The Boys Are Back!
One thing about waiting for literally years between seasons of a show you like is – it builds up A LOT of anticipation! So let’s just say I was really excited to finally watch the season premiere of the fifth and final season of The Boys. I’ve been watching since the very beginning – I’ll give any show a chance that has Eric Kripke’s genius attached to it, and I was captivated by The Boys from the start because of its eerie reflection of what was already happening all around us. The comics began the tradition of calling out things that are wrong with our society, but by the time the series aired, the reflection started to seem less like fiction and more like reality. Season 5 was mostly written well before the last election and there’s no way Kripke and company could have known how disturbingly close to home some of the story lines would hit right now – but I’ve said more than once that the man is eerily prescient. As I watched the first two episodes, I can’t even count the number of times I started swearing out loud “OMG how could they be so spot on?!” or “This is impossible, Kripke how did you anticipate THIS??” It’s certainly not a good thing that a show meant to be an over-the-top parody of all that’s gone wrong in modern (especially American) society ends up feeling so realistic and relevant, but it makes me feel better that someone else is seeing it too. That’s a first step to maybe stopping it, right? Right??
And yes, that’s a theme in the show too. You see why I love it so much?
Season Five Premiere – Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!
Prime Video released the first two episodes of the new season on Wednesday, so what follows is a spoilery review of how the new season kicks off and how our favorite (and not favorite) characters are doing. If you haven’t watched yet, you may want to come back when you have – I love this show and I love digging deep into it and its complicated characters, hence the spoiler warning.
Homelander’s Crisis Continues
The season premiere kicks off with spectacle, which is fitting for The Boys. It’s a full on mega church moment as Homelander appears at the Vought shareholders meeting to the religious ecstasy of his followers – I mean, shareholders. Promises of a safer, more God fearing nation…. Does this sound familiar yet? Meanwhile, Starlight disguised as a Firecracker backup dancer is hacking into the system – suddenly the footage of Flight 37 appears onscreen of Homelander callously threatening the doomed passengers as he looks on horrified in the present.
His eyes start to glow ominously, and then Sister Sage shakes her head to calm him down. I immediately thought, they’ll probably just say it’s AI – and sure enough, that’s what they do. Remember, this was written years ago, but they get it right anyway, solidifying people’s willingness to disbelieve what their own eyes see if it’s an inconvenient truth. Memes making fun of the “AI altered footage” hit the internet; Homelander points out that he has seven fingers in the altered footage. How did they know that would be such a thing?
Peter Thiel gets a shout out as calling Sage for advice, the little bits of reality name dropped just making it all more eerie. She’s fine with the ongoing conflict the leak caused. Homelander, predictably, is not. What he cares about is being worshipped – he’s more pressed about the unflattering memes about him than how his ratings are. In fact, he says, posting those kind of critical memes should be a crime. (Yes, I was yelling about how spot on the show is once again at this point). Homelander can’t stand being disrespected, his fragile ego too brittle to withstand it.
“I need people to be devoted to me,” he whines.
I can’t help but feel a little bad for him even as I’m horrified by him. He’s so DAMAGED. In the season opener, Homelander continues the psychological crises that plagued him in Season 4, knowing everyone around him has their heart rate skyrocket when they’re near him because they’re all afraid of him. His handy dandy little maternal fixation with Firecracker has dried up too (as did her milk once she stopped taking the drug that was damaging her heart to make her lactate).
Antony Starr is brilliant in making the strongest man in the world look exactly like a petulant toddler who’s been denied his favorite toy.
Homelander isn’t too happy with the other supes who are still loyal to him either. The Deep has a podcast because of course he does, along with Black Noir version 2. He’s all about the “men’s lives matter” and staying away from women because “bitches like Starlight make you weak”, claiming he’s never felt manlier. Later he spreads his bare legs for an overhead camera to sell his red light for the perineum contraption, which if you recall was a real thing on the internet for a while with guys out there sunning their perineum. Homelander calls in the Deep and Black Noir after the Flight 37 video debacle, demanding to know why they let Starlight get away and haven’t found A Train or Butcher. He wraps his hands around their throats as he hovers over them like a predator, the stage manager who was working the shareholder meeting dead (and decapitated) beside him as a visual warning. Antony Starr is very very good at making Homelander very very scary – the fact that he’s unhinged combined with all that power and the sadistic desperation is a terrifying combination. Apparently the stage manager liked some Starlight posts, and that’s why he’s dead.
(The whole liking social media posts can get you killed thing, btw, is too close to home right now, but spot on once again).
The Deep doesn’t hesitate to offer up his phone to have his social media posts checked, sycophantic to the end (or at least so far). He’s not pleased with Noir not backing him up, reminding him that he’s not the real Noir, he can talk! Noir remains both silent and mysterious. Ominously so.
Back home, Homelander stands in front of the capsule holding his bare-chested underwear-clad sleeping father, which is in his living room. He sighs. (Yes, that description is relevant, as are the many Soldier Boy photos and gifs that will inevitably grace this review – this is originally a Supernatural website, after all…)
