‘The Boys’ recap: “Good Boys and Bad Apples” (Season 3 Episode 1)

The Boys returns with our corporate-shill superheroes doing what they do best — some good old-fashioned red-carpet marketing. The A-lister group of superheroes The Seven and their media conglomerate overlord, Vought International, are doing some PR clean-up work after the leaked photos revealed their newest hire, Stormfront (Aya Cash), was in fact, a Nazi. The bombshell is being handled with the usual virtue signaling language that The Boys so enjoys playing with. CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) assures the press that the “bad apples” have been handled. Homelander (Antony Starr) — leader of The Seven, America’s sweetheart, Stormfront’s boyfriend, and resident secret sicko/sadist/psychopath of the group — spits out the same media line repeatedly. He fell for the wrong woman; he’s spent the last year slowing down and reconnecting with himself.

Slow burn coupleHughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) use the star-studded event to officially go public. Hughie is now opting, much like his optimistic superhero girlfriend, to attempt to fix the system from within, working with Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) in the newly created Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. Meanwhile, Starlight continues to attempt to shift the culture within Vought, grappling with being asked to co-captain The Seven with Homelander.

The Seven is currently down to a paltry five — Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell), Starlight, Homelander, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), and the newly returned A-Train (Jessie Usher). The Deep (Chace Crawford), former aquatic supe of The Seven who was booted for sexual misconduct, is determined to return to the group, using his experience in the cult-like “Church of the Collective”to stir up sympathy and scrub his image clean (“They’re calling me the next Leah Remini,” he shrugs. “No big deal.”). While technically disavowed, Stormfront remains in Vought Towers, still dismembered and horrifically burned after being attacked by superpowered spawn of Homelander, Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti), seemingly existing mainly for Homelander to stop by and fantasize about his godlike powers with her. 

Despite Starlight and Hughie’s admirable intentions, the corrupt systems in place often seem far beyond repair through traditional means. In The Boys, superheroes are permitted to do whatever they please privately as long as they stay palatable to the public — Stan Edgar coldly describes his job as running “a daycare dealing with spoiled children and dead prostitutes.” Minus the occasional slip up, most of the particularly nefarious actions of supes and their handlers stay totally under wraps; including, most recently, Edgar’s attempt to sell a new superhero compound that acts as a superhero-for-a-day elixir for civilians or militia.

Attempting to go straight, Hughie is still in touch with “The Boys,” the radical, vigilante-based crew of disillusioned anti-supe civilians. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Frenchie (Tomer Kapon), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) now help Hughie find some supes off-the-record for his bureau. This undercover operation yields some of the best gross-out moments of the episode. An attempt to locate the superhero Termite at a party turns to the handling of a full-on crime scene after Termite shrinks himself to enter the tip of a man’s penis, but accidentally sneezes himself back to full size and explodes the man’s body. After Termite attempts to get away, including a desperate crawl up Frenchie’s asshole, Butcher traps him in a baggie full of cocaine. It’s a nice return to what The Boys does best — some grotesque superhero, often sex-related, injuries and deaths. 

Much like Hughie, fellow former Boys-member Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) has gone straight to repair his familial ties.It seems that the only ones left in the original crew are the ones that have nowhere else to go. Butcher’s brutal loss of his wife, Becca, leaves him halfheartedly visiting her and Homelander’s child, who now lives with Grace Mallory (Laila Robbins). Kimiko and Frenchie continue their gentle relationship, but only really have each other. The Boys newest pseudo-member is the once by-the-book superhero Queen Maeve, who seems ready to embrace radical action (read as: out for Homelander’s head) after her traumatic and humiliating year. Maeve offers Butcher some of the single-use superhero compound as well as introducing him to some valuable information and potential supe weaponry — the supergroup “Payback”, once more famous than The Seven but now defunct, have a definitive air of suspicion around their past and the death of their leader Soldier Boy.

While all our good guys (the actual ones, not the corrupt supes) want to take action against the tyrannical, governmentally and culturally sanctioned, reign of superheroes, there is a definitive tension between opting for the radical route or the more above-board path. The Boys, at least at this junction,suggests that to opt for the revolutionary and radical route is to be out of options, totally demoralized. Can one be all in for radical revolution and hold onto some sort of happiness? Or does one have to settle for less meaningful change within the system to find personal contentment?

Hughie’s illusion of a happy, normal life within the system is shattered in the final moments of the episode. One of the presumed “good guys” in the system, Congresswoman Neuman, is a secret superhero herself, capable of making people’s heads implode (and using it to her so far unclear, but aggressive, advantage). In the final moments, Hughie inadvertently sees this power in action. Only time will tell if this revelation will push him back to his radical, vigilante roots. Perversely, I want to see him back in the gritty free-for-all justice of The Boys.

The sicko cynicism of The Boys is what I ultimately keep coming back for. Homelander’s unique brand of cold psychopathy (his dead-eyed delivery at the end of his media spiel — “I am very excited for everyone to meet the real me” — both chills and excites), the gross-out violence of the superhumans, the blatant mockery of an untenable military-industrial complex and the media conglomerates that uphold it — are what makes The Boys shine. Here’s hoping some of the larger existential questions about power, change, and action can be explored in the gnarliest way possible this season.

Image courtesy of Prime Video