Now that we've all watched the first season of The Boys, let's untangle all the plot threads
left dangling at the end of the season finale and figure out where we stand with these comics-inspired
characters and their superpowered stories.
Spoilers ahead!
The last we see of Hughie, he's helped his teammates escape.
He leaves Starlight behind at the warehouse where they were being held, so she can try
to resuscitate A-Train.
We don't know where Hughie's allies run to, but so far they seem pretty adept at finding
hideouts when they need to.
Hughie has grown in leaps and bounds.
In spite of Butcher calling him "pathetic" in the season finale because Hughie refuses
to help him kidnap Madelyn, the truth is Hughie is as strong as any character in The Boys.
He's grown from a young man still living with his dad too afraid to ask for a raise at work
to an outlaw who murders a member of the world's most prestigious superhero team, infiltrates
that same team's headquarters in a plot to bug their conference room, and purposely gets
himself captured in the season finale so he can rescue his new friends from what promises
to be torture and death.
Yes, he yells "I'm sorry!" over and over as he fires an assault rifle at the men guarding
Kimiko ...
"I'm sorry!
I'm Sorry!
I'm out."
...but hey, a few episodes ago he was too meek to tell his dad he didn't like pizza
rolls.
Give the guy a break.
Baby steps.
Initially known simply as "The Female," the powerful but silent Kimiko enjoys her own
evolution in this first season.
When she's introduced in the fourth episode, she's too wild and savage for anyone to leave
unbound.
When Frenchie frees Kimiko, we see how physically powerful she is and the violence of which
she's capable.
We eventually learn Kimiko was kidnapped by terrorists and used as a lab rat.
At first, Kimiko won't even let Frenchie get near her.
But by the season finale, she's changed.
She still isn't talking much, but the Boys manage to win her trust, particularly Frenchie.
Before the black ops team assaults the Boys' motel room, she's cleaned herself up and put
on makeup, and she's clearly affected by the young woman she sees in the mirror.
We'll have to see if those changes have stuck in season 2.
Being recaptured may have thrown her back into wild mode.
Remember when we meet Kimiko she's a prisoner, and in the space of five episodes she's captured
two more times, and nearly cut to pieces by Black Noir.
Repeatedly being captured and sliced open probably doesn't promote emotional openness.
Neither Mother's Milk nor Frenchie want to be back working with Butcher when The Boys
begins.
We haven't heard all the specifics yet, but it's clear Butcher and the others once worked
with Mallory toward similar goals, and the results weren't good.
But more than that, neither of them want to work with one another.
Mother's Milk and Frenchie seem to have gallons of bad blood between them, and no small part
of it seems to be due to Frenchie's attitude toward Mother's Milk's wife.
When Butcher recruits Mother's Milk he straight-up lies about Frenchie's involvement and predictably
he has to pull the two apart when they see each other.
By the time they're imprisoned together in the season finale, the warring outlaws have
made peace with one another.
Perhaps it's because with Milk's wife in hiding and telling him she never wants to see him
again, neither of them have anything left to lose.
By the time he confronts Homelander, Butcher is completely on his own.
Hughie leaves him, and Butcher abandons the rest of the team to their fate when he learns
they've been captured.
Hearing about Homelander's twisted relationship with Madelyn, Butcher goes to the executive's
house and covers her with explosives while his finger rests on the dead man's switch.
When things go sideways and Homelander kills Madelyn himself, Butcher resigned to his fate
lets go of the switch.
He wakes up in daylight on a green lawn, and soon learns he's somewhere he could've never
imagined existed.
Up until then, he believed that his wife Becca was murdered by Homelander.
In the season finale we learn at the same time Butcher does Becca is alive and living
with an 8-year-old boy with blond hair and eyes that glow red when Homelander tells him
who he is.
How Butcher could possibly react to this is anyone's guess.
Will he be grateful his wife is alive?
Will that make him more or less committed to taking down Homelander and Vought?
Not to mention, how's he going to survive his confrontation with the leader of the Seven?
Elisabeth Shue is wonderful as the manipulative and powerful Madelyn Stillwell, who somehow
not only pushes Vought to new levels of profit but seems to be the only person who can exert
any control over Homelander.
Unfortunately, Madelyn makes a fatal mistake.
When referring to what supposedly happened to Becca, she calls Homelander's child's death
a "miscarriage," alerting Homelander that his lover and Jonah Vogelbaum didn't get their
stories straight.
Just before he hollows out her skull with his eyebeams, Homelander tells Madelyn he
"managed to squeeze" the truth out of Vogelbaum that both mother and child survived.
Save for Homelander himself, no character's death could have more potential impact on
future seasons than Madelyn's.
She may not have had superpowers, but throughout the first season we learned just how important
Stillwell was.
Not only was she the only person who could rein in Homelander, she was pretty skilled
at manipulating the government officials who stood in her way.
Shortly before her death, Vought big cheese Mr. Edgar makes it clear he sees her as his
potential successor.
With Madelyn gone, everything's up in the air.
Not to mention that both Vought and Homelander will find themselves in a bind if they can't
explain exactly how she died.
In the beginning of The Boys, we get the notion that Homelander is a powerful weapon but the
one pulling the trigger is Madelyn Stillwell.
By the season finale, we've learned that isn't quite true.
When Homelander blasts the Baltimore mayor's private plane out of the sky at the end of
the series premiere after the mayor blackmails Madelyn it eventually comes to light that
Homelander was working all on his own.
When a supe terrorist shows up in the season's penultimate episode, it destroys the Boys'
plans.
Even though Butcher had previously brought a sample of the infamous Compound-V to the
CIA, the government isn't willing to go after Vought because they need the corporation's
supes to fight these new super-powered enemies.
While you could hardly be blamed for assuming powering up terrorists was a company-wide
Vought conspiracy, we learn it was all Homelander's plan to force the government to let superheroes
work for the military.
"And now we have villains all over the globe that only we can fight."
Now, Madelyn is dead, Vought's supes are greenlit for active service, and there is no one left
to keep Homelander in check.
He was already the most physically powerful man in the world.
Now, Homelander is getting close to becoming powerful in other ways.
The last person that said “no” to Homelander is dead, and at his hands - or eyes, whatever...
What happens if this twisted Superman stops taking orders from Vought?
From the military?
From anyone?
We meet Dr. Stan Edgar for the first time in the first season finale of The Boys.
He gives Madelyn a bonus for helping get the military contracts approved, and he makes
it clear he's interested in her becoming his successor.
But Madelyn doesn't survive the season finale, and it makes us wonder exactly how Vought
will recover from losing one of their most effective executives.
Without Stillwell, Vought's most powerful and influential heroes will need a replacement
handler, and that handler will have the challenge of trying to control the physically most powerful
people in the world with fewer cards in their hands than ever.
Homelander has learned that he can not only manipulate just as well as his dead lover,
but he can even kill Vought executives with impunity.
When a man can lift mountains and burn off body parts by looking at them, what Vought
executive will be able to rein him in?
And if no such person can be found, what happens to Vought?
As Homelander pushes the envelope further he's going to see Vought and the rest of the
Seven as less and less important.
By killing Madelyn, Homelander may have set a time bomb within his own mind, and within
Vought itself.
When we leave Starlight, she's acting more like an actual superhero than any other member
of the Seven.
A-Train would probably kill Hughie but his heart gives out from his continued use of
Compound-V. Even though his survival could mean her losing her spot on the team, imprisonment,
or even death, Starlight is performing CPR on A-Train the last time we see her.
A-Train knows Starlight helped Hughie escape, and if he survives and tells Homelander, things
won't go well for Starlight.
There are other possibilities.
A convenient if a bit predictable outcome would be that A-Train survives but is unconscious
for a long time, can't remember what happened right before his heart attack, or both.
There's another potential outcome, and it depends on exactly who Starlight has become.
Earlier in the episode, Starlight has a conversation with Queen Maeve, who tells Starlight she
was just as idealistic when she first joined the Seven, but kept giving away pieces of
herself until there was nothing left.
It's this conversation that convinces Starlight to come to Hughie's aid, and it's a conversation
that may save A-Train's life.
When Hughie leaves the warehouse, Starlight could easily just stop trying to save A-Train's
life.
Considering what's in store for her should A-Train survive, the thought must be a tempting
one.
If she gives in to that temptation, she may get closer to the position Maeve has been
in for years.
The Wonder-Woman-esque Queen Maeve is one of the most conflicted characters we meet
in The Boys.
She tells herself she gave up trying to be a real hero long ago, but throughout the first
season we see glimpses of her desire to change.
She tries and fails to get Homelander to save at least some of the passengers of the doomed
Flight 37 in episode 4.
Guilt-ridden over the event, she visits her ex-girlfriend Elena but later rebukes her.
When Homelander finds out about Hughie and erroneously thinks Starlight helped him infiltrate
Vought on purpose, it's Maeve who steps in and defends her.
"You want her, you got her.
She's your responsibility now.
I just hope you're right about her.
For both of your sakes."
In the season finale, when Maeve finds a drunk Starlight getting sick in the ladies' room,
for the first time she shows genuine sympathy for her teammate.
Maeve opens up to the younger hero and tells her that she really did care when she first
joined the Seven, but years of compromise and giving away pieces of herself turned her
into something else.
She urges Starlight to be herself, because at least one of them should be.
Whatever's coming in future seasons of The Boys, Maeve may be the key element in any
struggles against Homelander.
She clearly isn't ready for open revolt against the more powerful supe, but she may very well
be getting close.
By the season finale, the Deep has no allies left.
Homelander hates him for informing Madelyn he's responsible for killing the Baltimore
mayor.
He's exiled to the relatively crime-free Sandusky, Ohio after his disastrous attempt to spring
a dolphin from a water park.
All of this pales in comparison to the fact that he forces himself on Starlight in the
premiere episode.
In Sandusky, the Deep is even more useless than ever and when word comes in that the
government has greenlit supes for military action, he assumes his time for redemption
has come, but his Sandusky handler assures him Vought wants the fish man to stay exactly
where he is.
When we last see the Deep, he's freeing himself.
From hair.
First he shaves all the hair off his chest, and next he hesitantly buzzes all the hair
from his head.
So what is the Deep doing?
Well, what's one of the biggest differences between a man and a fish?
Hair.
Perhaps this low-rent Aquaman no longer sees any options for himself on the surface world.
Maybe the Deep is planning to run away to the place he's named after.
He seems to have pretty stimulating conversations with doomed dolphins and grocery store lobsters,
so who knows?
Maybe he'll be happy.
"What's up man?
How'd you end up here?"
In the beginning of The Boys, Butcher and Hughie are looking for vengeance.
But by the end of the first season, it's clear their quest may eventually have a much more
important goal.
We now know that not only were the terrorist supes exposed to Compound-V done so just so
the Seven would have an excuse to join the military - but that it was Homelander who
was behind it all.
By the end of The Boys' first season, the stakes have gone far beyond the profit margin
of Vought or violent emotional catharsis of Butcher and Hughie.
Homelander is now a threat on a global level., the ragtag team of revenge-seekers, mercenaries,
and traumatized lab rats may be the only thing standing in the way of global annihilation.
"This is never gonna stop!
It's just gonna be more blood and more awfulness.
That's the f------ game."
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