The Boys season three started on a high note and ended on an even higher note. The season starts out with Vought’s ego being so huge that they had to make a movie of The Seven. But as they say: Twice the pride, double the fall!
And that is exactly what this season is all about. An infight to takeover Vought. The fight was about Stan Edgar, who at the start of the season was the CEO of Vought International, Victoria Neumann, Edgar’s surrogate daughter and later Homelander.
Stan Edgar vs Victoria vs Homelander
So Stan has been doubting the Supes for a while now and wants to make a few changes. Knowing that Homelander is ice-cold and knowing that the Supes are all too hard to handle, Stan wants to teach Homelander a lesson by fining him and teaching him that he can’t get away with everything. Especially not with murder. That and the fact that Edgar has a new toy called V-24, a compound that gives people superpowers.
While trying to teach Homelander a lesson and with the added help of surrogate daughter Victoria, he calls for a press conference. Instead of teaching Homelander a lesson, Victoria falsely accuses him of crimes and that Homelander acted as the main informant of the crimes committed by the CEO.
Stan Edgar’s last act for the Seven is making Starlight co-captain of the team to make The Seven look a bit better. Edgar is forced to take a leave and later gets fired.
With Edgar out of the way has an effect on Homelander. Whereas Edgar controlled and had Homelander under control. Now Homelander gets to do whatever he wants and he is also the new head of Vought. He is emancipated and has a first taste of what that feels like. Which you will see throughout the entire third season.
Homelander’s emancipation
With Edgar gone, Homelander is now the new leader of Vought International and with no one to keep him in check, Homelander goes off on a rant akin to real-life American right-winged politics and won people over that way as well. This will continue throughout the season.
He will use his audience and the media to slander Starlight mostly. He basically lies about everything to get his way. He feels liberated from not having to take orders anymore from Vought International or Stan Edgar and he lets go and having realized that he gives the following speech:
“I don’t make mistakes. I’m not ‘just like the rest of you.’ I’m stronger. I’m smarter. I’m better. I am better. I’m not some weak-kneed fսcking crybaby that goes around fսcking apologizing all the time. And why the fսck would you want me to be? (…) All my life, people have tried to control me. My whole life. Rich people, powerful people have tried to muzzle me, cancel me, keep me impotent and obedient, like I’m a fսcking puppet. You know what? It worked. Because I allowed it to work. And guess what. If they can control me, then you can bet your ass they can control you. They already do. You just don’t realize it. I’m done. I am done apologizing. I am done being persecuted for my strength. You people should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am, because you need me. You need me to save you. You do. I am the only one who possibly can. You’re not the real heroes. I’m the real hero. I’m the real hero.”—Homelander
But what about The Boys? They can stop Homelander right?
The Boys and the V-24 compound
The Boys are, just like in previous seasons, trying to keep the Supes of The Seven in check. This season they find out about V-24, a compound that gives them powers like the Supes. Billy’s use of V-24 gives him the following: Durability, heat vision, reflexes and strength. Combine that with his SAS training in hand-to-hand combat and you have yourself a neutralizing machine that is almost unstoppable.
And that’s what this season needs. Not only are The Boys trying to keep the Supers in check but they also make attempts to neutralize Homelander, who they view as the most dangerous because of his amoral and sociopathic nature. And they aren’t wrong. This season next to V-24 for both Hughie and Billy Butcher, they will also call on the help of Soldier Boy.
Soldier Boy is a pioneer for the Supes. He was the leader of the previous pack of supers but he was mean, lean and led through fear. For instance Soldier Boy kicked the crap out of Black Noir when he said that he wanted to act in Beverly Hills Cop as Axel Foley. That role went famously to Eddie Murphy. That is an example of Soldier Boy’s ruthlessness.
Soldier Boy comes into play after Billy visits his son Ryan. He presses Ryan’s guardian, Grace, about Nicaragua where Soldier Boy allegedly went missing. It turns out that Soldier Boy was given to the Russians by his own team because they hated him and Stan Edgar gave the ok to have Soldier Boy removed. Vought engineered a new Supe using the DNA of Soldier Boy rendering him obsolete. And so Soldier Boy’s team wasted no time. Instead Soldier Boy was gassed and then experimented on. The Boys hear about the gass and go to Russia to go and get it because if it works on Soldier Boy then it should work on Homelander too.
Soldier Boy eventually turns on The Boys because it turns out that Homelander is his son.
Queen Mave is nothing but a drug dealer
Of course, this header is a bit tongue-in-cheek. But nevertheless very true. The Boys don’t stand alone. They get inside help from Queen Mave, who is out to neutralize Homelander.
It is Maeve who gets Billy Butcher information on Soldier Boy and the potential gass. It is also Maeve who gets The Boys the V-24 compound. And she even had a rough one-night stand with Billy Butcher.
Homelander eventually finds out what is going on with her and has her detained in a facility underground in the Vought International building. With the help of Starlight’s influence on Social Media, Maeve is eventually found and while Vought tries to transport her to a different facility, Maeve overcomes the guards in the truck and frees herself. She is eventually found by Starlight and The Boys and they team up.
In the final fight of the show, Maeve, Starlight and The Boys team up to take down Soldier Boy and Homelander. Maeve engages in a fistfight with Homelander and draws first blood. But Homelander pokes out her eye.
In the heat of the fight, Maeve sees that Soldier Boy is charging up his nuclear chest and knocks down Homelander to jump to Soldier Boy and a huge explosion follows. Maeve is presumed dead but in security footage seen by Vought International it is seen that The Boys pick up Maeve who is still alive but critically injured.
Starlight finds Maeve in her apartment and Maeve tells her that she has lost her powers thanks to Soldier Boy but is alive. She opts to flee the city with her girlfriend instead.
Starlight is finally stepping up
We see Starlight in season 1 and all she really wants to become is part of The Seven. She gets her shot but is immediately raped by The Deep. And that is the start of her journey with The Seven.
She slowly but surely sees how corrupt and twisted The Seven and Homelander in particular, are. She starts dating Hughie and slowly but indeed starts looking for a way out of The Seven. She eventually succeeds in season three.
The expectation for Starlight in season four and possibly beyond is that she will be helping or leading The Boys to take down Vought International’s schemes and in particular Homelander and given what The Deep has done to her, she will plot her revenge on him as well when the time comes. And even though Maeve has exited the show and is powerless, she may just come back at some point to teach Starlight how some things are done.
All in all, Starlight’s role will be bigger in the upcoming seasons and actress Erin Moriarty is definitely up for the task. Starlight is a good and kindhearted person by nature who cannot idly stand by while the other supes suppress the normal people.
The Boys season 3 is about maturity
As I wrote before; Homelander is emancipated and feels free for the first time. Starlight is coming into her own and frees herself from Vought after three seasons. Hughie is taking his own responsibility by stopping taking V-24. All in all, this season is about freedom, maturity and taking matters into your own hand.
Homelander will still be CEO in season four and now gets cheered on by his fans. Even after he neutralized someone they still cheered him on, which sets the tone for season four because his audience does let him get away with the stuff Stan Edgar never would.
Victoria Neumann will still be by Homelander’s side. She is like Stan Edgar and doesn’t flinch when Homelander threatens her. So that is going to be an interesting dynamic between the two. Comes with it that Victoria also has superpowers and can explode body parts of everything that is in sight. So we will see if she can pop any of The Seven’s heads.
Starlight, as mentioned, will be leading The Boys against The Seven and will not hold back. I wonder if she will start making her own new costume given the fact that she threw away her old one.
Billy Butcher was told that he has only 18 months to live but he still shows spirit and wants to make the best of it by neutralizing the members of The Seven. Having said that, he has lost his son Ryan to Homelander and Ryan just stepped into the spotlight as Homelander’s son instead of his. So there is another story arc going on where Billy may or may not try to win Ryan back from Homelander.
The best part of the third season I found to be the death of Stormfront. She was a nazi and I dislike those. So her death was the biggest thing in this third season. Having said that, it is still a comicbook show so nobody means no death. And all we saw was a hospital bed with a sheet that is supposed to be covered by something.
The exit of Black Noir was something that was supposed to happen. Homelander neutralizes him in wake of the news that Soldier Boy is his father. Homelander wished that Black Noir told him that. I don’t dislike Black Noir but his role was so marginal in all of the seasons of The Boys that I most likely won’t miss him.
The Boys Season four: what do we know so far
So with Black Noir dead, the creators of the show have said that it is just a version of Black Noir that has died. So in essence the creators of the show are trying to reboot the character. Perhaps we will finally see a talking version of Black Noir.
“Here’s what I will say for any Black Noir fans that are mourning his passing: A completely silent masked superhero is super easy to recast,” Kripke notes. “And there’s a reason they haven’t told the public that Noir is dead. So this is not the last we’ve seen of Noir. This is just the last we’ve seen of that version.”
With actor Jensen Ackles getting a big part in the TV show Big Sky, we don’t know yet if we will see Soldier Boy again anytime soon. But creator Eric Kripke say that we will see him again in the future.
“He’s probably not going to show up in the short term. But there’s a very specific reason we didn’t kill him,” Kripke says. “The series is not going to end without Soldier Boy popping up again. For the story to go where we need the story to go, sometimes you have to put characters on the bench for a minute. But just because they’re on the bench doesn’t mean they’re not getting back in the game.”
Queen Mave did survive the fall but without powers, her character felt a bit redundant. Include the fact that she has barely been seen on the screen this season, it felt natural that the character was let go.
“A lot of the big story is Annie finally stepping up and emerging as the hero she needs to be, and in classic [story] structure, it’s time for her mentor and protector to go and let her stand on her own two feet,” Kripke explains.
