After the bloody fights of the last episode filled with close saves, The Boys have lost their lead in the fight. Starlight decides to partner with Singer and support his anti-supe legislation to takedown The Seven. Butcher has been added back to the team for reinforcements, as he and Mother’s Milk have their sights set on undermining Firecracker’s new show, “Truthbomb”.
On a commercial break, Firecracker, Mother’s Milk, and Butcher run into each other. The Boys threaten to tweet about Firecracker’s looming statutory rape charge after sleeping with a fifteen-year-old if she doesn’t tell them information about Sister Sage’s plans. Firecracker is unbothered by this and sends the tweets herself. She gets back to announce this news to the crowd, sandwiched between two big mistakes of Starlight’s. The first being that she had accidentally blinded a mother of three during her first save. The second, that set Starlight off the edge was the announcement to the world that Starlight had an abortion, which Firecracker labeled as being a baby killer. After this is said on public television nothing can hold her back from running across the street and demolishing Firecracker.
One of the issues with this scene was its believability. Starlight understands the gravity of the mission to take down Vought. She sees that Singer– and this next mission– is what they are hinging the takedown of Vought on. Starlight beats Firecracker to the ground. It did feel a bit out of character, only because she did not stick to her guns after the fight. Instead, Starlight pretended like she didn’t see the cameras…despite her watching Firecracker on the television across the street for a quarter of the episode. Singer sees this all on live TV and tells Starlight they can no longer be affiliated with each other to save his own image. Meanwhile, Frenchie and Butcher got caught raiding Firecracker’s trailer. As they are fighting their way out, we learn that there is a possibility that Butcher now has superpowers as he was able to take out a supe with his bear hands.
One of the big questions that arises with Butcher in this episode is the state of his brain tumor that is causing him to see hallucinations of Becca, his ex-wife. It is revealed in this episode that Butcher has taken Compound V to try and give himself more longevity but time will tell how long he has with the team.
Hughie’s father is still circling the drain in the hospital with his mother, and Hughie decides that there is only one thing that could save him from his awful prognosis, Compound V. Hughie appeals to A-Train’s guilt and asks him to get him some from Homelander. They are being watched in this moment by Kimiko’s sister, and the Shining Light army. Hughie and Kimiko fight them off, but Kimiko leaves her sister once again. Recently in episodes, there is a cycle of Kimiko running into this sister but nothing changes about their relationship. Why do the two of them fight just to stop in the middle of it and nothing has changed?
A-Train runs into Ashley as he breaks into Homelander’s for Compound V. The both of them decide to pretend not to see each other. However, this solidifies that there are people in Vought that are well aware A Train could be double-teaming. Earlier in the episode, we see that Sage finds him suspicious as he is checking his phone a lot in a Vought meeting.
A-Train returns to deliver the Compound V and Hughie forgives him, truly, as promised. This is something that is a clear and new character arc for Hughie, as he is now much more graceful with past hurt, and seems to think people are redeemable again.
Hughie runs this medication to the hospital and meets his dad again. Hughie hides the vial from his mother in his pocket, after having second thoughts. But his mom, Daphne, somehow absconds with the vial and injects it into his dad’s IV.
At the end of episode three, Homelander looks into a shattered mirror and is reminded by his inner consciousness, “to go to the beginning”. He does just that and goes back to the lab that he grew up in as a boy. It is here that he gets incredibly merciless vengeance, and it is gory. It is this reunion that informs that Homelander is a product of his environment growing up. First, he got vengeance on Frank, a man who burned him in an oven as a child by doing just the same to him. He decides not to stop at this and ramps up the office humiliation. He confronts an old security guard who had caught him with his pants down, giving him the nickname “Squirt”. Homelander takes no mercy on him or his groin in typical bloody Boy’s fashion. The last of his vengeance lies with Barbra, his only mother figure, who reminded him that he was a superhero and could’ve left or killed any of them whenever he wanted. Barbara says he didn’t leave because of his deep need for validation, which reminds him of his humanity despite being a super. Homelander then kills everyone in the office and leaves Barbra in a room with them.
Romance is taking a big steamy turn this season as The Deep and Sister Sage become closer and closer. We also learn more about the brain behind Sister Sage, as she has a deep need to stop thinking, turn her mind off, and find a space for her sexuality, but her powers hinder this. She approaches The Deep for a lobotomy so that she can remember why she found him attractive. This also gives a lot of intel about a potential weakness as she could be caught in a situation before her brain has time to regenerate. A couple with far less luck though is Frenchie and Collin. Collin has been feeling recently that Frenchie is very cold and closed off. He bombards him with being more open with his past but this only makes him feel more guilty.
This makes him cave and reveal to Colin that it was him who murdered his family. Colin is livid beyond measure and almost beats him to death, except he sees that Frenchie wants this. Colin tells Frenchie to never come near him again. A bitter ending to this episode and a beloved on-screen couple.
Rating: 8/10