The Boys are back in town and I am not referring to the Thin Lizzy classic song; The Boys are back in town. Although looking at the lyrics it would fit nicely. But more about that later….
Who are The Boys?
Back in 2019, after watching The Boys season one I wrote the following:
The story of the boys a complete twist of the superhero genre. Most, if not all, of the Marvel and DC Comic heroes are pretty clear about their alignment. They are on the good side, they fight for the good side and take down the bad guys. Only to put them away until they are out on either release (yah right ;) ) or they break out of the heavily guarded prisons or mental institutions like The Raft for Marvel or Arkham Asylum (DC Comics).
And this season of The Boys is no different. The bad guys called The Seven, are still out there pretending to be the good guys while oppressing the people who in reality don’t stand a chance versus any of The Boys.
Since this is the second season and most of the characters have been establised by its’ first season, the writers went all out while focusing on the characters a bit more. Fleshing them out as much as they can.
Fleshing out characters
The main focus on this season is Homelander, the parody on Superman. In the first season he killed Madelyn Stillwell, one of the bigwigs of Vought International. On top of that a new “hero” called Stormfront managed to steal his thunder by making him look like an even bigger ass than he already was.
Homelander was trying to look cool in front of the camera but shot himself in the foot when he tried to get calm in a situation that went south when a protestor tried to shoot him with a gun. Homelander used his heatbeams to cut the protestor in half but shot an innocent bystander in half as well.
That video went viral and Homelander’s approval rating went down very quickly. So then comes the newcomer, Stormfront, and using her troll-factory of social media nitwits she manipulated the images by calling the original video fake news.
It is a not-so-subtle reference to what’s happening in the world today. But absolutely not obtrusive, in fact the scenes where Stormfront makes uses of her social media are all spot on. And the best thing is it’s not necessarily about politics. Which makes it even better.
After helping Homelander getting his approval rating up, Stormfront and Homelander became best friends / lovers. Together they visited Homelander’s son. Homelander has a son with the wife of Billy Butcher. Apparently Homelander couldn’t keep his hands where they belong and raped Billy Butcher’s wife and she gave birth to Homelander’s baby.
The dynamic is really weird between Becca, that’s her name, Homelander and Ryan, the name of the kid.
Apparently what happened is that Becca’s baby was kept a secret from the general public and lives in secret far far away, cut off from the world. All paid for by Vought International.
And there is the twist. Homelander has been visiting on a regular basis to see of Ryan has superpowers. All against the wishes of Becca.
But when Stormfront and Homelander came by together, they filled Ryan’s head with so many lies that Ryan turned against his mother and left with Stormfront and Homelander.
Becca contacts Billy in order to get Ryan back. Butcher closes a deal with Vought International to help get Ryan back. Billy Butcher than concocts a plan to leave his phone with the GPS on so that Vought International could pick up Ryan while Billy and his wife Becca are reunited and on the run. However Billy gets second thoughts and they flee with Ryan alltogether. It ends in a huge fights with two of Vought’s supers , Starlight and Queen Mave beat up Stormfront along with The Female, a woman with a healing factor and can’t be killed.
Stormfront flees the scene and finds Becca, Billy and Ryan in the middle of the woods. While Billy is taken out quickly, Becca is begging for her life and Ryan uses his powers but doesn’t control them very well so when he shoots lasers out of eyes he not only completely maims and mutilates Stormfront but also mortally wounds his mother Becca.
Homelander just figured what happened after killing a dozen of Vought’s agents then jumps into the scene and cries at the sight of Stormfront who lays limbless on the forest floor muttering words in German. While Becca is trying to hold to her life. Becca makes Billy promise to take care of Ryan and he promises he will but if you look closely then you notice that Billy hates Ryan because he is the one who killed his wife whom he loved dearly despite of their past.
Minor plot twists and turns
Homelander isn’t just oppressing the people but also his team members. Queen Mave turned out to be gay and while she kept her lovelife private, Homelander announced on television that she is gay and thus outing her against her permission.
Queen Mave then became the face of the LGBTQ community against her wishes along with her partner. Afraid that Homelander will retaliate against her partner Eve, Mave decided to play along but the actions of Homelander adds more tension to the relationship between the two. The tension was already there after Homelander refused to save a crashing airplane last season and his inactions caused the deaths of a plane full of people.
The footage of the passengers begging for their lives was later used to blackmail Homelander into leaving Mave and Starlight alone. An apology was issued to Starlight whom was branded a traitor by Homelander.
Starlight and Hughie continue their love relationship trying to keep it a secret as much as possible. It is also Starlight who publicizes Stormfront’s Nazi past because apparently Stormfront was the first super using Compound V as an experiment by the founder of the company, Frederick Vought.
The papers were stolen by A-train who has been teaming up, out of desperation, with The Deep to get back into The Seven together. A-train gets the spot however leaving The Deep alone and frustrated. Because The Deep really has been trying to get his approval rating up by, hypocritically, manipulating the audience that he is in a healthy relationship with a girl attempting to leave his sexually abusive past behind.
The Boys season 2 is really worth the watch and with all episodes out you can binge them on Amazon or get the episodes from the dark corners of the interwebs. I would heartily recommend that you watch both seasons and read the comic. The series is very violent and gory, so please, parental advisory is needed.
