The Boys Episode 3 Tackles Intergenerational Trauma – with a Punch!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE BOYS SEASON 3 EPISODE 5!!

Also warning for lots of Soldier Boy, since this is originally a Supernatural website and we might enjoy lots and lots of Jensen Ackles characters. You’ve been warned!

“Every One of You Sons of Bitches” was a tough episode to watch. The theme of fathers and sons and how that can go wrong, and the repeated depiction of intergenerational trauma, plays out in vicious fashion. Literally hard to watch at times, but the episode left an impact (yes, figuratively too).

And we got a lot more Soldier Boy, which is always a win in my book.

Soldier Boy Joins the Seven

Soldier Boy officially joins the Seven, going along with Homelander’s plan at least for now, with the propaganda machine working smoothly to get the public to revise their negative view of him. “America’s first hero, defender of liberty, branded a traitor by legacy media, scapegoated by Starlight, Soldier Boy has been reborn.”  Apparently he was working with “our friends in Russia” to rout out traitors in Ukraine, as evidenced by a photo op of him shaking hands with Putin.

The Deep notes that Russia was the first nation to not put up with trans bathrooms, which sounds like it should be a ridiculous thing to say except over the several years since this season was written, it’s unfortunately gotten even more believable as something we might hear on TV.

Ashley presents Soldier Boy with the “democratic medal of patriotic freedom” and he beams, his narcissism well fed. Seriously, how many times am I going to watch a scene in this show and be able to call to mind another REAL one that looked exactly the same??  Some silly made up honor and a big gaudy gold medal placed around some narcissistic leader’s neck while he grins like an idiot.

 

Sorry, Soldier Boy, but oof.

Both Antony Starr and Jensen Ackles say so much with their facial expressions and posture in this scene. Soldier Boy accepts the honor, which Homelander probably played a part in setting up, but as he watches his father soak up all the glory, you can see that it pains him. He can never allow anyone else the limelight without feeling like it should be him (Soldier Boy is the same way, as Black Noir found out the hard way).

Homelander expresses everyone’s gratitude to Soldier Boy and says they hope “he can forgive us as he takes his rightful place in the Seven.”  That’s a bit of a Freudian slip, as Homelander is at the moment worried about Soldier Boy’s more personal forgiveness – he’s afraid that his father has not forgiven him for sending him after Butcher clueless about the supe-killing virus that almost took him out.

Homelander also can’t resist sharing that he’s also very proud to say that “this great hero is my father” – Soldier Boy looks ambivalent about making this public, to say the least.

When they’re out of the public eye, Homelander tries to butter his father up, saying he’s still got it, that social media is blowing up, calling them “America’s sexiest dynasty.”

This show’s intersection with reality is so ridiculous, this could be an actual People cover or a fan-made creation and I would believe either explanation!

Soldier Boy is not amused.

He has been silent this whole time, but the look on his face is chilling. (The chapter I wrote about Soldier Boy in the book on ‘The Boys’,  ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes,’ dives into Ackles’ extraordinary ability to convey more information with his face than most people can with a page of dialogue, and he shows that here.)  Homelander insists he would have never sent Soldier Boy in if he knew Butcher had the virus – and reminds him that he said not to engage, so it’s not really his fault anyway – but you can clearly see that none of this is convincing to Soldier Boy.

Homelander is lying about not knowing, but he did apparently tell his father not to engage – the farthest someone like him can go to protect someone he cares about (even if that caring is mostly just selfish).

Soldier Boy never says a word, but looks scary as hell – and pissed. Narcissists do not do well with betrayal and it’s clear he feels like Homelander betrayed him. It’s an Achilles heel for him, people he trusts betraying him, and something that keeps happening – as Soldier Boy doesn’t exactly inspire loyalty. That’s the Catch 22 of being a narcissist, desperate for people’s love and approval but constantly holding them to standards that they’re bound to fall short of and being such a dick that they inevitably betray him. (It’s a pitfall that both father and son are falling into, with Homelander taking it up to a whole other level).

Setting Up Vought Rising: V1

‘The boys’ figure out that Soldier Boy wasn’t killed by the virus because he has V1 in his bloodstream as Frederick Vought’s first iteration of Compound V. Which means, as MM puts it, “this motherfucker is unkillable.”

Sage explains the same to Soldier Boy. It only worked on a handful of supes – Bombsight, Torpedo, Private Angel, him and Stormfront. To Soldier Boy’s questioning look, she explains that’s Dr. Vought’s wife Clara.

Sage: I think you know her as Liberty.

The look that passes over Soldier Boy’s face at learning that speaks volumes, setting up some of the plot for Vought Rising starring Soldier Boy and Stormfront/Liberty. They clearly have a history and I cannot wait to find out what it is!

V1 is why Soldier Boy doesn’t age. Homelander asks hopefully if he too is immune to the virus, but the answer is no. (Back at the boys HQ, Samir clarifies the same thing – and that if Homelander gets his hands on some V1, he’d be immortal too. The boys vow to find some V1 before Homelander can).

Homelander to Sage: Bring me some.

I liked the way these parallel scenes were shot, with both the boys and the supes figuring it out at the same time, and both determined to get some V1 for their own uses.

Intergenerational Trauma Part 1: Soldier Boy and Homelander

The book I edited on ‘The Boys’ has multiple chapters written by psychologists analyzing all the trauma in his show and how much of it is passed down through generations. The insights from the actors touch on the same thing and how that informed their acting choices.

This episode delves into that dynamic again and again, each time more painful than the one before it. The first (in this episode) really painful father-son scene happens when Soldier Boy breaks his silence and verbally tears down his son, which seem to hurt him even more than the physical fight they two had back in Season 3.

When they’re alone in the hallway of the Seven HQ, Soldier Boy turns on his father, lashing out. He’s been betrayed and he’ll make the betrayer pay, even if – especially if – it’s his own son.

Soldier Boy: Fuck you! You knew Butcher had that virus. You defrosted me just to send me into the fucking woodchipper!  Well joke’s on you, asshole, because I’m gonna live when you’ll die. When you’re sitting in that wheelchair with a colostomy bag, I’ll be running the Seven, shitting on Shari Lewis’ tits.

(Me channeling Hughie: why is everything you say so disgusting??)

Homelander insists he didn’t know, then as Soldier Boy continues to berate him, he stands there struck silent, looking like he’s about to cry. A look that would bring some empathy or at least sympathy from most fathers – from most people actually.

Soldier Boy: Look at you, just the softest wettest boy. You’re pathetic, you’re nothing at all.

It’s a call back to Season 1 when A Train said something similar, and Homelander stands alone after. Isolated, bereft. The words are designed to cut, particularly effective for a man who has bought into toxic masculinity and paid a price when he didn’t. ‘Softest’ reeks of misogyny, everything he’s afraid to be. ‘Wettest’ is subtly infantilizing, an accusation you might make to a toddler who’s wet himself, with all the implications that come with that. The painting of himself on the wall looks gigantic compared to how diminished Homelander is, just a little boy, lost and alone.

He’s too awful to feel consistently sorry for, but it still is painful to hear such brutal words from a parent to a child – and you know it’s just going to make Homelander more horrible. It’s a terrible cycle, be hurt then hurt, be more hurt then hurt more, on and on and on.

We don’t see a lot of vulnerability in Soldier Boy yet this season, but we do know from Season 3 that Ben heard similar hurtful words from his own father. Everything he was terrified of being – soft, unmanly, a failure, someone who might cry  – when he thinks he sees that in his own son, he can’t tolerate it. It infuriates him – it disgusts him. On and on and round and round they go.

His father’s rejection and derision leaves Homelander more psychologically broken than he already was (that’s how this cycle works). His words run through Homelander’s head – maybe if I’d raised you, you’re a fucking disappointment – along with hurtful words from Stan Edgar, A Train, all the way back to father figure Dr. Vogelman’s “you’re my greatest failure”.  Unable to tolerate it, he hallucinates the clouds opening and Madelyn Stillwell appears as an angel or a Jesus-like figure, crooning ‘my boy, my sweet boy’ the way she actually did in real life.

He cries to her about the betrayal of both his father and his son, that he’s lost them, that it’s all falling apart, but she reassures him that what is happening needed to happen so he can ascend and become immortal – a true god with the love of the world. She compares him to Jesus, asks why He should “have more love than you when you save more people?” He worries that they’ll call him a monster, but she tells him to rid the world of the nonbelievers, skin the parents in front of their children, and the only ones left will be the faithful – and they will love him.

It’s an insane survival strategy that the most broken part of his brain creates, the last resort of a narcissist desperate for people’s love and respect so he can finally feel like he’s not a nothing and a failure. She (that part of his own mind) convinces Homelander, and he kneels in front of her as she pulls her shirt open, glowing golden, and he moans in ecstacy. The camera pulls back to show him alone in the room, as we of course knew he was, cracked open and imagining the woman who was both a mother and a lover and an abuser to him (who contributed a great deal to fracturing his psyche), who he himself killed.

Homelander’s relationship with Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) was one of the fascinating things about the first season that drew me into this show – it was supremely fucked up, and both actors were so good that you had to keep watching it anyway. She seduced him when he was too young to understand how badly he needed a mother, mixing up the maternal and the sexual in a way that Freud would have a field day with, both nursing him and sleeping with him to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. It backfired on her in the end because she dared to care about someone else more – her own son. Homelander could not deal with that, needed to be special, to be the first, the only. He couldn’t deal with Ryan loving his mother either, or Soldier Boy not seeming to care that Homelander is his son.

Side note: I literally had to stop watching for a moment in the middle of this scene because I was so struck by Madelyn looking like Jesus telling Homelander he is a God because it was so ridiculously parallel to what just happened in reality with the current man in power in this country depicting himself as Jesus. I actually thought for a second, wait, did they take this episode like yesterday and just insert this into it to reflect that, because otherwise how could this be so spot on?

I should be tired of asking myself that at this point!

After his revelation, we see Homelander in the tub, having summoned Soldier Boy.

Priceless Soldier Boy moment as he comes around the corner to see his naked father in a tub full of –

Soldier Boy: What in the fuck? Is that milk?

Breast milk from the NICU it turns out, I mean, why would preemies need it more than him??

Soldier Boy: You asked me up here so I could watch you swim in tit jizz?

It’s wonderful framing, Homelander decadently reclining nude, as close to going back to the womb as possible, and his father framed above him in the mirror, like the voice in his head that he is desperately trying to negotiate. Homelander is in full on manic mode, says he wants to give Soldier Boy another chance, if he can help him find the V1. That is the exact wrong thing to say, since Soldier Boy thinks Homelander is the one who’s at fault.

Soldier Boy: I’d rather fist myself with a handful of razors. Besides, Cleopatra Jones says there’s none to find.

He’s so filthy and racist and just plain awful it almost loops around to amusing, but not quite. So far this season we haven’t seen anything but the invulnerable persona that Soldier Boy projects, all foul mouth and over-sexualized, no hint of the vulnerability we know is underneath (even if well buried), which is a bit of a disappointment. Ackles is so capable of showing us more than just meme-worthy one liners (though he can deliver them with aplomb). I hope we’ll see more cracks as the season goes on.

Homelander insists that an angel told him he’d find the V1, and Soldier Boy comments dryly that there apparently is no ceiling to how weird his son can get. Homelander’s revelation has put his fragile narcissism back together at least temporarily, though. He stands up, naked, and faces his father.

Homelander: You’ve been blessed with immortality and what have you done with it? Drink and fuck yourself numb. YOU are a disappointment. See, I’m not gonna waste my immortality. I’m gonna take what’s rightfully mine. I’m asking you because you’re my father if you want a seat at the table, but with or without you, a reckoning is coming.

Soldier Boy doesn’t miss a beat, saying all he sees is a freak – with a bush of gray pubes.

“Try some Just For Men,” he says as he walks out.

It’s a vicious attack again, the kind narcissists are so good at, because it goes right to Homelander’s vulnerability. He’s been terrified of aging and losing the only thing anyone has ever valued about him – his strength and power. Soldier Boy brutally points out that’s exactly what’s happening and he can’t stop it. (Being naked in the tub makes the same point – Antony Starr is a brave enough actor to appear stripped down, slender and vulnerable looking without his supersuit, to show that Homelander’s power is also something that’s not inherent to him – something he can lose.)  I love this show most when it tells its story both visually and with the talent of its actors.

Later, Soldier Boy does Firecracker’s show (after a commercial full of Gen V style puppets exhorting young people to sign up for wilderness survival camp to learn how to sniff out “stinky Starlighter rats” – cue more noooooo it’s too real protests from me). Almost instantly the two start comparing firearms and making it an odd (but predictable) type of foreplay. Firecracker is upset because Homelander is drinking someone else’s breast milk now, and Soldier Boy is upset because his son is weird and confronted him standing in a bathtub of it. They’re both primed to get back at Homelander – and what better way than with each other?

She shows off her Glock (along with her legs).

Soldier Boy: A Glock, huh? Mine’s a much longer barrel, battle-proven All American Colt 1911. That’ll blow your fuckin’ panties off.

Firecracker: I think you mean an antique.

Soldier Boy: A classic. Wanna give it a try? Some can’t handle the kick but something tells me you’ll do just fine.

She eyes him, stroking the barrel of the gun suggestively.

Every Supernatural fan watching: A Colt 1911??? Dean Winchester, I see you!

Cut to Firecracker gasping in pleasure as she rides Soldier Boy, sheets strategically draped, finishing with a “Heavens to Betsy!” as she rolls off him. (I can’t help but see this as Ackles holding the sheets up to half cover Valorie Curry because that so seems like something he would do, even in a show like this).

Soldier Boy, predictably, comes up with something distinctly unromantic to say.

Soldier Boy: Gotta hand it to ya, I haven’t fucked that hard since I railed Shari Lewis on the balcony at Studio 54.

Firecracker: I’ve got no idea who that is.

I love the little shout out to him being old as hell, which makes them together even more messed up than it is otherwise.

He can get even more unromantic than that though, asking what’s with the hairless pussy and “what’s the point of goin’ down there if you’re not gonna get a fat face full of fur?”

He asks if that’s how Homelander likes her, like a baby?

(Hey, at least he likes his women to be grownups!)

Firecracker is as perceptive as she is manipulative. She tells Soldier Boy she’s more like a mother to Homelander than a baby and that no, they haven’t fucked. He’s surprised, admitting he was just sleeping with her as petty revenge against “the freak”.

She admonishes him, and he justifies it by saying that Homelander “thinks he’s better than me”.

The worst thing you can do to a narcissist is think you’re better than them – does not matter if you’re their son (or father).

Firecracker: He doesn’t. I can read people, and the way he looks at you? I ain’t never seen him look at nobody like that.

Soldier Boy considers that, the wheels turning. What’s he thinking? My son might have some weird but fond feelings? This is a new way I can manipulate him? Who knows! He notes that’s not exactly a compliment. (In fact, it’s probably weird in the way that everything Homelander related is vaguely incestuous and not at all vaguely messed up).

Soldier Boy: He’s the strangest motherfucker I’ve ever known, and I’ve had a threesome with Gary Busey!

(I’m sure Firecracker doesn’t know who that is either, but I do and it made me snort out loud). Soldier Boy, for all his homophobic insults, is clearly not averse to being adventurous in real life. I believe that’s the second guy he’s talked about being in a threesome with, and the last guy had his thumb up his ass if I’m remembering correctly.

In real life, Cameron Crovetti (Ryan) is apparently friends with Gary Busey’s son, and filmed them and some friends watching the episode – when that line was said, they all erupted in OMG! Busey himself responded to the post, saying ‘Those were the days.’  Hey, can’t blame him for looking back on that fondly!

There was a lot of fandom discourse about Soldier Boy’s very tame by The Boys’ standards sex scene, and his rather muted response to getting it on with Firecracker. The latter part makes sense considering his outright admission that he wasn’t even into her, just trying to get some revenge on his father by sleeping with who he thought Homelander was sleeping with but was really nursing from (once again, everything Homelander related is vaguely incestuous and not so vaguely messed up). I did note Ackles’ casually moving the sheet aside to show some bare thigh. Ad lib or scripted, I wonder?

Intergenerational Trauma Part 2: Butcher (and His Dad) and Ryan

This episode sees the return of Ryan, not a little kid anymore, and hiding out in Russia. He’s embraced his supe powers enough to go full on no mercy when Russian soldiers find his hiding place, even when one man pleads “please, I have family.”  His own brutality scares him though, after he killed both his mother and Grace.

Zoe calls Ryan, saying she wants to kill Butcher – and Butcher himself shows up after Zoe leaves, knowing he’d probably still be in touch with Zoe. They’re brittle with each other, both angry, especially Ryan, who says maybe Zoe was right, he should put Butcher out of his misery.

Butcher: But you won’t. We both loved the same woman and we both hate the same cunt.

Ryan agrees to talk to Butcher, who says he’s the only one who can lure Homelander out – to kill him. When Ryan protests that’s all Butcher thinks he’s good for, killing his dad, Butcher reminds Ryan that Homelander raped his mother and he’s going to burn the world down. He claims stopping him is Ryan’s destiny. He admits that Ryan will die too if he does it, and so will Butcher. “We’ll go together,” he says, admitting it’s not what Becca would have wanted, but insisting it’s the only way and it will be justice – that he’d be saving the world by sacrificing himself.

The entire conversation is stomach-turning. Ryan is still young, and Butcher is manipulating him into killing himself with little regret, using his own guilt and fear that he’ll go darkside  like his father against him. He uses a quote form his own father and Ryan asks about him. Butcher shares his own history of intergenerational trauma and toxic masculinity that explains how he got here, talking a teenager into killing himself, saying his dad would lose all their money betting on horses then come home and beat the living daylights out of Lenny and him.

Ryan asks where his dad is now.

Butcher: Bottom of the Thames. Put him there the other day. Wish I’d done it sooner before he caused more damage.

That answers the question definitively – what we saw was indeed Butcher killing his father.

Ryan worries that he might turn into his dad, and Butcher says he doesn’t know – but that without “us supes” the world is a better, safer place. Ryan agrees to do it.

Ouch.

It’s not only Soldier Boy who’s passing along the pain of his toxic upbringing to his son, it’s Butcher too. The parallels, as both men become darker and more twisted and more willing to hurt anyone, even people they claim to care about or who are ‘sons’, have been there for several seasons, but they’re pretty damn pointed now. I feel similarly sorry for Butcher for the abuse he suffered as a kid and the tragic loss of Becca, but it’s impossible to justify the choices he makes now as anything but stomach-turning.

 

Intergenerational Trauma Part 3: Hughie Tries to Break the Cycle

Meanwhile, ‘the boys’ visit Stan Edgar, living with Zoe, his granddaughter. She’s a teenager now (and a supe) and understandably pissed about Butcher murdering her mother (Victoria Neuman).  Edgar knows all about the virus and asks why he would help the deranged man who murdered his daughter and orphaned his granddaughter, which is actually a pretty good question. Edgar annoys the crap out of MM, who tells him to stop droning on “like some black Mr. Spock” and says he’ll be just as fucked as the rest of them if he doesn’t.

They all reluctantly work together for a while and we get some more backstory. Dr. Vought’s first test subjects were at Dachau, and they lived in torment after he experimented on them with V1. He murdered thousands and then kept doing tests on American servicemen, finally coming up with a stable formula and sweeping the V1 debacle under the rug, leaving no paper trail to tie him to Dachau.

Maverick, Translucent’s son, is also living there. Edgar told him that Homelander killed his dad so he’s determined to get back at Vought. Hughie feels guilty because he’s the one who actually killed Maverick’s father, and tries to befriend him, saying he’s sorry about Maverick’s dad, that he lost his dad too. That he should live his life, keep going, fall in love.

Maverick: I have a girlfriend. Sloane. She’s an alpaca.

Hughie: Uh. Cool. Maybe think about what your dad would want for you.

He apologizes to Zoe too, saying Victoria was his friend; she tells him to go fuck himself.

MM and Stan smoke expensive cigars together, but they are not on the same page. Edgar worked with MM’s father and respected him but says he couldn’t win and MM ultimately won’t win either, because he’s fighting an unbeatable foe more powerful than Vought. Profit and loss, supply and demand, making them all just cogs in a great machine. If they kill Homelander or Soldier Boy, Edgar says, when supes go out of fashion, something else will just take their place because corporations will still rule and money must still be made, the machine must still be fed.

(There are several really insightful chapters about that in ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes’ if you’d like to dig deep with some psychologists and sociologists about The Boys, btw)

MM realizes Edgar plans to run Vought again if he survives, and promises to put a bullet in his skull.

The Deep and Black Noir make their way to Edgar’s hideout, along with telekinetic supe Cindy and another supe with super smell powers (Dogknott), in their cybertruck because of course that’s what they drive. The Deep is pissed that Soldier Boy is getting so much attention from Homelander “because he’s a nepo daddy, and he’s not even all that good looking.”

Everyone watching: Incorrect.

“Like his hair’s doing most of the heavy lifting,” The Deep complains.

This is just a coincidence, but last week as The Boys cast was doing their press interviews for this new season, one interview went viral when the interviewer put up an ad from a barber shop in India with manipulated before and after photos of Jensen Ackles to advertise their hair transplant business. Jensen, who had already seen it (known in the fandom as ‘Baldsen’), just shook his head. Antony Starr, who hadn’t, totally lost it, laughing so hard he was practically crying – much to Ackles’ delight. I must have watched that little interview clip twenty times, it was so happy making.

Anyway, The Deep’s comments were just perfect considering that.

The supes break into Edgar’s allegedly impenetrable fortress and all hell breaks loose. Maverick tries to help, Hughie telling him to be careful, struggling with his own guilt.

Hughie asks Annie, how many more people they’re going to kill and then their kids come after them, that they need to at least try to break the cycle. She kisses him, saying it’s been a long time since she’s been around someone who’s trying to make things better and not just keep them from getting worse.

It’s a main theme of the show, how dark the “good guys” get in their quest to do anything to take down the “bad guys”. It’s a slippery slope, one that Hughie has been the most willing to call out.

The super smelling supe catches Maverick because of his teenage over-use of cologne, trying to be like his deceased dad, and the Deep tells him the truth – that Hughie and Butcher’s crew killed his dad. We see a single tear roll down Maverick’s cheek while the rest of him is invisible. They break in and everyone runs, Stan thinking he’s evaded them and left the rest behind, only to be tackled by Noir instantly.

Hughie: Instant karma, but fuck!

They put Stan in the cybertruck, and the Deep knocks out both Edgar and Noir, pulling him out of the car and leaving him in the snow before taking off. Maverick attacks Hughie for killing his dad. Hughie doesn’t want to fight him, while an invisible Maverick tosses him around the room like a ragdoll. Cindy shows up and kills who we initially think is Hughie, and Annie in anguish snaps Cindy’s neck. It turns out it was Maverick who was killed. Hughie holds Annie as she sobs, shaken by the close call.

Frenchie and Kimiko had left before the supes arrived, headed back to the lab, stopping to have a conversation that makes it clear that they’ve been living entirely in the moment, from one life-threatening crisis to the next, ever since they’ve met, without getting to know each other outside those crisis situations. Now that a future might be a possibility, it turns out Frenchie would never have kids – and Kimiko wants them – two girls and a boy, a house by the water, peace and quiet, a place to call home.

That does not bode well.

Zoe stows away in the truck with Kimiko and Frenchie, and goes into the lab, almost killing a man sleeping on a cot. He turns over and she’s shocked to find it’s her father, who embraces her with astonishment.  When Samir realizes they lied to him that Zoe was dead, he smashes the lab and the virus he’s been working on. Frenchie raises his gun to shoot him, but Kimiko stops him and insists they let them go.

Kimiko: She should grow up like a kid, not like us.

They leave, though I worry about their future… In fact, Edgar keeps trying to call Zoe to tell her not to come back home because it’s not safe, but she doesn’t answer.

 

Intergenerational Trauma Part 4: Homelander and Ryan

Butcher’s plan falls apart when Kimiko and Frenchie tell Butcher the virus is all gone and that Kimiko let Samir and Zoe leave. Butcher threatens Kimiko and Frenchie threatens back that he’ll never make more if Butcher touches her.  Angry, Butcher tells Ryan the plan is off, cruelly telling him that he just said what he said so Ryan would get mad as hell.

Butcher: Without that germ, you’re just another stupid kid on a suicide run.

Ryan: You’re the same old lying pathetic asshole.

Have I said ouch yet?

Ryan goes off on his own, meeting Homelander at Planet Homelander. He says he’s glad Ryan called, that he knew he would.

Ryan: Remember when you took me here and pretended to care about me?

Homelander insists he does care, that he loves his son. He tells Ryan he forgives him, that he put too much pressure on him to “fill my boots”, that he now realizes that’s impossible and realizes his own legacy – that he’s going to live forever so Ryan is off the hook and can “do whatever”.

It’s a weird, very dysfunctional sort of attempt to be magnanimous and probably as close as Homelander can come to caring, but at its core it’s all about him. Ryan is no threat to him now, but his value is solely related to what he can do for Homelander (and what he no longer needs from him).

Ryan confronts him about raping his mother, which Homelander denies, insisting it was a consensual affair, and then that Becca came onto him, and look what came out of it – a blessing.

Ryan attacks him, enraged, his eyes burning through posters on the wall, pieces of construction material. Finally Homelander smashes his son to the floor, the wooden beams of a box shattering beneath him. And then, like every abuser ever, he says “Look at what you made me do.”

Absolutely chilling. All the acting props in the world to Antony Starr.

He holds a breathless Ryan down, and in an almost parody of parental love soothes him with the words Madelyn used to say to him, “It’s okay, my sweet sweet boy.” He strokes his face, holds his hands down.

And then starts punching him, again and again, blood flying.

He pauses, and we think for a second he’s going to regret it – and then starts in again.

It’s sickening, and we’re meant to think he’s killing Ryan. It’s a terrible depiction of what love has always been to Homelander, inextricably tied up with abuse and violence, from Dr. Vogelbaum calling him a sweet sensitive boy and then locking him up to be tortured, to Stillwell calling him her sweet sweet boy and using his security blanket and her own body to manipulate him, mixing up parental love with sexuality in a totally messed up and confusing way, and again inflicting pain – this time emotional – mixed up with what was presented as love. He didn’t really have a chance to be anything close to capable of actual love or a healthy relationship, and this is the culmination of that.

And it was really hard to watch.

 

The End (and Its Perfect Soundtrack)

The ending scene comes with a poignant soundtrack, Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying”, which every Supernatural fan loves as the title to a poignant and brilliant episode of that show.

Kimiko says no, she won’t lay off the porn.

MM has taken up smoking cigars ala Edgar.

Homelander, hands and face red with his son’s blood, in front of a painting of him victoriously crossing a river (the Delaware? Is he Washington now? Jesus wasn’t enough?)

Annie tells Hughie how messed up she is that he almost died, saying that if that happens, she can’t come back from it. She flies off, leaving him standing there.

Butcher finds Ryan, his pummeled body lying in the shattered wood of what now looks like a coffin. He kneels over him, touches his face. “Take my body home so I can die easy” the lyrics say.

Ryan twitches. Alive.

The Deep brings Edgar to Homelander. He embraces Stan as Stan stares anxiously, pulls him in, cups his face. We know his gentle touches can be a prelude to the most extreme violence, and Edgar knows it too.

Where will we go from here?

I thought this season was dark before, but we are really in dark territory now. I’m half anticipating, half dreading next week’s episode!

If you haven’t read it yet, check out the book ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes: Inside the Complex Characters and Twisted Psychology of The Boys’. There are chapters by psychologists and sociologists all about the show’s themes, from toxic masculinity to corporate evil, along with the actors’ thoughts on their characters, including Jensen Ackles on how he crafted Soldier Boy.  Every book purchased benefits the Venice Family Clinic, whose good work Eric Kripke supports too.  Info at: https://smartpopbooks.com/book/supes-aint-always-heroes/

-Lynn