The Boys: Season 3

Based on: 2006 comic series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

Developed by: Eric Kripke 

Written by: 

Craig Rosenberg, David Reed, Anslem Richardson, Geoff Aull, Meredith Glynn, Ellie Monahan, Jessica Chou, Paul Grellong, and Logan Ritchey

Starring:  

Karl Urban (Billy Butcher), Jack Quaid (Hughie), Antony Starr (Homelander), Erin Moriarty (Annie/Starlight), Dominique McElligott (Queen Maeve), Jessie T. Usher (A-Train), Laz Alonso (Mother's Milk), Chace Crawford (the Deep), Tomer Capone (Frenchie), Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko), Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir), Colby Minifie (Ashley), Claudia Doumit (Victoria Neuman), Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy)

The Boys season 3 trailer:

There aren't that many series that are written so well that they have me absolutely glued to the screen. I also don't binge my TV series; watching two episodes of any series on the same night is usually pretty generous, but I watched half this season in one sitting. 

The Boys is a superhero TV series that asks the question, "What if the superheroes don't actually care?" In this world, the team of superheroes, known as "The Seven" for the number of heroes in the group, are sponsored by the company Vaught which functions just like any other company: for profit. The Seven function as a brand name and their superheroics simply bring the brand popularity, which increases sales. Among The Seven, each different hero has very differing views on just how much they care about actually saving people. In the first season, newcomer Starlight (Erin Moriarty) joins The Seven with naive optimism, hoping to truly make a difference. She encounters the functional leader of The Seven, Homelander (Antony Starr), who is her polar opposite: he'd kill any number of men, women, or children as long as he gets his way. It also just so happens that Homelander is basically the strongest hero of that world, with the same powers as Superman. 

For most of the season, Starlight is forced to be co-captain on The Seven and act as Homelander's ally

Then there is the titular group, "the boys," who are an unofficial team of misfits (which includes one girl from the start, despite the name) who see The Seven for what they really are and seek to take them down. 

As the series goes on, the balance of power shifts to and fro between the individual heroes of The Seven and Vaught itself. For most of the series, Vaught has been able to keep Homelander on something of a leash, constraining him from a bloody rampage against lowly humans with the promise of adoration from his fans, which is the only thing he loves more than crushing those beneath him. 

However, he also craves the same love and adoration from his teammates on The Seven, and season 3 made clear that this is crumbling. These teammates are keenly aware of Homelander's true nature and, up till now, haven't cared. But a power trip that began during the premiere of the season functionally removed that "leash" from Homelander's neck, allowing him to begin a more dictatorial rule over the company itself, compelling everyone in the building to fall under his leadership and whim, lest they be literally murdered. That old leash compelled Homelander to at least act like a decent human and treat his teammates as equals for the first two seasons. As season 3 went on, power continued pumping to his head and Homelander's blatantly bullying behavior progressively alienated the rest of The Seven, forcing them to fall in line, fall into hiding, or die confronting him. 

A crumbling Vaught struggles to maintain itself as precious few supes remain loyal to The Seven 

Meanwhile, the boys spent the season continuing to search for ways to bring Homelander down. A contact within The Seven gave the boy access to a drug that could temporarily make them superpowered (or "supes"). Using this drug, they sprung another extra-powerful supe, Solider Boy (Jensen Ackles), out of a foreign prison because he's one of the few supes with enough power to take on Homelander. Through the season, the leader of the boys, Butcher (Karl Urban) does increasingly questionable things under the influence of the drug, which his confidante (and audience surrogate) Hughie (Jack Quaid) compels him to consider and refrain from. Additionally, their new weapon Solider Boy has a very skewed view of justice which most of the boys don't agree with, and question whether his allyship is worth their cause. 

Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), the only female and the only supe in the boys for most of the series, goes through her own individual arc this season in which she discovers her core strength and motivations 

In the season finale, Homelander's bullying has even the members  of The Seven who had been closest to him--like Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell)--reveal their true fear of his power and turn against him, further eroding any reservation he has against killing everyone in a violent rampage. The boys join in on Maeve and Black Noir's confrontation, also adding Soldier Boy, Starlight, and a powered-by-drugs Butcher to the mix. However, Solider Boy's skewed justice turns the fight on its side and soon the mix of The Seven members and powered people are fighting different enemies in a brutal, incredibly destructive event. 

For a lovely, brief moment, Queen Maeve, Soldier Boy, and Butcher present a unified front against Homelander 

I don't often condense full season-long plots into a full blog entry, but this time I felt it was important because it's these intermixed plots and motivations that make the series so compelling. Why does Homelander refrain from simply killing everyone? Why is it a big deal that Queen Maeve turned on Homelander, and what are the repercussions? Why does it matter that Butcher keeps taking drugs for superpowers? How does Soldier Boy's presence change the dynamics of the entire thing? How can human or weaker supes like Hughie and Starlight make a difference? And just what happens when Homelander's biological son is brought in? 

All these questions have been dancing around our head for the whole season and explode in the finale, sometimes quite literally. A show simply about superheroes fighting each other just doesn't grasp the audience's attention, as some DC and Marvel movies have unfortunately shown--and I say that as a big fan of Marvel and a bigger fan of DC. One of the most compelling parts of the finale, I thought, was Queen Maeve's own confrontation of Homelander, a one-on-one battle that's given a fair bit of screentime. That's because it's ripe in both muscle and material: Queen Maeve had been Homelander's partner on The Seven since the team's inception, at least as far as the viewers know. They have significant history. Plus, as the show's version of Wonder Woman, Queen Maeve is one of the only supes in that world who can hold her own against Homelander's power. Their battle was almost an internal dialogue on how far each was willing to go. Homelander's initial shock of having to battle this former ally was only surpassed by the audience's shock of what each one has to do to injure the other, and how far each is willing to go to kill the other. 

The season leaves off with fewer deaths than I would've guessed, especially given the sheer amount of power being thrown around between every combatant and the fact that each one was going for the kill. However, what did change was stakes. More members are added to the boys, strengthening their resolve and ability to take down Homelander, but also widening the target on their collective team. At the same time, The Seven is left hollow and fragmented as Vaught itself. Homelander's bullying over the season has left the company a shadow of its former self and Homelander is keenly aware that precious few people care about him--and now even fewer try to act like it. One of the biggest questions the season finale leave us with is, how close is Homelander to losing his mind and literally killing everyone?