Butcher bristles at having to take direction from Hughie…but given what happens at the end of the episode I can see their old dynamic reasserting itself sooner or later.
Butcher is in a bad place. He’s paying periodic visits to Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), the son his wife had with Homelander, but he’s clearly uncomfortable around him. His work nabbing troublesome supes seems to be paying off, but it’s not enough; they’re catching the little fish while the big fish swim free. He hasn’t moved on, he’s not happy, he doesn’t wanna be happy, and he’s considering taking a new experimental drug that can give him superpowers for 24 hours at a time if it’ll help him get hold a weapon capable of ending Homelander for good.
Homelander visits Butcher in a scene towards the end of the episode I thought was tense but wasn’t sure if we needed it. What did we learn from this scene that we didn’t already know? That these two want to kill each other? That they’re violent people who are more similar than they’d like to admit? Maybe the show just wanted to get Antony Starr and Karl Urban in a room together. Can’t complain too much.
So there you have it: “Payback” is a solid premiere with a little of everything that makes The Boys worth watching, namely pointed satire, nimble character work and scenes so grotesquely imaginative you won’t be able to keep food down for a week. What a fun show!
The Bullet Points
- It’s been fun watching Colby Minifie grow into her role as Vought publicist Ashley Barrett, a professional who took her job with the best of intentions but who is becoming increasingly desperate over the shitshow she’s become a part of. Minifie has good comic timing and I welcome a bigger role for her.
- Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) is out of the game and spending more time with his daughter, his wife and his new boyfriend, but you get the idea that he’s eventually going to follow Butcher back down the superhero vengeance hole.
- We don’t meet Jensen Ackles’ character Soldier Boy in this episode, but he is mentioned. Expect him to show up shortly.
- At the end of the episode, Hughie finds out that his employer — who’s running the agency meant to tamp down on superhero misbehavior, mind you — is a superhero herself, and one who brutally kills an old friend in an alley. We already knew that congresswoman Neuman had a secret and I’m glad the show isn’t keeping it a secret from the other characters.