Homelander still has his sights set on completing the ideal Seven, and having his son, Ryan, as his new predecessor. Along with this comes loads of PR planning and rehearsal for Ryan’s first save, as he is not so good at honing his powers yet. Through this, Ryan is learning exactly what it means to be a supe in this world and is struggling to understand that his actions are not as genuine as he thought. He later goes through with the planned save and accidentally throws the man posing as a fake villain, splattering him against the wall in typical bloody The Boys’ fashion. Ryan seems not to have gotten his heart from his father Homelander though, as he has immense empathy and cannot fathom what he has just done to the man. All the while Homelander tells him he should not even care about the lives of mere humans.
The completion of this plan is due to the credit of none other than Sister Sage as she is the new mic in the ear of Homelander. This is something that Ashley, Homelander’s former right-hand woman, is becoming very wary about as she senses her power over him weakening and Sister Sage stepping into her place. As of now, it is easy to see the sparkle of master planning in the eyes of Sister Sage. While her plans remain unclear, she wants to mold The Seven at her own will and understands who she must take down first. It is clear she does not see The Deep as much of a threat to her intellectually and starts to break the team down from the inside by pitting Ashley and Kevin against each other.
This however was written in a way that was not true to the character of Ashley, who is known to be a strong-willed, feisty red who can stand like the supes without needing to be one. However, in this episode, Kevin seemingly gets offended at Ashley for mocking his intelligence (it is Sister Sage who tells him to be angry about this). He decides to go up to her later and “threaten her”. Despite him messing up his capybara joke and unconfidently posturing his superiority, the usually sarcastic Ashley backs down and looks scared of him. Kevin is not a threatening character due to his himbo nature, especially to Ashley, so seeing these lines of action occur felt unbelievable to their characters.
Meanwhile, The Boys set their sights on Firecracker. She is speaking at Truthcon and claims to Sister Sage that she might not believe all that she says, but it’s done to give people who feel that their viewers are judged by popular media a purpose. She speaks of the dangers of Starlight and anti-supe propaganda.
It is also then that we see A-Train has decided to double-cross the Seven, handing Starlight footage that proves her followers were not responsible for the trial riot killings. A-Train’s change of heart seems to stem from a place of guilt for having faked supe saves in the past. He feels like he has no purpose within his power.
We also see that Starlight is feeling the same way, feeling uncomfortable with the way the world is idolizing the suit and what all that now means.
Meanwhile, Frenchie and Kimiko are both suffering mentally. Kimiko is struggling to open up and Frenchie has immense guilt about the people he has killed – specifically Colin’s family. The guilt resorts to Frenchie taking pills to cope.
This episode brought a far more interesting plot after a more lackluster season premiere episode. However, at times it only completed this through pure shock factor, which did not play into the plot at all. For example, as The Boys are fighting Firecracker and the clones, they simply leave out the door in the middle of a gunfight and walk into a dance hall, and Kimiko and Frenchie find a human centipede scene of six men face to butt, with the first one touching himself to a photo of Firecracker. This felt out of sorts even for this world and unconducive to the story as the six men had no affiliation to the plot.
Rating: 7/10