Season 3 of The Boys will need to catch up to the comics in one major way
TV Features For Our Consideration
Spoilers follow for seasons one and two of The Boys and the comic book series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson.
The Boys are not effective. Billy Butcher is deviously charming, Frenchie is adorably cavalier, Mother’s Milk is appreciably stalwart, Kimiko is delightfully laconic, and Hughie is sympathetically idealistic. In Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s graphic novels, they’ve embodied how loss, grief, and trauma can transform into rage toward and resentment of a system that prioritizes the exemplary few over the ordinary many. But as foes to the former in defense of the latter? They are consistently useless, and there is only one solution that can remediate this sluggish storytelling: The Boys series needs to take a page out of its source material, and Butcher et al. need to inject Compound V in the recently ordered season three.
Conceived by Ennis as a response to the George W. Bush presidency and the War On Terror, The Boys graphic novels are most persistently a critique of the slippery merging of America’s military and corporate interests—of the rah-rah patriotism and casual xenophobia that so gripped the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and continues to this day. Ennis’ reliance on rape, homophobic language, and overly sexualized female characters (CIA director Susan Rayner is introduced in a scene of hate-filled sex with Butcher; Annie’s group-rape initiation into the Seven is revolting) has been decried by detractors as the tactics of a schlocky edgelord. To be fair, there is a lot of that stuff. Hughie adopts a gerbil that crawls out of a dead superhero’s ass. Some of the Boys’ blackmail includes threatening to out supes. The series’ stand-in for Batman, Tek Knight, becomes an uncontrollable sex addict, taking out his urges on everything from a hot cup of coffee to his unwilling butler’s ear.
It’s a lot, but to dismiss The Boys on that basis would be to miss how clear Ennis and Robertson are in their argument that superpowers are inherently corrupting, that superheroes are ultimately fascist, and that we’re all in danger from the kind of consolidated force that they represent. Those supreme beings who are meant to care for us? They probably don’t. As Butcher says in the first issue, “The Name Of The Game, Part One:”
‘Superpower’s the most dangerous power on Earth, there’s more an’ more of ’em all the time, an’ sooner or later they’re gonna wise up. If you can dodge bullets or outrun tachyons or swim across the sun, you’ve better things to do with your life than save the world for the two hundredth fuckin’ time. One day, you might twig what you’re really invulnerable to is your humanity. An’ then God help us all.’
The only way to fight figures like this, The Boys asserts from the very beginning of its print run, is to use their own weapons against them—and that means boosting up with Compound V. When we meet the Boys, they’ve all already injected themselves (with the exception of MM, who was born with mutated genes because of Vought’s amoral testing of the compound on its factory workers, including MM’s mother, and the Female/Kimiko, who fell into Compound V waste as a baby and subsequently developed powers). By the fourth issue, “Cherry, Part Two,” the CIA has provided Compound V to Butcher and his team so they can keep an eye on superheroes, and Butcher injects Hughie with it as soon as he joins their ranks. Without Compound V, how else could the Boys hold their own (“Can’t operate without it,” Butcher says to Hughie), or make any headway in tamping down the superheroes’ worst impulses and behaviors? The Boys wastes no time in either presenting how the practical invincibility of superheroes opens the door to their depravity, or arguing that the only way to take a stand is to use the weapons of the enemy against them.
As The Boys’ print run progresses, Butcher’s zealousness also grows. Described by the CIA as the “possibly single most dangerous individual ever encountered by this agency,” Butcher has more than a little bit in common with Rorschach from Watchmen in terms of murky moral positions presented compellingly. Under his leadership, the team’s antics are never boring. Hughie, upon taking Compound V for the first time, accidentally kills a supe by punching through him. Butcher is powerful enough to warp a gun with his hands. There are countless missions, some of them international (including one to Russia that is alluded to with all the head explosions in the second season of the show). Butcher states that there are 200,000 supes of all ages, some of whom are organized into various teams (not just Vought’s Seven) for the Boys to fight, and there are physical brawls, blackmail scenarios, and the omnipresence of U.S. propaganda regarding terrorism. And the Boys mostly stick together: They are committed to their anti-superhero ideology, and they are willing to—and often do—kill in support of it.
The Boys TV series, though, has eased quite slowly into much of this; at this point, it’s taken two seasons to reach where the comic series starts off, with the Boys operating under a presidential directive to fight supes. On the one hand, that has allowed the show to replace or entirely slough off many of the source material’s problematic elements: Annie is a fully rounded character; Homelander’s narcissism has more depth; and there aren’t Game Of Thrones-levels of rape in each episode. On the other, The Boys as a show seems primarily interested in considering superhero obsession as a capitalist sales strategy and marketing tool. Fandom as identity has been handled well—the cold open in “Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker” was particularly horrifying in its depiction of right-wing radicalization, as inspired by Stormfront—but that has left little room for the show to also incorporate the source material’s larger questions about the drastic measures needed to embolden individual resistance. And because, save for Kimiko, the Boys in the series are still resolutely human, their inability to fight back against supes has made for increasingly nonsensical choices from these characters.
Part of the issue is that the series, unlike the comic books, has built out only the Seven as the Boys’ foes. There are no other superhero teams, like the Teenage Kix or the Young Americans, to investigate or target, and the show has instead pivoted into exploring Vought’s shady history. The result is that the second season of The Boys fell into a recognizable pattern: Butcher and the team would plan an attack against a supe, be shocked by failure of said plan, get saved by a good supe (most often Annie), and then fail to adapt in response to persistent incompetence. That set-up made for repetitive, increasingly unsatisfying storytelling. On an episodic basis, The Boys entertained: “Over The Hill With The Swords Of A Thousand Men” was one of the season’s best for Aya Cash’s performance as the villainous Stormfront, and for how the show revealed her true Nazi motivations. “We Gotta Go Now” fully committed to the series’ satirical spin, mercilessly mocking both the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Looking back on the season overall, though, it’s difficult to identify what the Boys actually accomplished.
The last time the Boys actually did anything against a supe was in season one: Butcher was able to hold his own against Translucent with Hughie’s help, and their eventual killing of Translucent required some ingenious thinking into how to penetrate his skin. But they don’t seem to have been nearly that successful since. Instead, the Boys keep relying on guns, missiles, and other weapons that for the most part are easily repelled by the supes. Black Noir, who has superpowers, only stops himself from killing Butcher during their fight at Butcher’s Aunt Judy’s house because Stan Edgar calls. Kimiko is the only member of the Boys able to engage with Stormfront, because she has superpowers. Lamplighter sacrifices himself to free Annie from Vought Tower, because he has superpowers. Frenchie is successful with his superhero-specific frequency in the finale “What I Know” (a nod to one of Butcher’s plans from the comics), but the Boys fail to act on that blow against Homelander, who manages to kick their asses because he has superpowers. Annie and Queen Maeve join Kimiko to beat up Stormfront in that same episode’s twist on vacuous “girls get it done” messaging because they have superpowers. Collaboration is great, but the frequency with which the Boys are rendered inept might make you wonder what threat they really pose.
Kripke has confirmed that the third season of The Boys, which will include Jensen Ackles as comic book character Soldier Boy, is currently being written. But in interviews about the recently concluded season two, Kripke hasn’t elaborated much on whether viewers should expect the Boys to incorporate Compound V into their arsenal. When the show’s first season wrapped in July 2019, Kripke told Entertainment Weekly, “I always say the only magic that you’re allowed in the show is this vaccine called Compound V and it happens to give people unpredictable superheroes, and that’s all you get… Anything that comes out of this drug is viable, and anything that doesn’t we’re not allowed to do, and that’s a good way to maintain a certain amount of discipline.”
In hindsight, that comment seems to allude to the Sage Grove subplot of season two, which cemented that Vought is using Compound V not just on babies, but also on adults—to some success, as with the escaped Cindy. Does that revelation open the door for the Boys’ future use of Compound V? Potentially. And to be fair, perhaps Kripke and The Boys’ writers room has avoided the Compound V development because it compromises the characters who are meant to be the show’s heroes. But that argument doesn’t hold much weight when you consider all the other stuff the Boys have already done to try and bring down Vought and Homelander, most of which has already been explained away by an “ends justify the means” ideology. The aforementioned kidnapping and killing of Translucent; Butcher using a laser-eyed baby as a weapon; their awareness of A-Train’s killing of his girlfriend, Popclaw, who was working for them as an informant; the Boys eviscerating a whale by driving a speedboat through it; Butcher trying to convince his surprisingly still-alive wife, Becca, to leave her superpowered son, Ryan, for him and then trying to cut a deal with Vought’s Stan Edgar to allow for this scenario; and, of course, their indiscriminate killing of whoever is on their tail, whether they’re Vought operatives or police officers.
The initial twist of The Boys was that the best of us are actually the worst of us, and that our idea of heroism has been shaped by decades of complicit comic books and pro-military propaganda that encourages romanticized, worshipful awe of crushing power. Kripke’s series has mastered the first part of this, portraying supes like Homelander and Stormfront as all the bad -ist words (racist, sexist) as well as selfish, deceitful, and power-hungry. But The Boys now needs to take its central argument one step further and commit to the idea that the Boys, as adversaries of the likes of Homelander, must rise to the standard set by the supes in order to seriously oppose them. Narrative balance comes from equity between heroes and villains, and by the ability each has to strike against the other; stories need that equilibrium to help us decide who we’re going to root for or against. In The Boys comic books, Compound V is that equalizer—it is what allows the Boys to truly inspire fear in the supes they’re watching, hunting, and punishing—and that development provides an additional layer of moral complexity. What do you lose when you transform yourself into a version of your enemy? As Hughie asks Butcher in the comic book issue “The Name Of The Game, Part Two,” “They’ve got superpowers. I mean, how are you gonna make any impression on them?” Two seasons in, The Boys series has yet to fully answer that question—and it needs the Boys to inject Compound V to do so.
123 Comments
I saw on a Reddit thread that the show is overly reliant on the good guys using blackmail to stop people way more powerful than them from doing bad shit and it’s so true. Think about just S2, Starlight blackmails her friend to get her Compound V then later extorts A-Train to stay silent with her knowledge of him killing Popclaw. She also keeps Stormfront silent for a bit by threatening to reveal she’s Liberty. Butcher uses information he has about Ryan to stop Edgar from killing the Boys. And finally, Maeve stops Homelander in the finale with the video of him on the plane from S1.The tactic gets tired when used so repeatedly and they definitely need a new way for the “good guys” to stay alive and making moves.
I saw on a Reddit thread that the show is overly reliant on the good
guys using blackmail to stop people way more powerful than them from
doing bad shit and it’s so true.
Blackmail is one of the few things that actually works against the powerful.
Think about just S2, Starlight blackmails her friend to get her Compound
V then later extorts A-Train to stay silent with her knowledge of him
killing Popclaw. She also keeps Stormfront silent for a bit by
threatening to reveal she’s Liberty. Butcher uses information he has
about Ryan to stop Edgar from killing the Boys. And finally, Maeve stops
Homelander in the finale with the video of him on the plane from S1.
Not seeing the problem here.
The tactic gets tired when used so repeatedly and they definitely need a
new way for the “good guys” to stay alive and making moves.
Again, blackmail is one of the few things that works against the powerful. I think taking Compound V & becoming what they’re fighting against isn’t the answer.
The problem is it’s boring as a plot device when used over and over again.
That’s certainly my problem with the show. Its all blackmail… and we’ve learned that Vought can spin things. The device has outlived its usefulness. The Boys need to be able to fight on a supe’s level. I agree: Compound V.
yes, and it seems like blackmail is having a diminishing return on Homelander since the show keeps increasing his disdain for fans to the point where it seems he really doesn’t care about their opinion. Then of course, he drops a few points in the polls and is desperate to get the numbers back. So it is just an ego thing, while I’m sure he doesn’t want to look like a monster due to the airline footage, at some point that just isn’t going to stop him anymore. Especially given 1) what he does in the comics 2) what he does in his final scene of season 2.
The repetitiveness is a fair criticism, but the use of blackmail in lieu of powers is working for me (for now). Yea, Vought’s spins can be a little frustrating, but the fact that the Boys’ best weapon against super powerful people and super powerful corporations is the same thing (leverage) speaks a lot to how our real world works. And the thing people keep saying they like about this show is how they identify with its real-world mechanations. Scandals, exposure, I can’t deny it fits thematically with where we are irl. Let it go: Compound No!
I’m actually okay with The Boys not being hopped on V themselves, that’s something you can work around.What I really want to know is if Kripke has the balls to SPOILERS AHEAD……………..make Butcher the series’ Big Bad.
Short answer: no probably not. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t see it happening. Worse yet, it could happen but feel like an unearned twist as the show has forged its own identity (see Game of Thrones Khaleesi)
Unearned? At least in the comics, Butcher only lost his wife once.
HARD disagree. As Tyrion had to spell out for people, Daenerys was ALWAYS capable of being a bad guy.
Everyone might have cheered when Daenerys crucified hundreds of slave owners, but when it boils down to it, all it says is that she was the sort of person who was willing to crucify hundreds of human beings. You shouldn’t be surprised that someone who murdered people she saw as her enemies (slave owners) later murdered people she saw as her enemies (the people of King’s Landing).
Just so, Butcher has always shown himself capable of being evil. Butcher has already been shown to be willing to murder Annie, a supe who actually agrees with him, to a degree, that Vought and supes need to be taken down.
Let’s not relitigate this again. While the potential for Daenerys’ heel turn was always there, her sudden snap descent into madness was a HUUUUGE fucking reach
Way too fucking sudden. Would’ve been near-perfect if they actually built towards it, but then too many people would’ve clocked that they were going there, and they’d lose all their “Mother of Dragons” fans.
Yup. ‘Earned’ and ‘Possible’ are two different things. Unless it subverts your expectations of course. Then it’s good on it’s face no matter what inconsistencies or forced plotting are required.
It was the correct ending — had only there been two additional seasons. *Everything* was badly compressed in the last few seasons, which didn’t go well with the slow burn of the earlier seasons at all.I suppose if you know you know you won’t have 10 or 12 seasons, don’t pace the first 4 or 5 seasons as if you will.
Agree complete re: Daenerys vs. Butcher. But, I think making Butcher a villain in the show would be a mistake.
When the government does it it isn’t murder, right.
I agree with you about Danaerys but with Butcher, in the show not the comics, he’s had some collaborations with supes, such as Kimmiko’s brother and Annie, and they’ve been on his side against Homelander and Vought. So I think his hardline stance against Supes in the comics has been somewhat tempered, shown in his restraint against killing Becca’s kid right after he accidentally killed the love of Billy’s life. He has, against his will and to his chagrin, been forced to acknowledge that some Supes are not time bomb power hungry monsters.
Except she didn’t kill the slave owners because she saw them as enemies. She killed them because she saw them as oppressors of the weak and vulnerable. Because, they, you know, just crucified hundreds of children. Basically normal Medieval justice. Which is why having her kill a bunch of KL peasants was moronic. If Daenerys was going to go evil, she’d be wholesale murdering aristocrats and other powerful people. Also, considering Tyrion himself murdered hundreds with wildfire (and Arya killed dozens and fed them to an old man and Jon hung a twelve year old and Sansa fed her enemy to dogs…) what exactly makes Daenerys’s willingness to kill slavers so special?
Murder? Legitimate governments kill they don’t murder. She didn’t murder anyone, even burning the city could be explained as a missed communication. They signaled they were surrendering too late.
I don’t know anymore. With Becca dead but now with absolution about how it was done, it’s almost as if Butcher’s now a different character. Does he have reason to hate Vought and specifically Homelander? Hell yeah. But since he resisted killing his wife’s son, enacting his “big plan” at the end of the comics would take a huge toll on his current TV characterization.
Homelander, Vought, and Superheros, the three things he hates, are still around and alive. Becca is dead indirectly thanks to all three and left him with a son he doesn’t want. Plenty of motivation for him to keep going from there.
Butcher is no quite likeable in the series and has a tendency to react violently while being quite stubborn. He’s not quite growing and learning even if he’s a bit more accepting.
He’ll have to. It’s the arc of the series and the point. Ahab and his whale. With the changes to Noir, however, the lesson won’t be learnt.
I would totally buy it that Butcher has been the bad guy all along. Even in the very first episode, I thought there was something off about the way he manipulated Hughie; I just don’t understand why the rest of the team trusts him so much.
Meh. If they handle it better than the shittiness in the comics. I never bought it. And I don’t think they need it. Butcher will certainly die, at the end. Does he need to be the big bad? I don’t know if that’s as “ballsy” as one might think. Cos it happened, and it was horrible in the wrong ways.
I completely agree with you on all counts.
I wouldn’t say he’s the “real” big bad, but he eventually becomes no better than Homelander in his ideologies and methods.
Well no better than Homelander in his “Us vs. them” mindset but his techniques and methods are vastly different than Homelander.
I don’t think they’re going to go that route because 1) Butcher and Annie have collaborated a few times and it seems to have slightly gotten him past his “All Supes are time bombs” mindset that was never shaken in the comics 2) He suppressed his instinct to kill Becca’s son and seemed to acknowledge that the killing was accidental 3) it was easily the weakest part of the comics and felt like a coda after the real finale rather than an earned and fully thought out arc. Also, would ruin the potential for more seasons if he kills off the majority of the Boys like in the comics.
I only watched the first couple episodes of the show and then dropped off, but I think just from the way Hughie has been portrayed at the start it would be impossible to end up where the comic does. In the comic Butcher actively recruits Hughie because of his grief and rage and forcibly injects him with Compund V. Then Hughie accidentally kills a supe in the chaos of a fight because he does not know his own strength. It really fucks him up and he spends nearly the entire rest of the series feeling guilty and trying to avoid violence, while Butcher continually tries to orchestrate situations to force Hughie into committing violent acts. In the show Butcher recruits Hughie simply plant a bug because he can get into the Seven’s base and seems to have no interest or use for him beyond that. Then Hughie ACTIVELY chooses to murder Translucent, which completely changes the nature of his character to me.and COMIC SPOILERS……The whole end of the comic is based around the fact that Butcher (possibly intentionally, possibly subconsciously) recruited Hughie for his decency. He was a failsafe to either remind Butcher of his humanity (reminds him of his brother) or try and stop him if he goes off the deep end (because Hughie isn’t as warped or violent as Butcher or even the rest of the team). I don’t see any way you get to that ending when TV Butcher didn’t really give a shit about Hughie at first and TV Hughie willingly gave into violence almost immediately.
I am not sure I would agree with your characterization of him in the comic, but I absolutely expect the show to end that way. He has absolutely the same attitude as the character in the comic when it comes to Supes.
Nah
The end of S2 included a subplot with stabilised V being nearly authorised for use in the military/law enforcement, then quickly being backtracked. However we know there was a shipment on the way to the CIA, and we know The Boys have been officially hired by the CIA as an anti-supe task force. It seems pretty cut and dry to me.
Did they state/confirm that it was stable? I thought the idea was that Vought got the sale due to the threat of super-terrorists/the hearing-massacre, but that it still was mostly a crapshoot (which would make it just as realistic for a greedy pharma company, etc – willing to unintentionally kill off people, since they got the money anyway, and the government would be unlikely to admit that they made a ‘bad purchase’)
It honestly did seem pretty rushed. I just took it at face value, cause honestly the writing of the finale was kinda sloppy, also around V in general. I guess we’ll see, but even with Vought proven to be pretty untouchable, killing a bunch of cops and troops with unstable V would be an extremely bad PR move in the US of all places.
“The last time the Boys actually did anything against a supe was in
season one: Butcher was able to hold his own against Translucent with
Hughie’s help, and their eventual killing of Translucent required some
ingenious thinking into how to penetrate his skin”Which was stupid anyhow because you can still drown a guy with impenetrable skin.
You didn’t want the scene of Translucent getting exploded with a bomb up his ass?
If that was actually the only way to kill him, sure, but I’d just spent a bunch of time asking the screen why they don’t just drown his ass so it was more like ‘Finally, maybe it won’t be so stupid going forward!’Thankfully it got a lot less stupid.
At least they said on screen that someone tried drowning but it didn’t work. Whether that suspends your disbelief is up to you.You want really stupid, go to Luke Cage. A character literally brings of drowning and poisoning but nobody ever tries them.
If they said that I missed it. Still there are plenty of things you can do: Don’t give him water for a week, hang him upside down for a few days, etc…
They were also up against a clock, since it was clear Homelander had a good bead on them.
I seem to recall at one point a mook tried to suffocate Luke with a plastic bag over his head. But since Luke’s hands were free you can probably predict how well that went over.
Really enjoyed how Jessica almost killed him by shooting him point blank in the head with a shotgun. Invulnerable skin doesn’t save your brains from getting scrambled by the blast impact bouncing your brain around inside your skull.
Pretty sure Wolverine’s died that way a few times. Or least his kids.
Yeah Wolverine did that to Daken once. Lasted about as long as the next Marvel reboot hahaha.
I was going to say.. I’m pretty sure any supe would be vulnerable to… say… a room full of nitrogen.
I can think of a good half dozen ways to kill a guy who only has invisibility and invulnerable skin just off the top of my head.
Or chlorine.
Of force feed him poison
Or I assume poison him.
Serious. I assume he still needs, you know, food and drink. This whole thing will sort itself out if you just wait a few days (I forget if there was a time limit or not).
Homelander was coming.
I understand what your saying but how do you drown a guy in a non-airtight room? They had to keep him there because of the Faraday cage Hughie built to block the signal. The seven were actively looking for him. If you dump in the ocean they’ll find him and get there before he drowns…….? Should they have brought him to a vat room at a factory? Constructed the cage there? He showed up at hughie’s store and they fought. It’s not like they had a planned abduction or anything. How do you force feed an invisible person poison? Where is their mouth? They can see you and you can’t see them. I mean, he could just bite their fingers off at the very least. For this plan to work you would have to have poison at the ready after the unexpected fight when they zapped him unconscious. Yes you could starve him and deprive him of H2O, but how long will that take for him to die? A normal person could survive almost a week with neither of those things, how long does a supe last? How much food and water do they ACTUALLY need to survive? All I’m saying is, for all the numerous ways you can think off how to kill him, I can probably think of just as many reason why it’s not practical to do any of those things.
There are plenty of ways to remove oxygen from a non airtight room.
Maybe. But is that REALLY more practical and faster then just shoving a bomb up his ass?? No. No it’s not.
It is almost like they’d never seen “Marvel’s Luke Cage” and tried some of Bushmaster’s methods haha. yeah I’m surprised more people don’t try and drown Luke Cage. or Wolverine for that matter. Adamatium skeleton and swimming don’t mix, and a healing factor replenishing brain cells? Iffy at best. but I can only think of Wolverine and Luke getting drowning attempts used against them maybe once apiece?
I want to see them kill more superheroes.
I saw a shot of Hughie next to shelves with jugs of stuff and though he was going to gas him by mixing ammonia and bleach together or something like that.I’m also annoyed that they didn’t spray paint him at some point just to make sure they could see what he was doing all the time.
In the comics taking V give powers for a short time, they don’t become supes forever. The show is making it sound like taking V is permanent and gives you powers that do not go away. Which is why I don’t think the Boys will ever take it.
Billy Butcher is deviously charming, No.Frenchie is adorably cavalier, No.Mother’s Milk is appreciably stalwart, Maybe.Kimiko is delightfully laconic, No.and Hughie is sympathetically idealistic.Nope. it needs the Boys to inject Compound VNo.I actually appreciate that the series didn’t go (yet) the route of everybody becoming superhero, and the question becoming which superhero will punch the other superhero harder. It stayed asymetrical so far. It stayed David vs Goliath. It stayed everyday normal person in front of the crushing power of whatever superheroes symbolize there (political economic mediatic, whatever). Superheroes, supermen, superjesuses aren’t interesting. What’s interesting is Odysseus flipping his finger at Poseidon, and reaching home even if it takes 10 years.Or failing.
I actually appreciate that the series didn’t go (yet) the route of everybody becoming superhero, and the question becoming which superhero will punch the other superhero harder. It stayed asymetrical so far. It stayed David vs Goliath. It stayed everyday normal person in front of the crushing power of whatever superheroes symbolize there (political economic mediatic, whatever). You don’t feel it’s gotten to be a bit much with the luck they’ve been having in their wins? Even without V, none of their wins feel earned to me, it’s been circumstantial, there’s always a mcguffin, there’s always someone with actual powers to save the day. The Boys seem wildly incompetent, and basically useless. I feel the becoming what you hate angle is just as interesting, and wasn’t explored enough in the comic, and when The Boys do get V, could be explored better on the show. Wee Hughie never really bothered to get on Butcher about everyone being infected with V in the comic, Butcher just called it a necessary evil, that was comic Butcher and Hughie, things could be far more interesting now on the show.
In the comic V usage was fairly widespread, it was how the prostitutes survived having sex with the supes and was a street drug diluted with meth.
I don’t think it’s very original or interesting. “Become the monster you fight” is an even more common trope than David-and-Goliath (in series, movies, videogames, etc). And it’s easier to implement.https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/04/11/he-who-fights-with-nerdsAnd I don’t like the message. Like only power defeats power. It’s like a struggle between aristocrats. If you want to defeat a media mogul, don’t bother unless you become a media mogul. If you want to defeat a big corporation, you need a big corporation. Etc.I prefer the asymetrical fights of, say, the lone private versus the big politician, the Van Helsing versus the supernatural monster, the teen detective versus the Death Note owner, the tired soldier versus the space hunter. It requires to imagine unexpected paths to fight the baddie outside his territory. And the life message is a bit more stimulating.Not that this show does it very well, I agree. But this show isn’t such a good show anyway.
To be fair that teen detective had the support of entire nations behind him and was also a genius.
Much better take than Hadadi’s: Narrative balance comes from equity between heroes and villains, and by the ability each has to strike against the other; stories need that equilibrium to help us decide who we’re going to root for or against. As you point out, fighting against overwhelming odds is far more compelling.
The thing about that quote is that narrative equity doesn’t have to be physical. Batman can beat The Joker in a fist fight. That’s not what makes them equals. I think The Boys has done a fairly decent job of countering The Seven’s power with their sabotages and blackmails. The don’t win often but it’s just enough to keep the superheroes in check.
But the source material (for all it’s faults) never resorted to a superhero punch fight. The boys got Captain America-esque powers where they became strong and resilient. They didn’t fly or shoot lazers or have freeze breath. Just plain old boring strong. Not nearly enough to go toe to toe with supes WITHOUT a whole bunch of blackmail and fuckery and shenanigans attached. They still needed to brainstorm and plan and then EXECUTE exactly as they planned for anything they did to work. At last with the seven. The smaller, minor groups were just not good at being supes. they were always easily dispatched by the boys because most of tem were just young junkie idiots. V allowed them to survive their encounters with the 7seven, not make them equal combatants.
I agree, a bunch of the success of the Boys is attributed not to brute power or anything but to the 5 P’s that Mallory and then Butcher employed, Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. Basically their training and spy game gave them the edge in the war and knowing how to actually fight like special forces units was a huge advantage against supes who were too reliant upon powers and never learned anything else.
In the comic all the Boys have the V from the jump, but they are still an intelligence gathering, blackmailing operation. The V let’s them stand a chance if it comes to a fight, but due to various factors including Vought’s power and the many, MANY supes in the comics mean punching is not usually a viable solution.
The problem is we keep getting deus ex maeve situations over and over again. That can work with a more cleverly written mini series or movie that is inherently shorter and you only pull that kind of stunt once or twice throughout the whole run. Doing it over and over again because logically your heroes can’t possibly stand up to the villains just turns it into lazy contrived writing. This show is popular and will likely continue as long as amazon is making money off it. The idea that the boys will never get any super powers of their own means we’ll just keep getting poorly written bullshit reasons why they survive all these encounters with super powered individuals over and over again. Is it predictable to have them take V as an ends justify the means? Sure but it would be more fun and more interesting then watching homelander get blackmailed or bribed into not murdering everyone immediately over and over again for 5+ seasons.
I don’t know where they’re going with this. When I heard it was being made I didn’t think it was filmable. The changes they made to make it work are inspired. I don’t think may of the comic readers are going to go so purist that they’ll implode since they haven’t already with the changes. Light touch and common sense has worked in the show’s favor. I do think they’ll end up taking V at some point, but with that kid still in play I don’t know where it goes that isn’t super dark in the not funny way. I think they’ve done a great job so far and there’s no one path that must be followed.
They have been sort of sticking to the comic more than people realize with some plot points, just with major revisions in order to make it more relevant and palatable to today’s audience and less disgusting. The route they seem to be taking with Homelander, Mallory, and possibly Neumann if the guesses and speculation that she is a really Vought plant turns out to be true, it’ll really be closer to the comics more than ever. I don’t think this is a bad thing. The latter end of the comic is a lot better than the first half.
The first half was just mostly over the top gross sex and violence, a parody of how real super heroes would be in many a minds at the time (Ennis, Ellis, building off Moore), mostly. It produced some of the best stuff of all time, deconstruction wise, mid Wildstorm universe, such as Planetary and the Authority. I also don’t see amazon letting beastilaity/rape fly… The other issue is time. Malory in the comics was a WWII vet, old and retired. All those experiences were plot points. 20 years later, no way they’re still working. They had to re-order so much. Sure they’re following some of the plots but they’ve shown they’ll merge or change as needed and that’s not a bad thing as long as the theme remains.
If your doing a TV series adaptation you need to soften the characters quite a bit otherwise people won’t watch. Just look at “Trainspotting”. In the book all the characters were horrible people but in the movie they gave them a bit of a spit-shine. The Boys need that spit-shine for the show to work. Maybe in the final season so the V route but not now.
How is it a bad thing that they’ve used 2 (GREAT) seasons to lead up to where the comics begin? That means we should now be able to expect a potential for 5 seasons! This is GOOD. I would also be fine if Kripke goes WITHOUT the Boys on compound V. They’ve already set up that they are finally going to have PAYING JOBS working for Mallory, so they will be well equipped and have some infrastructure from which to fight. But I would be fine if they take some V also.
Frenchie’s flashback spoke to that as well. Mallory wanted him because, without significant backing or resources, he had already designed weapons that could hurt or kill supes. Homelander is so far out of their league. But the average supe?
Oh, that makes sense, and gives me a better understanding/appreciation for the flashback. Thanks!
I think I like them better without the V. It’s more interesting if they have to win by being smarter, crazier, or more daring than their opponents. It forces the writers to be more creative. One of the most memorable sequences from the season is the Boys smashing their speedboat through the Deep’s whale. If they can win by punching, how are they different than any other superhero show?
Yes, this! I like them having to think laterally. A lot of the comics involved them doing spywork but in the fights their training overwhelmed the supes who had just relied upon powers and had no idea how to really take people down, special forces style. So the show just cranks that up to another degree where a bunch of highly motivated and trained individuals working as a team can take out self absorbed assholes with powers. For the most part. Cause as the last episode shows, top tier Supes like Homelander and Stormfront can be manipulated but when it comes to a head on collision you need someone with V, like Maeve/Annie/Kimmiko, or you’re screwed. Especially if you yell out things such as “The rocket launcher is our only chance!” and then it immediately gets shocked… Frenchie!
Preacher did the same thing. Didn’t work too well that time.
Oh, did it also prequel comic material? Everyone says I should have watched it, and still don’t know why I did / have not.
The first season is literally the first page of issue 1–the WHOLE season. Season 2 literally adapts the following pages. To be fair, S1 does take on another series of issues.
I liked Preacher season 1 a lot and supposedly it took place before the comics began (which I didn’t read, so I had no attachment to the property going in) then as soon as they started adapting the material I was done. I hope history doesn’t repeat itself here as I loved The Boys Season 1, wasn’t completely on board with this one but still like it and have hope for the future. But I didn’t read these comics either except an excerpt here and there and from what I’ve seen I vastly prefer the show.
I’m sort of with you on Preacher. I wasn’t a fan of the comics, but I liked the their take of Season 2 and 3. I watched one episode of 4 and haven’t gone back.
The show executes the concept far better but the direction they’re moving in would actually mirror the better part of the comics that hasn’t been followed so far. And for what it’s worth I don’t see how they could follow the precise story lines. I think they would just take the idea of the Boys being a bit more of a formidable agency that the Seven can’t afford to touch.
I thought the best part of the comics that wasn’t being used was how the Boys were there to keep the supes in line, and would have self-sustaining story arcs only sort of connected to the Seven. It would give them more flexibility and be a bit more fun. They’ve already established all the other supes have their own branding and exploits so there’s plenty to go after.
I think giving them powers takes the air out of the premise. By the same token, it’s clear they’ve exhausted the current repertoire of tactics The Boys can use against the Supes (blackmail, hiding, running, and more blackmail), so they ended S2 by having them link up with Mallory. So we’ll see!
counterpoint, the most disappointing part of the season 2 finale was how it largely resolved itself with a bog-standard “good supers beat up the bad supers” climax, and the most interesting part of the whole premise was how outgunned these ordinary folks are against the supes.honestly, i feel like the show is going to be a case of diminishing returns either way, but i can’t think of a way to lose my interest more quickly than giving the good guys superpowers
Beat but don’t kill the villain. Even with overwhelming odds in their favor the 100 year old Nazi just flys off into the sunset.
Ennis’ reliance on rape, homophobic language, and overly sexualized female characters (CIA director Susan Rayner is introduced in a scene of hate-filled sex with Butcher; Annie’s group-rape initiation into the Seven is revolting) has been decried by detractors as the tactics of a schlocky edgelord. The craziest rape thing in the comics was when Hughie was anally raped by Black Noir.Leaving aside any discussion of whether this is “problematic”, what was insane about that plot point was that it was, well, pointless. It didn’t serve as a clue, it didn’t serve to develop Hughie’s character at all. In fact, the aftermath of that plot point, and again, this is the main character being anally raped, was so anticlimactic that I was sure that there was going to be a big reveal that Hughie wasn’t raped after all, and the encounter with Black Noir involved something else entirely.So I’m 100% down with the people adapting his comics playing fast and loose with the source material. His comics have their moments, but there’s a lot there that desperately needs revising.
As a side note: The show did sorta allude to the group rape. Unless I’m completely misremembering, one of Lamplighter’s The Seven porn parodies he was listing off to Hughie was a gangbang scene involving “Starlight.”
No.Just no.They don’t NEED to use Compound V. Don’t give them powers they don’t need – I don’t care about comic accuracy in a television show, I’m more interested in the dynamics of protagonist vs. antagonist (“good guy” vs “bad guy” is quite hard to suss out based on behavior so far). I don’t WANT them on even ground, who wants them on even ground?The supes rely on power and force – the Boys rely on creativity, planning, improvisation. Did they need to put a bomb in Translucent’s ass? No. Of course not. But there needed to be a pivotal moment where Hughie just goes all-in, and detonating the bomb is that moment.Can we only take so many times where Hughie, Butcher or Frenchie take a serious hit? Yeah, they’re going to have to find ways out of one of them taking a deathblow. Their no longer being wanted fugitives helps.They’ve established, very clearly and repeatedly: Butcher won’t trust supes. Annie took two big hits–and still looked past them–and her clear bi-directional feelings for Hughie didn’t matter. The ONLY way I can see it working is if it was forced on him, Frenchie and Hughie. They’re all gonna die and they have access to V, and it’s the only way out. Actively choosing to do it? I just don’t see it.
who wants them on even ground? I do? And it’s not exactly even ground, they aren’t anywhere near as powerful as The Seven, they’re not even as powerful as the number two or three teams in the comic, it just makes things a bit more even. At this point their wins and escapes are coming off as disingenuous, especially in season 2, there were far too many last minute, lucky, mcguffin style saves for my liking.And Butcher absolutely isn’t okay with The Boys being on V in the comic, he called it a necessary evil to fight them directly if necessary, it wasn’t a crutch, it didn’t diminish the investigative work they did, or the black mails they pulled, it was just an extra tool in their arsenal. Also The Boys really aren’t “good guys”, they’re really bad too, they kill, steal, black mail, and destroy, the V really doesn’t change the dynamic at all. And without spoiling things, there’s absolutely fallout to them being on V in the comic, which is something that could play out far more interesting on the show.
I disagree with your interpretation of the comics.By the time Hughie joins in the comics, The Boys are a match for at least 5 of the Seven. Homelander should be physically out of their reach, but its debatable that Butcher truly believes that. And even then – they’d lose their battle but Butcher would win his war.They are more competent and prepared than every other supetroop out there. To me, the comics lacked tension accordingly. Plot Armor clearly surrounded them and I never even questioned if they’d win, just how Hughie would get humiliated during the win. And to a degree*, I felt a lot of the problematic titillation (Herogasm doesn’t even make sense! ****** doing ***** to Hughie doesn’t even make insane sense!) was necessary to offset that lack of tension or they’d have been boring af. At least that tension has to exist now in the show.(Yes, to a degree. Ennis does as Ennis does, I know it wasn’t not going to happen.)
The Boys really aren’t “good guys”, they’re really bad too, they kill,
steal, black mail, and destroy, the V really doesn’t change the dynamic
at all
Well there ya go. If Compound V doesn’t change the dynamic, then giving it to the Boys is a wash. Besides making the fights more even, what character purpose does it serve? It would only make them less relatable. I’d argue the underdog factor is the greatest advantage the show has over the comic right now.
I don’t think it serves a character purpose and doesn’t have to, it’s an extra weapon in their arsenal that is sorely missing. Having it will cut out the lucky saves and mcguffin style, last minute someone else saving their ass moments. To me, it seems really stupid always having a supe save them, the answer, they need a bit of juice themselves.
They were never really on even ground even in the comics. They were just a little stronger and tougher than average. But they were never “trade punches with Homelander” superpowered. It mostly seemed like a way for them to occasionally get super-punched or laser blasted and not die, which is partly why I’m not sure they need it.
It’s a genre gimmie that the protagonists don’t get concussions or skull fractures the way a normal person would, but you still wouldn’t quite be making them strong enough to go toe-to-toe with their opponents.
I do recall in the comics one of the Vought people running a simulation where it pits the Seven against the Boys and it had the Boys losing a close one but taking out most of the Seven. Of course, that was like a pitched fight simulation and didn’t take into account the various alternative methods the Boys employed to keep the Seven in check or even “take pieces off the board” and their spygame. The sim was more of the Boys all being on V and mostly having military training (Butcher and MM) or being wild and unstoppable (Frenchie and the Female) vs. The Seven having powers but being complacent and not having any training or know-how.
Fully agreed, the lack of Compound V in The Boys themselves has made for some awful writing, and some real dumb, lucky moments. The lack of V has made, as pointed out in the article, a lot of lucky moments, too many, The Boys seem wildly incompetent. Even without V their plans usually fail, they have no real way of fighting anyone on a level playing field, it’s been really meh, it made season 2 pretty awful in some areas with its convenient saves. I was fine in season 1, the show clearly wanted to keep that man v god aspect going, but it just isn’t working anymore, and it won’t work going forward. Also agreed on the lack of ramping up to The Seven, that has been pretty awful as well. Making The Seven the focus, and The Boys only real goal, has been pretty dumb, in no scenario could they ever have any success fighting these people. Relying on black mail and luck was fine in season 1 as mentioned, but it’s just silly now. The Boys worked their way through the ranks so to speak in the comic, there was build up, they knew damn well they couldn’t go directly after the big guys, even with black mail and Compound V, the show has gotten egregious in their dancing around making real progress through luck and circumstance. Also, I find the lack of The Legend disturbing, he was a fantastic bit of parody and narcissism in the comic, and I feel the show runners could have adapted him into something hilarious. I feel the show has been adapting characters from the comic really well over all. Vic the Veep isn’t a useless moron with the IQ of a used condom, MM doesn’t have an embarrassingly stupid backstory with his mom and his “birth” powers, Stillwell was fun and a nice twist from the comic, and now Edgar is just comic Stilwell merged with comic Edgar.The show has adapted and changed many things from the comic for the better, but it’s ignoring some things that have made for bad writing and lucky saves too often, overall, point blank, I feel The Boys getting juiced on V could drop a lot of that bad writing. I am fully confident season 3 will end with Butcher telling The Boys it’s time to “level the playing field”, and he’ll hand each one of them their respective 17 billion dollar shot of V to make things more even.
That’s a lot of writing just to say you want the Boys to have powers.
Maybe there’s some nuance to the article that I’m missing, since I never read the comics, but this argument does not make any sense to me. If The Boys are the good guys, because they’re trying to fight the Supes, whose Compound-V enhanced powers are what makes them the bad guys, how do The Boys remain the good guys if they take Compound V to give themselves powers? Wouldn’t that ultimately lead to their own corruption?
That The Boys tend to screw up in the efforts to fight the Supes, and fail to learn from that, and sometimes just get lucky, is honestly one of the more actually human things about this show. Otherwise, if The Boys take the V, the whole premise of the show is that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, which is not true in any world, and would also be just incredibly boring to watch.
One word: HEROGASM
That should’ve been one issue, not an entire mini-series. God, Ennis’ worst impulses…
The Boys series needs to take a page out of its source material, and Butcher et al. need to inject Compound V in the recently ordered season three.NOPE.The series has done a fantastic job of avoiding the worst parts of the book, improving bits that needed improving, and just forging a far better and more interesting path.So let’s NOT go down the predictable route of “our heroes develop cgi superpowers to have generic cgi superfights as the solution to every problem”. Let’s give the writers the room to make more interesting choices. Both for themselves and for the characters. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Having every problem solved by the application of handwavey superpowers (looking at you AoS) is the father of disappointment.
They aren’t really big cgi superpowers in the book, they take a low dose of V that’s used in some military applications that basically gives them a sub-Captain America level of strength and endurance. It mainly serves to make it less ridiculous that they could get out of some of the encounters without serious injury, though that still happens, and for them to be able to hold their own in direct confrontations with lower level supes. A problem with the show is they’ve made seemingly most supes bulletproof and super strong, in the book plenty of supes, even certain members of the seven, could be dispatched by being shot with conventional weapons. The power imbalance is much greater in the show just from that alone.
So what is AoS? I don’t get that reference.
“… our idea of heroism has been shaped by decades of complicit comic books and pro-military propaganda that encourages romanticized, worshipful awe of crushing power.” Which is why I appreciate that they haven’t had the boys take V yet. There’s too much temptation for it just to become boring punch outs. Having them use other tools: persuasion, blackmail, anal explosives, serves to underline how underpowered doesn’t mean helpless. I always like it when heroes use other means than raw power (not that i don’t enjoy a good fight scene). That said, I wish they would show more of Frenchie figuring out weaknesses (there was a little of that in the finale), and I’m not against them dabbling in V, especially if they have to grapple with the consequences.
The only problem with the idea of Butcher et al. taking Compound V is that it takes the “regular people vs. superheroes” angle and just turns it into another super-fight, which we’ve seen all over media before (and which the show has explicitly mocked in its jabs at the MCU/DCEU). Plus I think it’s kind of crucial that the characters be powerless to keep up the show’s portrayal of how low-key terrifying a world of superheroes would be. I’m not opposed to the good guys having super-help, I like them having Kimiko and Starlight around for example, but I think it’s crucial that the team stay mostly power-free. The only one (were I in the writer’s seat) that I’d give V to would be Butcher both because it would allow him to wrestle with how/if he can let himself become what he hates and because then it would actually give a reason for how he manages to keep breaking in/sneaking in to high security areas besides dramatic necessity.
I think the Boys do need to be more proactive though, I just hope it’s more through the use of stuff like Hughie’s clever ideas or Frenchie’s inventions.
yeah, the running gag that Frenchie’s stuff “should” work… we know it has. So let’s see him come up with a bomb or contraption that knocks a supe the FUCK out. Or dead out. Either/or.
Conceived by Ennis as a response to the George W. Bush presidency and the War On Terror, The Boys graphic novels are most persistently a critique of the slippery merging of America’s military and corporate interest Well maybe it’s partly conceived by that but I’m sure that plenty of it is conceived by the barely-concealed contempt Ennis has for superheroes in general that you can see in much of his work for Big 2 comics
Lamplighter sacrifices himself to free Annie from Vought Tower
No he doesn’t, that was completely accidental. When the fire alarm went off a light that Annie could siphon power from came on in her cell. I seriously doubt Lamplighter expected that to happen.
That is a really good point – Annie used the opportunity created by Lamplighter’s suicide to free herself. And I think it also rebuts the central premise of the article – Compound V may rob the Supes of their humanity, but they are *still* human, they will make mistakes, and those mistakes can be used to bring them down. They Boys are lucky not in the sense that they’re succeeding by accident or despite themselves, but in the sense that they are prepared to take advantage of any opportunity.
I like your take on that.
I agree with your thesis that the Boys need to actually take down/kill some supes and prove themselves effective.I also agree they need to interact with more than just the 7.I disagree they need to start injecting V in order to do so.
The show has, for me, improved immeasurably on the source material in every way. I anticipate and hope they will continue to do so and find a more interesting scenario than just injecting V. Or, if they go that route, do it in a more interesting way than simply “we’re high and strong fuckers!”
They have to, right?There are only so many times you can let characters get out of situations where they should die by blackmailing someone. Opinions may differ, but I think that limit has been reached
The entire tension and excitement of the show revolves around The Boys vulnerability. Even the most lowest reviewed episodes from this site, have an atmosphere of impending doom because they can’t rely on super powers to get them out of a pinch. Their wits and smart thinking have been the instruments of their salvation.
The reason the show works better than the comics is because the writers find that the best weapon against the supes and Vought, is human ingenuity.
“…the frequency with which the Boys are rendered inept might make you wonder what threat they really pose.”absolutely NONEHomelander is an idiot and is his own worst enemy on the show and in the comicin a World with an Earth -1 Superman or a Miracleman or a Hulk?or even a Batman? imagine what a Batman would do to The Boysthey aren’t a threat to superheroes, that’s the HOOK
I understand this comic is off the wall and supposed to offend, but the one things that NEVER sat right with me was why Jack from Jupiter LOOKED LIKE A DAMN ALIEN?? Nobody else in this universe looks like that or even notices (i.e. supes) that he does and he gets laid all the time looking that way!! Was it THAT important to get the martian manhunter in there?
What do you lose when you transform yourself into a version of your enemy?
Injecting the Boys with Compound V so they can also be invulnerable supes reminds me of the problem that came up in Curse of the Black Pearl, where if they are both undead, would they just keep fighting forever?
I get what the article is saying (and I am all for honoring the source material), but our protagonists’ vulnerability has been The Boys’ biggest strength, imo. Repetitive? Sure. Lots of shows fall into patterns if we really look for them, and in this case, all that incompetence and failure? I enjoy it. I feel like that’s what the show is, and when they finally get a win, it makes the highs higher.
Season 2 did some weird story stuff I wasn’t entirely down with, and I would certainly like to see more creativity from the boys’ attacks besides using guns (like they don’t know supes are bullet proof). But I don’t want powers. They said ‘every supe has a weakness’ and I like the gang puzzling out what those may be. Forces the writers to think outside the box. It leads to “Eureka!” moments like Black Noir’s hilarious peanut allergy.
And I think that speaks to the other side of what’s been clever about how they’ve handled the power imbalance- They’ve found ways to make The Seven more interesting (even sympathetic) by exploring the ways in which these God-like beings are weak. Past their egos, apathy and entitlement, we find insecurity, shame, and even people they care about. Things we have in common. For all the talk about superhero media as the new modern mythology, The Boys is the show using actual mythology themes.
And that’s not even getting into the politics, corporate commentary, and other themes that wouldn’t work once the everymen become the same as what they are fighting. I would love to see more super-powered teams, and I think the idea of taking V should at least be considered (for maybe an episode), but the trajectory of the show seems different, and that feels like the type of move to make once we’re ready for the endgame.
Season 2 was terrible.
Interesting suggestion. Having read a lot of the comic, I was surprised by this pretty major departure early on. But since the comic is pretty fucking awful, I was happy to see the show forge its own identity.But after a couple of seasons of increasing wheel-spinning, as the Boys basically do zero except hide out in their apartment, so utterly overwhelmed by their enemies in every conceivable way, this might not be a bad idea.There were a few too many “near misses” this season where the heroes’ escape from superpowered characters strained credulity.
Basically any scene where Homelander and Butcher are in the same place no longer makes any sense. And, yeah, there were too many of those, too.
This. It was insane to me that they weren’t on the modified Compound V from the beginning or that MM did not have his powers (or a decent explanation why he was called Mother’s Milk in the absence of such powers.
It wouldn’t break my heart if there was no 3rd season.