Ain’t no way the Boys were gonna snuff out Soldier Boy with just one whiff of their kill juice virus. And it’s a good bet no one can, because lab tests back at Vought after his Lazarus with the body bag reveals the first-gen secret sauce coursing through this supe’s 90-year-old veins. V1. Original formula. 10 times the strength of today’s Compound-V. It might even make S-B immortal. Which Homelander hears as will make himself immortal. Because if he were a true god, then no one would be allowed to shit on him.

“Look at you. Pathetic. Just the softest, wettest boy.” The defiant words from A-Train’s death blow are now in Soldier Boy’s mouth, who understands the V1 revelation to mean he’ll still be kicking once Homelander reaches obsolescence. It sends HL into his latest spiral as he considers his longing for love, the one thing humans have, which he covets but invariably destroys. And in this spiral, he is visited by the surrogate mother he lazered. Elisabeth Shue returns to The Boys as a vision straight out of Homelander’s insane membrane. Imagined as a patriotic avenging angel, Madelyn Stillwell says it’s all been foretold, that HL will ascend to the god-tier. And if any humans or supes get in his way, he can be comfortable in lazering them, too. Because those left behind will become the faithful.  

Speaking of former Vought execs, the Boys also wanna locate any remaining V1 before Homelander does, so they head back to the bunker of Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), who’s still with his granddaughter Zoe Neuman (Olivia Morandin). Remember her? With the mouth tentacles? Stan shows the crew to his archives, where stacks of redacted Vought files point to a decommissioned military base, Fort Harmony, as their likely next stop. But Zoe’s still angry that this bunch killed her mother, Victoria Neuman. Angry enough to sneak out of the bunker and text Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti). Yep, The Boys are bringing everybody back in this episode. But Ryan is conflicted over Zoe’s plan to stalk and kill Billy Butcher to avenge her mother. He’s stuck between the notion of his surrogate father and the horror of his actual father.  

It’s not even just Ryan, Zoe, Stillwell and Edgar. In this ep we also get sniff-tracker Dogknott (Zach McGowan) and object manipulator Cindy (Ess Hödlmoser), who both help Deep and Noir infiltrate Edgar’s subterranean compound. And we should note Maverick (Nicholas Hamilton) is down there, too, the invisible dorm RA from Gen V. But he becomes a very visible splotch of red goo when Starlight kills him. (For good measure, she also snaps Cindy’s neck for going after Hughie.) All of these characters have done time in the twisting backstory lore of The Boys, and in this finale season, any onscreen demise counts toward Eric Kripke’s state Epic Deaths tally. But in the course of this episode, these cameos and the resulting fights do not resolve a thing. 

Billy has a tracker on Ryan, so he can be close by, if and when the kid combines his powers with the anti-supe virus to kill his father. But that virus has become as hard to come by as the V1 revelation. Zoe tracked Frenchie and Kimiko back to the Boys’ hideout, where she discovered Sameer, the former Vought scientist and her real father, and when she connects Butcher to Victoria’s death, the two destroy the Boys’ virus lab in retaliation. Zoe is about to tentacle-face Frenchie when Kimiko stops her. Just go, she tells the reunited daughter and dad. There has been too much killing. Yep. Bloodshed is about the only constant in the chaotic Boys narrative.

Convinced by the vision he imagined that he’s been too soft on everybody, Homelander bathes in stolen breast milk before demanding Soldier Boy’s deference, transferring the bulk of Vought’s resources to finding and/or redeveloping stocks of V1, and flying off to meet with his son Ryan, who’s got the usual questions. “Did you rape my mother?” It’s awful, but because this is HL, it gets awful-er. He adjusts from pandering to basically admitting the truth, then blames the victim, and then just drops all pretense. Homelander has just assumed completion on the whole immortality thing, so he doesn’t even need Ryan to fill his red boots. “‘l’ll be my own legacy.” And with punch after punch after punch, he turns his son’s face into mush.

It’s Butcher who finds him and treats his wounds. The boy will survive to destroy another day, and with this confrontation, should finally have a better sense of Homelander’s selfish bullshit. The Boys lost all their kill juice, and remain fractured around not fully trusting Billy. But it could be they’ve gained a real asset with Ryan, if he truly is weaponized against his father. And they will need it. Back at Vought Tower, Homelander is stewing over his bloody fists when The Deep arrives to suck up to his boss. He brought Stan Edgar back from the compound in cuffs. HL grins. Who better to help with finding that sweet V1 immortality juice than a Vought guy from way back when.

Boys Noize for Season 5 Episode 3 of The Boys (“Every One of You Sons of Bitches”): 

• Kimiko and Frenchie are loving being reunited in a euphoria of sex and conversation. But talk of life plans brings snags. She wants kids and a bernadoodle; he wants to travel and play DJ gigs in Berlin.
• Firecracker’s been getting the cold shoulder from Homelander, so she cozies up to Soldier Boy instead. Their flirting over the type and length of their pistols leads to sex, which S-B makes weird by comparing it to the time he was with Shari “Lamb Chop” Lewis in the balcony of Studio 54.
•  And even if Homelander thinks he’ll be immortal like tomorrow, he’s no closer to fully controlling Soldier Boy. The OG supe thinks HL is “the strangest motherfucker I’ve ever known, and I’ve had a threesome with Gary Busey.” Help Homelander? S-B has other things to do.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.