“Vengence isn’t a path to glory,” says Laila Robins‘ Mallory in the season finale, and don’t we know it.
Everything comes to a head in the final two episodes of The Boys‘ whirlwind first season—dark histories revealed, friendships splintered, and a whole lot of blood spilled. Cycles of anger and quests for vengeance are proven to be futile endeavors and almost everyone, in some way, reaps what they’ve sown.
Having spent all season dragging everyone down with him, Billy is left alone to finish his mission. Not only is any sense of a satisfying resolution taken from him, but a shocking revelation in the final moments upends his whole purpose for being. In a way, finding out that Becca is still alive is a form of validation for Butcher, but the revelation being coupled with that of Homelander’s son makes it a nasty pill to swallow.
Revenge Is a Futile and Stupid Gesture
Hughie and Billy’s storylines intersect here in nice ways—not only have they had the most developed relationship of the season, but they also represent two possible outcomes of the path of revenge. We learn via flashbacks that Becca Butcher worked at Vought, and see the surprisingly cordial first meeting of Billy and Homelander. There’s an eerie sense of him taking an interest in Becca, which is yet another showcase for how uncomfortable Anthony Starr can make the viewer.
He’s all smiles and warm cheer, but of course, we know exactly where this is headed, infusing the encounter with a sinister edge. Billy’s downward trajectory is tracked throughout the flashbacks, from the naive man who’d never mistrust a Supe to the hardened manipulator he now is. There’s a particularly interesting notion that his grooming of Hughie is inherited from Mallory, who took this grieving man and set him loose on the Supes with little thought for the consequences.
Hughie, meanwhile, sees his budding relationship with Annie cut short when Homelander outs him (and the rest of the Boys) to the Seven as one of Butcher’s collaborators. He tries to rekindle things from their new hideout to no avail. Not only is Annie angry and embarrassed, but she’s also under great suspicion from her teammates, who now suspect she’s been in on Hughie’s operation from day one. And just when you thought he hadn’t screwed up enough, he’s even managed to get his dad involved, who barely survives an attack from A-Train.
Even with his world crumbling around him, it’s not until Billy leaves the team for dead that Hughie begins to realize the error of his ways. With Annie unwilling to help, it’s up to him to try and rescue them from Vought, which results in a particularly funny gag wherein his big hero moment is cut short by a tackle to the ground. It may come too late for his personal relationships, but Hughie finally comes to realize the futility of revenge, unlike one Billy Butcher, and tries to make amends for his misdeeds.
Unsurprisingly, Billy’s elaborate scheme winds up being a total loss. Now alone, he kidnaps Madelyn Stillwell in the hopes of killing her before Homelander’s eyes, believing her to be his only weakness. He straps a bomb to her chest and awaits the Supe’s arrival, but the confrontation doesn’t exactly go to plan. It’s a genuinely terrifying standoff, and Starr‘s shining moment this season (among many), where you truly have no idea what he’ll do next. His jovial tone gives way to bursts of anger as he parades around the room holding Stillwell’s baby, before burning her face off with his laser eyes.
Karl Urban‘s c*cky bravado and sense of determination are stripped away at this moment, Billy’s last chance at avenging Becca, in addition to the only thing he had left to live for, is gone. Mallory’s words echo in our minds as a resigned Butcher detonates the bomb anyway, supposedly blowing him and Homelander to smithereens. But that’s not before one final twist of the knife, which we’ll come back to later…
A Starlight In the Darkness
I don’t think I’ve given Erin Moriarty enough props for her performances this season. Annie’s naive optimism, her old school heroism, and her conflicted worldview in these episodes owe a hell of a lot to how she navigates the character’s various plights. And in a show full of killers, anti-heroes, and morally repugnant “heroes”, she’s anchored the show with a good-natured earnestness that’s made the darker moments just a little less bleak.
In these final two episodes, Annie sees her whole worldview upended—everything she thought to be true, from her relationship with Hughie to the truth behind her powers, turns out to be a lie. We see Annie grappling with what it means to be a hero and more importantly, how does one even do the whole superhero thing when everything they do is controlled by a transparently evil corporation. Not to mention the fact that all her teammates have long forgotten the meaning of heroism.
Hell, mere moments after being told she was not in fact “chosen by God” but injected with Compound V as a baby, she’s knocked down by Billy’s shotgun blast while Hughie flees the scene. Later, when Hughie comes to her for help rescuing the Boys, she understandably wants nothing to do with him. But a pep talk from Queen Maeve reaffirms her belief in the importance of heroism. Maeve’s own arc has been a hugely satisfying one in itself, going from jaded hero to confronting her culpability to reclaiming some of her old spark and helping Annie at a pivotal moment. It may not have manifested in as dramatic a way as I’d predicted, but it’s a satisfying supporting arc that nicely tied into one of the main players.
With her faith in heroes restored, Annie jumps in at the last moment to rescue Hughie and co. from certain death. We see her go full Starlight in ways only hinted at so far, and even get a showy fight with A-Train that makes excellent use of his powers. Thankfully, her brief reconciliation with Hughie has more to do with affirming her sense of purpose than it does rekindling their romantic relationship in any way. She’s had every reason to quit this gig—from her sexual assault to the constant policing of her image, but her persistence in the face of adversity is a surprisingly hopeful note for a show like this one. And hey, her storyline even managed to prove me wrong!
Off the Deep End
After the truth came out about Deep’s misdeeds, he gets benched to Sandusky, Ohio, a place with so little crime that the disgraced Supe is left without purpose. A comedy of errors ensues, wherein an attempt to rescue a lobster from a supermarket display results in it being killed on the spot and a declaration of his return to New York is quietly shut down by his new boss.
It’s a fittingly humiliating end for a character that started the season grossly abusing his power, one that sees him stripping away the markers of his former identity by shaving his head in the mirror. After witnessing his downfall to a man adrift, with the structures that allowed him to abuse others gone, I’m very much intrigued to see how where the second season takes his journey. Not least because Chase Crawford is extremely good at playing both the smarmy asshole and dejected loser parts of Deep’s character.
A Homecoming for Homelander
Homelander’s storyline takes some dramatic turns in these episodes—for a start, a deeper look into his past reveals that not only did Becca become pregnant after her assault, but that Vought covered up the truth of his child’s birth. For years, he believed that it had died in childbirth, but a visit to his former handler/quasi-father figure (in a brilliantly resigned performance from John Doman) leads him to discover that quite the opposite is true.
Which stings all the more when we find out the whole superpowered terrorist plot was actually his doing, in an ingenious move ensuring that Vought cannot be fully shut down. He engineers it so that the military needs Supes to fight off these new threats, creating an alarming parallel to real-world US foreign policy. The corporate machine keeps on churning, profiting off the endless conflicts created by those making all the money. It’s here that The Boys really lives up to the promise of its first episode, in ways that go beyond winking nods and poking fun at Marvel (which there’s also no shortage of).
Stillwell is impressed by his inventiveness and promises to keep no more secrets from him, resulting in a truly bizarre sex scene that makes full use of their creepy mother/son dynamic. There’s also the particularly amusing touch of Homelander finishing in under a minute, which goes a long way to undermining his brags about Becca. But as he soon finds out, Stillwell has one more secret up her sleeve, that of his child being potentially still alive. It’s the key to his killing her later in the episode, and leads to the revelation that ends the season on one hell of a cliffhanger.
After blowing Stillwell’s house to hell, Billy is rescued by his enemy and wakes up on a mysterious front lawn. To his, and our, surprise Homelander has taken them to the residence of Becca Butcher, who comes walking out the house, very much alive. But that’s not all, as a blond child comes running to Homelander. Billy looks on as the child’s eyes turn bright red, coming to the horrible realization that he was right all along, albeit not in a way he ever could have imagined. His dream of seeing Becca one last time perverted into a horrible nightmare.
The Boys: Final Thoughts
So that’s the end, at least for season one. Despite my early objections, The Boys turned out to be a pretty terrific show that exceeded my initial expectations and then some. What at first, seemed like a crass riff on existing superhero deconstructions, turned out to be a breath of fresh air amongst the ever-growing crowd of Disney+ shows and cinematic franchises. One that not only skewered the superhero stories that have become a staple of our pop culture, but also dug into our relationship to these stories and their all-to-tidy answers to difficult questions.
Anchored by some terrific performances, the show wound up being a far more biting antidote to the Disney/Marvel machine than, say, Deadpool and spoke to contemporary issues, like the widespread abuse in the entertainment industry, with more than empty platitudes. It hasn’t been without faults, relying a little too heavily on prestige TV tropes early on, and letting Frenchie, who had a compelling mid-season side story, fall by the wayside in the end. But with a tightly-paced structure that made great use of its eight episodes, The Boys triumphed, even over sister show Preacher, which has yet to have such a focussed season as this.
And with a second season coming sooner rather than later, I, for one, can’t wait to dive back into the dirty, morally ambiguous world the show has established.
But did you find this conclusion satisfying? And what are you hoping to see from season two? Let us know in the comments below!
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