The Boys is traipsing through its penultimate season with the usual gross-out humor mixed with social satire. Over the past few weeks, Homelander went home and essentially killed everybody who surrounded him in childhood, and Hughie’s life continued to be hell that doesn’t let up this week in the “Dirty Business” episode. Petition for a nice trip to Aruba for Hughie? Yes.
We’ll talk about poor Hughie’s ongoing troubles soon, but Firecracker has been waiting for her “glory,” and it’s Fourth of July week, so she gets to lead. Don’t worry, her victory will probably be brief because Homelander is a fickle beast, and at any given time, plenty of other Supes (other than A-Train, who is over it) and humans would turn themselves inside out for the mega villain. He has options, although surely, his time will eventually run out, too.
How Low Will Firecracker Go?
The answer to that question: she will go as low as possible and perhaps even die in the process. In Firecracker’s eyes, however, she’s made an incredible amount of progress with Homelander, which of course, is a satiric take on the cheerleading, gun-toting certain MAGA congress-types who profess their undying loyalty no matter what their leader does. Firecracker is, honest to god, now voluntarily lactating to fulfill Homelander’s milk fetish, and she only had to risk her health (by taking a regimen of drugs that “enlarges the heart just a tiny little bit”) to get there. Suddenly, the far-right nightmare is Homelander’s favorite member of the Seven, even above Sister Sage.
This gave the audience the very bizarre visual of seeing Homelander splashed in the face with breast milk, followed by his surprise and absolute pleasure. Then things got weirder with him lounging on a couch as she nursed him. Yup, The Boys does not disappoint when it comes to spectacle, but if Firecracker thinks that this will win Homie’s favor forever, she’s clearly deluded. That’s especially the case because I have a hunch that Cate will eventually be a part of The Seven, and nobody kisses Homelander’s tush with as much convincing fervor as the female Gen V recruit. Again, I feel like Sam is simply going along with the ride because it’s a less excruciating experience than Godolkin University gave him, but Cate has 110% drunk the Homelander Kool-Aid.
In other words, enjoy this moment, Firecracker. Despite the extreme show of allegiance and devotion, you’ll explode or fizzle out due to Homelander’s voluntary lack of object permanence and — let’s face it — psychopathy.
Oh, Hughie
Where to start? He’s been endlessly traumatized since the opening moments of the series, and Hughie lost his dad last week. There’s no time to mourn, however, because this week, he has to spend the majority of his onscreen time in Tek Knight’s dungeon. There, Hughie experiences Ashley’s pee-soaked form of domination before Tek Knight’s obsession with holes almost ends Hughie’s life. There was a nice little moment when Starlight and Kimiko came to the rescue and wired Tek Knight’s money to Black Lives Matter, which turned out to be the ultimate torture for him.
After the dust settled, Hughie revealed that he is very much “not fine” (dude had a family tragedy, and then he was directed by Tek Knight to take off his pants and fart into a chocolate cake, so yes, therapy could be useful), and he could really use a time out one of these days. That day is not today. Or tomorrow. Or anytime in the next few weeks.
And speaking of breaks, MM…
MM landed himself in the emergency room and learned that his panic attack is probably a precursor to a heart attack if he doesn’t cut this vigilante stress from his life. I do appreciate that the show continues to make space for the (arguably) most complex character of the series, but importantly, MM is also very much the audience POV, and we need this dude to take care of himself.
What is Sister Sage plotting?
During this episode, we learn that Homie and Sage are lining up plans for dissidents to land in internment camps. The odd thing about this duo is the Sage doesn’t seem to care about making Homelander happy, so her end goal remains nebulous for now. And dammit, her lobotomy “vacations” that turn into Taco Bell rants are sadly funny.
The first rule of Fight Club…
Audience hunches were correct: Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character, Joe Kessler, is not physically present, and in fact, Butcher has been conversing with a figment of his imagination this entire time. The real Joe is dead, and he’s the devil on Butcher’s shoulder, as if Butcher needed that type of encouragement. Still, we learn that Butcher likely has a massive brain tumor due to taking Temp V, and we still haven’t heard more about those snaky things we saw crawling under his skin in the shower. Joe is also claiming to be inside of Butcher, so yep, this is totally a Tyler Durden thing. We will have to wait and see how that revelation hits Butcher next week.
Prime Video/Amazon’s ‘The Boys’ streams new episodes on Thursdays.