We Gotta Go Now
The dramatic ending to last episode raises the stakes for episode 5 of The Boys Season 2. We begin with Queen Maeve on set. Homelander has forced her to turn her sexuality into profit for The Seven. Brushing off Maeve’s concerns, he turns his attention to a frazzled Ashley. She arrives with video footage of Homelander killing an innocent bystander. Or, an “easy win” as he calls it given the man is allegedly a terrorist. On the back of this, the video footage has been leaked to the public. The backlash has resulted in Homelander being down 9 points in the polls. Even worse, Stormfront arrives offering her “support.” After taking a beating in a club, Butcher patches himself up while Hughie rings and admits that Stormfront’s previous alias is actually Liberty. He also confirms that he’s not mad at Butcher. On the back of Becca refusing to join him, Butcher is not in the mood for chit-chat. He says his goodbyes and promises to go off-grid. Hughie senses something wrong – especially given Butcher’s being nice – and urges him to reveal all. Butcher arrives to see his Aunt but as he does, both Hughie and Mother’s Milk show up. Unfortunately they’re not the only ones. Black Noir happens to be on the roof watching from afar. After apologizing to his Aunt, the group try to work out their next move in the wake of this deadly assassin. Elsewhere, on the news Deep gets married and starts to salvage his reputation. Meanwhile, A-Train’s expulsion from The Seven causes him to desperately try and change the script he’s given. Unfortunately the Director, Bourke, refuses to do so. Kimiko goes on the warpath, killing a group of Russians. When Frenchie sees the devastation first-hand, he hurries after her. Meanwhile, Starlight becomes uncomfortable on set at the movie. When her Mother shows up, she immediately raises her defences. To make matters worse, she’s getting cozy with Stormfront. It’s here Stormfront starts to realize that Starlight was the one who leaked the Compound V scandal to the news. Maeve gets caught in a whirlwind of publicity as Ashley and the other PR agents start whipping up a gay angle for her to lean into. Afterwards, Maeve sits with Elena and promises to take down Homelander no matter what. Deep’s advert for the Church of the Collective does the rounds on TV. Stormfront comments how she used to be part of them before they started “letting anyone in”. As Stormfront coldly speaks to A-Train about this, she appears to hold a grudge against him. For now she holds her cards close to her chest. Homelander meets the protestors while Ashley watches in horror as he goes off on his own without a script. The people don’t take kindly to his arrival though and start chanting against him. Despite a vision of him killing everyone in the crowd, Homelander keeps his cool and eventually leaves. Butcher decides to give up altogether and offer himself up to Black Noir. but Hughie tries his best to get through to him but the big man pushes him away. M.M. comes to Hughie’s aide though and tries to turn Butcher around. Eventually Butcher agrees to fight back. Down in the basement, we learn from Butcher’s aunt that he used to have a brother called Lenny. Ironically, Hughie looks just like him. Before they can continue, they’re interrupted by an explosion above them. Black Noir has entered the house. He heads in and single-handedly knocks down M.M. and Hughie. Just before he delivers the killing blow, Butcher gives him an ultimatum and blackmails the assassin into giving up. He knows the details surrounding Homelander’s son and promises to leak this to the press. It does the trick too and as Edgar phones, they make a deal to call off Noir in exchange for keeping the information a secret. On her way to stop Homelander, Maeve approaches Deep and tells him he needs a woman to stand up for him. At the same time, Starlight breaks into Stormfront’s trailer and manages to hack into her computer. Stormfront arrives not long after though and the two admit their truths to one another. Thankfully, Homelander arrives and breaks up the party before things can turn nasty. As he does, Homelander and Stormfront hook up and she shows just how powerful she really is. Despite using his laser eyes on her, it doesn’t seem to phase Stormfront and the two wind up making love.
The Episode Review
With pockets of action dotted throughout the episode, The Boys instead doubles down on its character melodrama. The result is a series that doesn’t quite have the same energy the first one did. Some of this may be the fault of a weekly release which definitely doesn’t help matters here. The various subplots at play are interesting but mainly feel like satirical plays on different parts of celebrity culture. How these feed into the bigger picture, remains to be seen. It looks like all of this is building up to Homelander being usurped from The Seven. I think this is where the story is going but with Stormfront in the driving seat and coercing Homelander into making some pretty radical and bad decisions. For now though, the episode ends with lots of promise and plenty of question marks hanging over this one.
