With three new episodes of The Boys now available to watch on Amazon Prime, and five to go,
Season Two promises to be packed with references and nods that might not stand out after a
single viewing. Here are a few.
The Boys enjoys its television and movie references. Whether it's a nod to other projects that
the cast and crew have worked on in the past, or having Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator
fame anchor a news broadcast, there are plenty of little things to look out for. In the opening
scene of The Boys first episode of the second season, the audience jumps back and forth
between two events: Black Noir cleaning up a mess from the end of the previous season,
and Mr. Edgar negotiating the conditions of Vought's superheroes operating in the military,
and the damage they might cause to human life.
"Exactly what casualty allowance are we looking at here?"
"Officially, zero, of course. But Cone of Silence? 34%."
This is a reference to Get Smart, a comedic 1960s spy show starring Don Adams as Agent
86. In it, a running gag continually resurfaced around Maxwell Smart's desire to speak to
the Chief privately, urging for the highest level of secrecy by using the Cone of Silence,
a device consisting mostly of clear plastic that would usually lower from the ceiling
and cover the heads of both men so they could communicate without fear of being heard. The
device, however, rarely worked as intended.
About that whale.
One of the gorier scenes in the series happens in the third episode of the second season,
when a confrontation on the high seas turns into a sticky situation on the beach involving
the Deep and a whale. Inside the messy mammal, Hughie has had enough and thinks the best
course of action is to give up inside the beast, refusing Butcher's help. Butcher decides
to leave him.
"We can't leave the kid, man." "Pinocchio's staying put."
Fans of The Boys may not have seen Disney's 1940 classic animated film Pinocchio recently,
but one of the later scenes involves a handful of the characters ending up trapped in the
stomach of a giant whale named Monstro. In an effort to save his friends and father figure,
Pinocchio devises a plan to make the sea creature sneeze so they can escape. Thankfully, all
Hughie has to do to leave is crawl out of a giant speedboat-sized hole.
Anyone who's read the source material for The Boys doesn't need to be told how terrible
of a person Black Noir is. The new season of the show reveals that he isn't afraid to
murder women, but will we see his other atrocities on display during the series?
In the first episode, he's dispatched to kill a super-terrorist, and after doing so he walks
into the room of a small child while still holding the severed head. This moment concerned
some fans who were in the know, as Black Noir's comics counterpart has been known to cannibalize
children on occasion, but here we see him pick up a stuffed bunny and play with it for
a moment
This version of the character made for the small screen seems to be different, though,
even touching his chest, as if moved, by the sight of a dead whale. It's a quick moment,
easy to overlook, and it probably shouldn't be taken as a sign that Black Noir deserves
to be seen as anything but an antagonist and killer, but it may indicate a softer side
to this incarnation, or at least the showrunners trying to give him more personality.
Every good superhero franchise needs movies, and when you're in a world of real-life heroes,
making sure those movies are actually good is probably even more important. In an episode
three scene, we see someone pitching the script and storyboards for an upcoming film to the
group, getting wrapped up in his own hype when going over the final scene and the big
reveal of the ending, where he proudly proclaims:
"Title card! Dawn of The Seven! Cut to black!"
The phrase itself might not be enough to say that The Boys is nodding to the subtitle for
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but that isn't the only clue here. At one point the
film promoter suggests Batman v Superman composer Hans Zimmer when discussing the appropriate
music for the scene. And then there's also the color scheme of the poster mocking up
the film's logo.
This is an even deeper cut than it looks. The original comics for The Boys were initially
published by WildStorm, a subsidiary of DC Comics, before moving over to Dynamite Entertainment.
And don't worry that it's all about DC here — The Boys' second season is also off to
a good start with its potshots at Marvel, like Homelander making fun of the idea of
having a visually impaired hero named Blindspot, who is pretty obviously inspired by Daredevil.
Season two begins with the Boys in a rough spot. Not only are they hiding out underneath
a pawn shop as wanted criminals, but there's no Butcher, and that means no leadership.
In his absence, Hughie tries to get his teammates to do things a bit differently and entertain
other ideas, but this doesn't seem to fly, especially when Butcher returns with new motivations.
It isn't long before their personalities clash and punches start flying between the two.
Hughie has always been a bit of the moral center for the group and a member of the team
even points this out in episode three.
"He's your canary."
"My canary?"
"You let your canary die, how you gonna know when you've gone too far?"
This is all fine, two headstrong people working through their issues, but for those familiar
with the comics, this initial physical confrontation is also an unpleasant foreshadowing. Without
going into major spoilers, the stories the show is based on see Butcher and Hughie experiencing
a much greater disagreement on what needs to be done at the end of a long and depressing
road with a lot of lives held in the balance. The two wind up doing a little more than just
punching each other at that point. If the show follows suit, this will be a moment to
look back on and see where it started.
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