‘The Boys’ Season 3 Review – New Levels of Violence and Debouchery
This season introduced new dangers, tore teams apart, and showed Homelander‘s true colors. Here’s my The Boys Season 3 review.
Season two wrapped up with an explosive murder scene. This season starts after a year of change. Homelander (Antony Starr) is going along with a new Vought-led PR campaign. Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Butcher (Karl Urban) work for the government catching supes getting out of line. They’re not really buying into the work, though. When they learn that there’s an anti-supe weapon out there they leave peace behind, starting a war with The Seven while chasing the first superhero.
The whole season is now available to watch on Amazon. If you’re not up to date, you’ll want to catch up before reading further.
Season 3 Spoilers Below
The Boys Season 3 Recap – The Seven
Homelander, The Deep (Chace Crawford), and A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) are all trying to rehab their images with varying degrees of success. The Deep remains his shallow, self-centered self through a book tour. His girlfriend/agent dumps him, then goes on a PR tour talking about how horrible he really is. by the end of the season, he’s stuck binge eating snack cakes and dating (?) an octopus. It’s obvious at this point that he’ll never learn anything and is the airhead of the team.
A-Train’s brother is killed by racist Blue Hawk, changing him. He gives Hughie a serious apology (in the middle of an orgy), realizing he holds responsible for the death of Hughie’s girlfriend. Followed by collapsing after dragging Blue Hawk face down on a road till he doesn’t have a face (which calls back to the murder of James Byrd Jr.). His progress is for nothing, though. Vought drags him back in.
Black Noir goes on a journey with a cartoon beaver to find himself. We discover just how broken he is behind the mask, and why he wears it. He’s a sensitive guy with a lot of physical scars that kills people to fit in. Homelander takes him out in a fit of rage after he tells him the truth about Soldier Boy being his genetic father.
via Amazon
Homelander gradually loses it, showing his true self to the public. He stops hiding behind the character Vought has created for him and goes full fascist. Killing supes, human bystanders, and erupting in fits of verbal violence. Homelander becomes who he’s been all along: a super-powered narcissist that can’t stand to lose and has to be loved and admired. Or he throws a tantrum… a very dangerous tantrum.
Meave’s (Dominique McElligott) plot to kill Homelander lands her in a locked room for most of the season. She comes out in force in the finale, going one on one with Homelander. Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is forced to help in Homelander’s recovery plan by faking a romantic partnership, all while she’s acting as an insider for The Boys. She finally gets fed up and reveals truths about Homelander to her fans and leaves The Seven by the end of it.
via Amazon
The Boys Season 3 Recap – The Boys & Allies
On the other side of the fight, The Boys have scattered. MM (Laz Alonso) is attempting to be a father that’s present for his daughter. Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) search for a new life to escape their violent pasts. Hughie and Butcher are working with the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, hunting supes legally. None of this works out, of course. They regroup and go back to their own ways – with the addition of a temporary version of Compound V that gives them supe strength and powers.
They go through personal struggles. Both Kimiko and Frenchie have to face the bad choices they’ve made thanks to Little Nina. MM has to contend with his ex-wife’s new partner who is a drink the Kool-Aid Vought employee. Hughie deals with jealousy when Starlight’s ex, Supersonic, shows up. And Butcher continues to deal with Becca and Ryan.
Though several come out injured and sick by the end of the season, the group survives and becomes closer.
There’s also a fantastic dance number.
via Amazon
Conflict
The supe-destroying weapon ends up being the first superhero with some alterations. The powers bestowed on him by Russian scientists are disastrous to all supes – he can take away their powers. Soldier Boy’s (Jensen Ackles) ability and his need for revenge against his former team add to the chaos. Butcher thinks he can control him (and that he’ll stick with the deal they’ve made) with his newly acquired powers. Nope.
The main story becomes a three-way fight between Butcher, Soldier Boy, and Homelander (who learns Soldier Boy is his genetic father). They all hate each other. Their conflict is fueled by revenge, the need for power, and the need for the sole attention of the public. We finally get real supe vs supe fights thanks to it – the battles in this season are not to be missed.
The finale ends with Meave losing powers after tackling a fully armed Soldier Boy out a window. Soldier Boy ends up in a cryogenic chamber, and Homelander flies off with his kid after blasting a guy’s head off in front of a crow. Ryan has definitely fallen to the fascist side.
In the background, Homelander has placed cronies in powerful positions. The head-popper, Victoria Neuman (Vic the Veep in the comics), is now the VP pick of the right-wing presidential candidate.
This is not over.
via Amazon
The Boys Season 3 Review
This season was a bit rough, but it’s still worth watching. The story and trajectory of all of the established characters is great. Everything makes sense in the show’s universe. Eric Kripke and the writing team continue to be fantastic at adapting the comic in a way that pushes the line but isn’t overly offensive and juvenile.
It could have been done without some of the side plots. Most of the Little Nina plot line, as well as the whole Hughie/Supersonic thing didn’t need as much time. I’d rather have seen that time go to Soldier Boy’s vendetta and background. If you’re a person over 18 and have lived at all in the US, Herogasm was all hype and seemed to be there as a marketing ploy rather than something the story needed. I guess it made an appropriately ridiculous backdrop for the fight that ended up destroying the house.
The acting remains top-notch. These two play off one another brilliantly.
via Amazon
After two seasons, the show has managed to not run out of shocking moments or ways of lampooning DC and Marvel. Its opening scene tackles the whole Ant-Man/Thanos fan theory in short order, and that is followed up by commentary on capitalist, virtue-signaling superhero culture. The hypocrisy of the supes is glaring from the start and just gets worse.
Last season went after white supremacy as a major plot point, this season they lampoon some of the big cultural events of the last couple of years including:
- Kylie Jenner Pepsi ad (A-Train’s energy drink)
- Snyder Cut (#ReleaseTheBourkeCut)
- Rogue One reshoots (Dawn of the Seven – Charlize Theron cameo)
- MCU (with the VCU)
- Donald Trump (Homelander)
The show has been re-upped for a fourth season, which starts filming next month. As with a lot of shows like this, I really hope they don’t drag it out. I really hope they wrap up the current plot line without a bunch of subplots thrown in and call it a day. It would be a shame if it became a soap opera with a stretched, crappy story.
