The Boys season 2 was bigger, stranger, and somehow even darker than the first.
Revelations about Compound V, a hip new heroine as the voice of the Seven,
and closure for Billy Butcher… So how did that all shake out? Beware of huge spoilers ahead.
It's been clear since the beginning of The Boys that Homelander is a dangerous sociopath with
little regard for human life, a tendency to be highly manipulative, and a horrible, killer
temper. The question is always if he can really be kept in check, and by the end of Season 2,
it looks like almost nothing about Homelander is stable anymore.
Early on, his twisted relationship with Madelyn was the main check on his behavior, but he ended
up killing her after a perceived betrayal. In season 2, he seems to draw strength and comfort
from both Stormfront and his son Ryan, even though the boy isn't always what he hoped for.
“ahh”
By the end of the season finale, Stormfront is at death's door and Ryan has finally, definitively,
chosen a different path for himself, rejecting his father's path of violence and manipulation.
And while he leaves with Butcher, Butcher hands Ryan over to a more responsible party.
That leaves Homelander absolutely untethered in the final moments of the season,
and whatever happens with him next will definitely be an extremely volatile situation.
In the penultimate episode of the second season,
the US government is rocked by a strange and violent attack in the halls of Congress.
Just as a congressional committee is about to launch a hearing investigating Vought and the
creation of superheroes, heads begin exploding all around the committee room. Literally.
The season finale opens with Stormfront in particular feeling rather optimistic about
the attack, even if she doesn't know who did it. By the end,
none of the major characters know the culprit: Congresswoman Neuman,
a Supe with extremely potent mental powers who's been hiding in plain sight this entire time.
What is Neuman's endgame? Is she out to unmake and unseat Vought as the world's
premier home base of superheroes? Is she just a pure supervillain trying to sow chaos?
We don't know, but we do know she's dangerous in more ways than one.
In the wake of Stormfront's defeat, the Boys go their separate ways. Hughie is
happy to stay with Annie and try to make their relationship work in a more stable environment,
and eager to let go of the chapter in his life when he seemed to live between two worlds.
Little does Hughie know, though, that he seems to be on the verge of living some kind of double life
yet again. The last thing we see him do in season 2 is sign up for a job in Congresswoman Neuman's
office, and while that might not necessarily put him right in the thick of Supe battles again,
it does put him right next to one of the most dangerous Supes on the planet.
How long until he realizes he's been wrapped up in another super-scheme? Will Butcher and
the Boys come calling if they realize what Neuman really is? Either way, it's clear that
Hughie is already on the verge of getting pulled right back into a world he was eager to leave.
One of the defining arcs of The Boys has been the gradual breakup of the original,
stable lineup of the Seven as we saw it at the beginning of season 1. Starlight's addition was
supposed to be the only major replacement after the retirement of Lamplighter,
but since then, Homelander has struggled to hold his super-team together. As the series goes on,
both the Deep and A-Train are gone, Starlight is full-on rebelling,
and Maeve is beginning to have second thoughts. Near the end of Season 2, it looked like the only
loyalists left in the group were the newcomer Stormfront and the silent enforcer Black Noir.
Now, both of those allies are seriously incapacitated. Maeve takes Noir out by
feeding him an Almond Joy, activating a tree nut allergy that may not have killed him,
but has at least left him nearly braindead with no real prognosis.
As for Stormfront, she's still alive, but she's been left limbless and outed as a
literal Nazi. Suffice it to say, the Seven will look very different again in season 3.
Season 2 of The Boys featured a lot of minor arcs on top of the major ones, and one that paid off in
a hilariously twisted way by the season finale was the dual redemption journey of the Deep
and A-Train. Both were expelled from the Seven for different reasons over the course of the
first two seasons, and both hoped to leverage the influence of the Church of the Collective
to get back in Vought's good graces. Of course, it didn't go quite the way we may have thought.
"One other thing, you uh… ripped your vest. Your gill is showing. Cover it up. It's disgusting."
The Deep spent all season making sacrifices, changing his behavior and doing what he was told
by the Church in the hope that the Seven would see the light. Then, at the eleventh hour, A-Train
steals Church files on Stormfront and leaks them to the Boys, getting her ousted and, by extension,
impressing Church leadership and Vought with his initiative. So while A-Train is now back in the
Seven, the Deep is left once again without a home base, continuing to fail no matter what he tries.
When the dust settles, a lot of things are different, setting the stage for a third season
that will probably be even more unpredictable than the first two. Among the big changes,
courtesy of Grace Mallory, is that the Boys are free men. Because they helped take down
Stormfront, all charges against them have been dropped, and they've even got the opportunity
to join a newly-established office to keep an eye on Supes if they want it.
For now, none of the Boys, with the possible exception of Hughie, seem to want that job.
Butcher is grieving, MM has returned to his family, and Frenchie and Kimiko are off to
try and build a life together. Hughie's attempt to land a job with Congresswoman Neuman might
get him a position in the government office eventually, but for the moment we've seen the
end of the Boys at least until another Supe threat brings them back together.
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