The Boys “What I Know”

As I type this, it wasn’t that long ago that I finally finished reading the comic book version of The Boys.  I mean, I usually write these a couple weeks in advance.  That’s to be expected even if the review for the comic went up a couple weeks ago.

But here we are at the end of the second season as the show tells a very different story.

I’m all for that.

Now, it’s still The Boys and that means there’s still a lot of gruesome violence.  One more head explodes, and we know who did it.  Stormfront dies badly, first beaten down by the trio of Maeve, Annie, and Kimiko in one of the most satisfying moments of three women stomping a deserving person into the ground that I’ve seen since the last minute or so of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.  This wasn’t a lot of fancy superpowers.  This was three women essentially kicking someone exposed as a Nazi into the ground until said Nazi flew away, only for her to die for certain while threatening Becca Butcher, causing young Ryan to finally figure out how his laser vision works.

And then Billy Butcher does the unexpected and lets Mallory have the kid instead of Vought or even trying to kill the lad himself.  Becca accidentally died in the same laser blast as Stormfront, and Billy did the right thing by a supe that he should, by all accounts, despise.  Factor in as well that Maeve then shows up again with footage of Homelander on that plane letting all those people die, essentially blackmailing the increasingly psychotic Homelander into A) letting the Boys go, B) letting Ryan go, and C) letting Annie back on the Seven or else.

I am curious how Maeve managed to get where she was needed both times, but here we are.

Considering A-Train, possibly through manipulation, gave the Stormfront-is-a-Nazi forms to Hughie and Annie who in turn leaked it to the press, it isn’t that surprising that Homelander backed off.  The one thing he really wants is the adoration of the masses.  Without that, what is he aside from a nearly unstoppable douche?

Oddly enough, this final episode for the season ends with Butcher getting the go-ahead to work as a “supe check” under some black budget money, with the Boys cleared of all charges including the crimes they actually did commit.  So…it took two seasons to get the Boys to where they were at the start of the comics?

Regardless, things are looking a little better for most of the Boys.  Butcher’s work will be sanctioned.  M.M. can see his daughter again.  Frenchie and Kimiko can actually leave the bunker and find a place to live.  And Hughie, reconciled with Annie, got a new job with Victoria Neuman.

Who happens to be the head-exploder.

Oh, that can’t be good.

But what now for Fridays?  I was going to go to the follow-up series for The Haunting of Hill House, but then something else got announced.  Amazon Prime will be dropping the last 10 episodes of the last of my original five shows, Vikings, by the end of the year.  Or they will have by the time this goes live.  Writing things in advance can be confusing.

Still, let’s finish that off, particularly since the Amazon drop will come a few months ahead of the History Channel’s schedule to get the last batch of episodes out.  Will the show I think should have stuck to 10 episode seasons manage to not feel like it has gone on for too long when most if not all of the original characters are dead and the only ones left are less than compelling figures?

Probably, but I’d rather know for certain.  I got this far.