The Boys

Amazon

The Boys is attempting to ramp up the stakes as it heads towards its series finale, but for the most part, it’s simply missing that mark. Showrunner Eric Kripke cited Game of Thrones as something he stresses about, given how poorly it ended and how he’s trying to avoid that. And while we haven’t seen the last few episodes here, I don’t think it’s going especially well so far.

The problem is Homelander, as it has been for some time. Now, this turn into “Homelander thinks he’s god” is not really a significant evolution of what’s come before. It just makes him sound goofy and delusional, not power-hungry in some fresh way.

All of this already happened years ago. Pretty much as soon as Homelander realized that he was too powerful for people to tell him what to do, and he took over Vought, that was it. Vought is the most powerful corporation on Earth with its fleet of superheroes, obviously more so than most governments, and if Homelander ran it, and was clearly the most powerful superhero on Earth, the stakes have to get higher in time.

They haven’t. We have three episodes left, and we’re not seeing anything Homelander hasn’t done before, killing off individual heroes or characters he doesn’t like. The “stakes” only seem high because they’re characters that have been around a while. This season that’s A-Train and this week, Firecracker, but in practice, it’s just what he’s done for years now, pretty much ever since he lasered that guy and everyone cheered for him, creating an all-time GIF meme in the process.

The big religious conversion of Homelander, thanks to a four-second appearance of a topless angel, does not strike me as something that escalates things at all, and just makes him sound stupid as he debates the difference between him being called a prophet or the Son of God or the Lord himself. Large portions of these episodes are devoted to marketing campaigns. There are three episodes left in this entire series, we don’t have time for this. Thank god for Valorie Curry’s amazing performance this past episode, or yesterday would have been a totalw ash.

For years now, the show has also beaten the idea to death that Homelander is, at his core, a weak, insecure, stunted child with mommy issues, a huge loser in every sense. Even though sure, he’s strong, he’s not scary, and characters keep telling him at every turn he’s not scary (even if some of them die shortly thereafter).

It feels like Homelander has been sidelined for Soldier Boy, who has turned into a more interesting, charismatic, and apparently more powerful character, given that he has V1 making him ageless and even immune to the supe-genocide virus. It feels like the show is pushing him hard as we head toward the Vought Rising prequel spinoff he’ll lead, and this comes at the expense of Homelander himself. This past episode, some random guy knocks Homelander out and Soldier Boy could have killed him if he wanted, and only doesn’t because Homelander did the same for him recently. This does not make Homelander seem terribly scary.

Hell, even Sister Sage’s plan is more diabolical (heh) than whatever Homelander is planning. He’s worshipped as a god and then what? He sits around on a golden throne? Sage’s active goal is to destroy the world, essentially for fun, and sit in a bunker to read. Silly perhaps, but a more terrifying prospect.

It’s really too late to redeem this Homelander storyline. We’ll get another few deaths. I’m sure someone from the Boys team will die. Another member of the Seven or two. And then Homelander. You’re not building this up for seven years not to kill Homelander. But he still feels stuck as the same character, pretty much the same level of threat he was years ago, and the stakes are not high enough.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.