The Boys

But even a subdued Homelander (Starr) is still dangerous. The answer to taking him down may lie with the original Supe, Soldier Boy (Ackles).

Indeed, Homelander’s unpredictable nature has always been The Boys’ trump card in relation to other contemporary superhero content. Queen Maeve ( Dominique McElligott) is a bit shortchanged by the material in early episodes, but other subplots are heartfelt. But any concerns that The Boys’ capacity to shock has dimmed in the context of its new counterparts are emphatically blown out of the water within the first ten minutes, thanks to an Ant-Man riff so completely outrageous that it really has to be seen to be believed.

As long as we must live in Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Amazon Prime Video's The Boys offers an oasis for everyone who wishes we didn't.

The situation is especially complicated for Annie, whose role in the Vought fight requires her to remain in the company as a double agent at ever-increasing cost to her own well-being. Other than, you know, everything that’s bad about contemporary life — politics, capitalism, patriarchy — The Boys’ most obvious satirical target is Disney, which owns the two biggest sci-fi genre brands in pop culture, Star Wars and Marvel. The show’s June 3 season three premiere is hammocked between the Disney Plus premieres of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ms. Marvel. Yet while there is an argument to be made that Disney is a malignant force in the world, or at least not a benign one, Amazon is probably worse — and as savage as cultural critiques can be in The Boys, the show’s creative forces leave their evil corporate overlords alone. It’s already been widely reported that this season includes a trip to the 70th annual superhero orgy known as Herogasm, but “graphic” is an insufficient term to describe what makes it on screen. Hughie, who closed Season 2 saying he wanted to attack Vought “the right way,” has gone to work for the Federal Bureau Of Superhero Affairs — not knowing that its director, former Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), is a supe who ascended to her current position in part by strategically exploding her opponents’ heads. So as we rejoin the story for season three of The Boys, which begins one year after we left off, Vought’s crisis managers have supplied Homelander with talking points; the company has also rewritten the narrative of the Rise Of The Seven movie to make Homelander look less complicit. Like The Avengers and Stark Industries, The Seven are closely tied to a corporation.

We live in a world over-saturated by superhero movies with obsessive fans clamoring for the next predictable energy battle finale and loudly campaigning for ...

Starr continues to give the most unsettling performance as Homelander—descending fully into a madness that we haven’t seen before, which is saying something because Homelander has been a narcissistic psychopath since day one, but Season 3 takes him to entirely new levels. By the end of the season, Soldier Boy’s introduction begins to feel a lot more like this is The Boys’ Captain America: Civil War, right down to a secret about parents that tears the Seven apart. While character development is a very important discussion, this review would be remiss not to dive headfirst into a character that fans have been anxiously awaiting the introduction of: Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). Riffing on the ever-popular trope of a superhero being taken by enemy forces, brainwashed, and turned into a weapon, Soldier Boy is brought in Season 3 as Butcher’s last-ditch effort in destroying Homelander. While he’s not quite the same cartoonishly ridiculous character that was created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson in their comic book series by the same name, he is almost everything that fans were hoping for. While he has come close a number of times, and he has certainly put a dent in the population of supes, Season 3 brings him the closest to achieving his goals—but at a great cost. Since the start of the series, Butcher has been on a singular mission to get revenge against Homelander for what he did to Becca and, in the process, bring down Vought and put an end to superpowered individuals in general. We live in a world over-saturated by superhero movies with obsessive fans clamoring for the next predictable energy battle finale and loudly campaigning for studios to release some director’s cut of the last big team-up movie.

Add Vought (the evil hero management company) and a few loose cannons like Homelander into the mix and you've got the ultimate night in for all your superhero ...

Going to extraordinary lengths to chase the legend of the first superhero, Soldier Boy, seems like a reasonable place for The Boys to start. As the violent Homelander claws his way to the top, Butcher and The Boys have to find a way to stop him. Add Vought (the evil hero management company) and a few loose cannons like Homelander into the mix and you've got the ultimate night in for all your superhero fans, comic culture fiends, and explorers of the dark side.

The superhero satire goes from strength to strength. Between the actors, the writers or the viewers, it's hard to say who's having the most fun.

Anyone planning an invasion, for example, could buy enough doses from Vought to give their army overwhelming advantage, with nothing of the narcissism and corruption that – he now realises – habitually comes with making someone permanently special and worshipped by millions. The Vought corporation was in cahoots with the Church of the Collective (The Boys’ determinedly unsubtle poke at Scientology), while a lot – and I mean a lot – of popped heads somewhat derailed the congressional hearing into Vought’s possible misdeeds. In fact, in light of one particular set piece about 10 minutes into the first episode of the new, third series – which for sheer sideswiping audacity I do not think will ever be bettered – it is definitely worth acquiring the means to view it.

In the third episode of the third season of The Boys, "Barbary Coast," we open with a flashback to 17 years ago, when a young Annie was performing at ...

After she finishes, Grace tells Butcher that the weapon probably won’t work on Homelander. Butcher storms out, and when Ryan follows him, he tells him that he’s not going to see him again because it’s not safe. When she wakes up, Crimson Countess runs over to her and tells her that Soldier Boy was killed with some kind of weapon, and the Russians took his body. Alex finds Annie and lets her know that he was planning on bailing out of the contest, but he changed his mind. He asks Frenchie to set up a meeting with her; the Boys are going to Russia. Panicked, Starlight calls Hughie and tells him she wants to leave The Seven. But she can’t. They’re working on a plan to kill Homelander, and she needs to buy them time. Homelander arrives to talk to Starlight about her choices for the winners and surprises her with his grand idea: the return of The Deep! The Supe in question gives her a necklace with a large, gold dolphin on it as a peace offering. When an enemy attack closes in on the camp, the Supes are essentially the exact opposite of helpful. Kimiko plays a game of Connect Four with Ryan and the two commiserate over how they feel about their powers. After, Starlight proceeds to flip out on Homelander, threatening to release the footage from the plane incident. The Boys are finally all back together again, and M.M. is in full cleaning mode while Butcher pukes his guts up in the sink. She begs him to say no because there’s something terribly wrong with Homelander. When Hughie arrives, Butcher is more than pleased to rub the fact that he was unknowingly working with a Supe in his face.

OUT OF MY WAY: Gisborne Boys' High Puna Hihi runs in support of teammate Boston Morete as he makes a break through the defensive line of St Paul's ...

To see the side in their traditional black and red will please older supporters and aspiring players alike. Wyatt said: “Our goal is to give our extended squad game-time. And they are the better for it. The last month has been tough for St John’s. They lost 24-19 to Rathkeale College at Rathkeale on May 14, 48-20 to Feilding High School on May 21, and 34-10 to Wanganui Collegiate School last Saturday. Feilding High and Wanganui Collegiate beat St John’s at St John’s. Players have been drawn from the second 15, E Grade and F Grade as cover for an injury-hit but gutsy first 15, and now have the opportunity to play in front of an expectant Rectory crowd. So said Batman at the end of The Dark Knight. Such is the case for the 42 Gisborne Boys’ High School and St John’s College players whose game here on April 14 was postponed due to Covid-19 — and for whom playing at the Rectory is a dream.

The Boys season 3 review: Amazon Prime Video's crazy superhero satire is more violent, funnier, and darker than ever before. And it features some unexpected ...

But the real star of the show is Antony Starr as the all-powerful Homelander. He is a delight to watch and you cannot take your eyes off of him whenever he is on screen. In season 3 we see Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). The character is a parody of Marvel’s Captain America and is pretty much the antithesis of the first Avenger. Soldier Boy is racist, homophobic, sexist, and abusive. While many believe the USP of the show is the premise or the blood and gore, for me it has always been the performances. And then there is a surprising Rogers and Hammerstein-esque song-and-dance routine in the middle of all the bloodshed. Karl Urban is among the most underrated actors of our times. It’s relevant, it’s political, and it is well-intentioned. The third season follows The Boys attempting to find a fabled weapon to kill the mightiest superhero Homelander, as he descends further into madness and paranoia. The show shocks and surprises with both its violence, and numerous celeb cameos out of nowhere. The gorefest and sleaze is just the icing on the top, but it is rather interesting icing. In an interaction with prior to the release of the third season of The Boys, cast member had Claudia Doumit said, “I think that every season: ‘How are they going to top that?’ And they top that.” That pretty much sums up The Boys season 3, which begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on June 3. - The Boys season 3 review: Amazon Prime Video's crazy superhero satire is more violent, funnier, and darker than ever before. Part satire, part dark humour, and part sheer existential horror, The Boys is an irreverent take on the superhero genre.

The Boys premiere recap: Damn, we've missed this show! To say the first three episodes of season 3 are "shocking" is an understatement.

In the climax of the prior episode, he injected himself with V-24 in order to take on Gunpowder. But now… - As much as I love Hughie and Starlight together, the writers have done a great job of making me invested in the Supersonic/Starlight relationship. In classic Butcher fashion, he makes a bold move to push Ryan away for good — not by opening up about his feelings — by telling Ryan that he can't stand to look at the monster who killed his wife. But there's one person who might know: Payback's CIA handler — and Butcher's mentor — Grace Mallory. With that intel in hand, Butcher has a chance to let Gunpowder walk free, but with the combination of V-24 and blind rage flowing through his veins, he can't help himself — and he beats Gunpowder to death. Hughie, however, is unaware of this encroaching romantic threat, as he's busy with Butcher and the Boys — including Mother's Milk ( Laz Alonso) who's back in the ring after a few episodes of daddy-daughter time — pressing CIA agent Grace Mallory for insight into the cause of Soldier Boy's death. In the last episode, Queen Maeve gave him a valuable piece of intel that could help him eliminate Homelander once and for all — but that's not all she gave him. Back in the world of Vaught, there's a bunch of super-powered shenanigans going on. Instead, Gunpowder tries to murder Butcher in the parking lot after the convention, and nearly succeeds. After failing to arrest a superhero named Termite (in what's perhaps the most hilariously outlandish sequence thus far in all of The Boys, and that's saying something), Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) steps in with a potentially game-changing piece of intel: Regardless, Homelander's thrilled to celebrate his greatness and to do, as he puts it: "Whatever the hell I want." But in the world of The Boys, good things don't last. It's been a year and a half since the explosive finale of The Boys season 2, and they haven't missed a beat, kicking off season 3 with a premiere that's as shocking as it is…

"The Boys" serves notice immediately that its third season will be as ferociously gory and savagely satirical as the preceding two, racing through story at ...

Somehow, "The Boys" manages to test boundaries in a top-this way that can be insanely violent and bizarrely comical. keeps playing incessantly with a definite "It's a Small World" vibe. The heroes thus spend their spare hours strategizing with corporate PR, fretting about their popularity ratings and being apprised of how things play with "White men in the Rust Belt" among other demographics.

What does peacetime look like for The Boys? A recap of 'Payback,' episode 1 of the third season of 'The Boys' on Amazon Prime Video.

But perhaps the peacetime that both Vought and Neuman are so keen to maintain isn’t peacetime at all; it’s just stasis. For all his high-and-mightiness about the work he and Neuman have been doing — and, to be fair, they have contributed to a steep drop in “suit collateral” — the rich and famous still rarely face any repercussions. Of course, Butcher refuses to pass along Becca’s son Ryan’s location to Homelander; he’s bonded a lot with the kid over the year of Ryan’s isolated stay with Boys founder Grace Mallory. For all Butcher’s fears of becoming his father, he’s becoming a surprisingly good one himself. The two men agree to commit to their own favored brand of warfare: scorched earth, with only one left standing at the end. Neuman is complicit in sweeping the first death of the episode under the rug. “Think about what that would mean to millions of girls,” she tells Hughie, momentarily forgetting the real end goal here. It’s nice to see the big secret about Hughie’s new boss come out so early on, instead of after a few episodes of wheel-spinning. Creative violence is this show’s bread and butter, especially as it intersects with sex, so you can imagine the writer’s room laughing their asses off coming up with each beat of this scene. There’s no point in putting it off, so let’s dive in (no pun intended): at his boyfriend’s request, Termite shrinks down and squeezes through his urethra, stroking the inner walls of his dick as he meanders toward the prostate. Only two people die in the episode (a low body count in this show), and neither character was featured before this episode, anyway. It’s clear from the beginning of the episode that this ceasefire is temporary (if it even exists at all). In fact, much of “Payback” feels like the calm before the storm. What has happened in the last twelve months, and can an uneasy truce be sustained based on the threat of mutually assured destruction alone?

Spoiler Alert. Amazon Studios. [Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Boys Season 3 premiere, “Payback.”] Of course, of ...

A man shows up at Neuman’s office demanding to talk to “Nadia,” and while Hughie doesn’t think much of it at first, it’s a massive clue as to Neuman’s true identity. “I look forward to it,” Homelander says, and then he vanishes. If Butcher can find out what it was, he can use it to, as Maeve puts it, “blow his brains out.” She also hands him three vials of V-24, and leaves after telling him not to “f**k up” their one chance to kill Homelander. Stan pitches it to a presidential candidate as “V-24,” a temporary Compound V: It gives soldiers powers to complete a mission, and then it wears off after a day. When the premiere kicks off, shockingly, things are actually pretty OK for Hughie ( Jack Quaid). He has no clue his boss at the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs is a head-exploding supe, he and Annie, a.k.a. Starlight ( Erin Moriarty), have gone public, and he’s committed to taking down bad guys the right way. (If you require context, this involves a supe with shrinking powers who’s high as a kite, a sex thing, and an unfortunately timed sneeze.)

Amazon has premiered the first three episodes of The Boys season 3 today, and it plans to launch the rest of them weekly to extend the conversation about ...

You’ll see. You’ll see. Amazon Prime Video has had fewer hits than its high profile competitors, but they’ve landed a few knockout punches.

The Boys is back for eight more blood-soaked episodes in Season 3. Billy Butcher, Homelander, Hughie, and more are back for more fun.

The Boys Season 3, like Seasons 1 and 2, will be eight episodes in total. The cursing. It's the violence. Season 3 picks up right where Season 2 left off; Billy Butcher ( Karl Urban) and Hughie Campbell ( Jack Quaid) have both gone legit in their fight against the Supes, with Butcher's crew working under the CIA umbrella and Hughie working as the right hand to Victoria Neumann (Claudia Doumit)—who may or may not be the mysterious figure who can make people's heads explode whenever the hell she feels like it. It's been a while since the last blood-soaked, gut-filled season of Amazon Prime Video's superhero send-up The Boys, but man are we glad to have it back. Not good at all!

Fun! Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) work to get info about Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) from his old ...

“I’m the real hero.” And with that, the episode ends. With that, Butcher heads back to the convention to confront Gunpowder. The guy shoots him several times, and Butcher falls… The prolonged, heartfelt goodbye he says to his ex-wife does not inspire confidence that he’ll survive Season 3. “No God. The only man in the sky is me.” Caught between his laser eyes and the fall, she jumps. He’s left with a bullet in his leg and a cut on his cheek, but he gets away. He tries to threaten her, and then Stan Edgar, who’s been watching the dress rehearsal, cuts in and tells Homelander that since Starlight’s numbers are better, she “can call her own shots.” With that, Homelander storms away. He shares the info about Red River with her. “Oh, God,” the girl says. Ringing in his ears, Homelander rants at the girl and says she should, in fact, jump. With his annual televised birthday celebration approaching, “The Only Man in the Sky” turns the insane supe into a ticking time bomb of contempt, arrogance, and pent-up rage. (He wasn’t supposed to go there without Annie [ Erin Moriarty], but, oh well.) He lies to the nurse and says he and Starlight are thinking of adopting, and he’s able to copy information from one of their computers onto a flash drive. Fun! Meanwhile, Butcher ( Karl Urban), Kimiko ( Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie ( Tomer Capon) work to get info about Soldier Boy ( Jensen Ackles) from his old Payback teammates.

The Boys Season 3 premiere sets up the potential for an all-new, all-terrifying version of Homelander. Here's what it means for The Boys, Starlight, ...

What he might do next is a chilling thing to ponder, but, as in the real world, the scariest part is asking ourselves how the “good guys” will redirect a monster that has grown much, much bigger than any one person. Other options may include the many other unstable supes that exist in a secret government bunker, but perhaps most likely is the chance of a partnership with Soldier Boy, “the first superhero.” Referred to as “Homelander before there was Homelander,” it should be clear that his politics are dicey and he’s not exactly a team player, but his well-earned hostility toward Vought could entail him allying with The Boys. At this rate, it looks like they’re going to need all the help they can get. This is disturbingly reminiscent of his interactions with Queen Maeve in the first two seasons, and as with Maeve, he’s keeping Starlight off-balance in order to keep the upper hand. Homelander’s increasingly public revelations of his rotten core have only led to a surge in his ratings, putting the rest of The Seven and The Boys in similar positions attempting to navigate his ever-escalating bad behavior. Having already gone above and beyond to make an enemy of Queen Maeve, he’s moved on to attempting to break Starlight while continuing to bully the others. Nowhere is that more true than Homelander, whose anger at being “subdued” has encouraged bolder acts that go beyond cruelty and into outright fascism.

In Episode 3 of the new season of The Boys, a suped-up Billy Butcher gets the gang back together to desperately find a way to kill Homelander, leader of the ...

Now that Season 3 is out, we get to go a bit deeper into one of the first superhero groups in the history of The Boys. The loudmouth parody of Marvel's Captain America is the leader of Payback. And he has the strength to help America win World War II—and presumably has strength comparable to Homelander. His anti-aging ability preserves not only his skin, but also the sexist norms of the 1940s, when telling a female case officer for the CIA she needs to smile was acceptable to him. Until we see Orphan Black's Ryan Blakely do more than protrude his large forehead for a pose, we'll reserve judgment on how useful Mind-Storm is in The Boys universe. So far on this season of The Boys, she's only shot a few fireballs, but in the comics, she has Homelander-style heat vision lasers and can manipulate fire on a greater level than Season 2 standout Lamplighter. We may not have seen the last of what Crimson can do. In Episode 3 of the new season of The Boys, a suped-up Billy Butcher gets the gang back together to desperately find a way to kill Homelander, leader of the more popular Avengers spin-off The Seven, once and for all. Through her recollection of that catastrophic event, we find out about one of the first groups of superheroes Vought tried to shove into military action—Payback.

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke discusses how Jensen Ackles was cast as Soldier Boy for Season 3 — and how the Supernatural actor fought for the role.

He can be scary, he can be emotional, he can be a credible action star. So it hadn't occurred to me to think of Jensen because he plays as younger, but it wasn't until I was on the phone with him that I was like, 'Wait a minute, are you interested in this part? The hopelessly smarmy supe is played by Jensen Ackles, and the role reunites him with show creator Eric Kripke — the two worked together for a time on Supernatural when the series was first taking off on the now-CW — and let's just say that Soldier Boy is a pretty far cry from anything Dean Winchester ever was, even on his worst day.

The Boys season three returns with ample blood, NSFW moments, and all the weirdness you can handle. Here are the wildest moments this season.

Speaking of the Deep, Homelander hosts a dinner to celebrate his return. We get that he’s the man of the sea and all but ewww. He’s done a lot of disturbing things and this is one of the worst. “Homelander Makes Starlight Miserable” continues with Homelander using his “restored” image to bring the Deep back. Homelander’s birthday party goes awry when he declares that he’s not “like the rest of us.” And he will, in fact, not donate money to Starlight’s organization. The docuseries A-Train to Africa on VoughtSoul (a play on BET Soul) and a game about the slave trade. She refuses and he tells her to lighten the f*** up, but Stan interjects and says she doesn’t have to do it. And of course, this is when he discovers that his boss is the head popping supe. Frenchie and Miko are on a mission to learn more about Solider Boy and the Payback collective. It’s even harder to see her chop it up with her ex, who happens to be a contestant on a show to be a part of the Seven. He’s a handsome boy band kind of guy cracking his lady up with inside jokes. The Deep is a terrible person. He’s apparently not small all the time and is able to shrink himself down.

The Seven are some of the most powerful "supes" on The Boys. But who's the most powerful of them all? We rank them here.

As the wife of Frederick Vought, she became the first known superhero, and she is by far one of the most powerful. Just a few of the powers we see from Noir, but his main ability is his high martial arts prowess. The only other supe we see with this ability is Homelander, and he is clearly impressed by this as he falls for her. The ability to turn completely invisible is his trademark power, but it's arguably his carbon skin that makes him so formidable. One of the few on this list that is a consistent member of The Seven, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) is a great all-rounder. He is able to send a girl in the tunnel flying through the wall, and is also to send Starlight flying through the air, which is very impressive considering she's pretty strong herself. After spending years as a local hero, she is attracted by the glamour of The Seven, but quickly discovers the dark reality of being a member. Noir is definitely one of the most feared in the group and is highly reliable, but he has one unfortunate weakness that lets him down: Tree nuts. Her alliance to The Boys massively helps them in their pursuit of taking down The Seven, providing them with intelligence and working from the inside to bring them down. One of the earlier members of The Seven, Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore) was replaced by Starlight, with not much being known about him in the first season. One of the first heroes we meet, The Deep (Chace Crawford) finds himself sinking toward the bottom of the rankings. Kicking things off, we have Shockwave (Mishka Thébaud). Although he never really made it to The Seven, he was all set to join as the replacement to A-Train after the latter's forced retirement.

The Boys had maybe its most disgusting scene ever, featuring an Ant-Man-esque hero named Termite and an exploding penis.

This is Termite's first major inclusion in the show by Kripke and company, though he was previously seen in the secret Supe sex club that Butcher and Hughie walked through in the very first episode. "Then silicon viscera was created, from blood to intestines, to assorted organs, and packed into the dummy's hollow rib cage, so that when it flopped onto the bed, the blood and guts would spill out of it." He tells Termite he didn't see anything, but then Termite doesn't have any interest in word of this getting out—he shrinks down to bug size, and, in a lovely reference to the famous Ant-Man Endgame theory, tries to fly into Frenchie's behind to explode him. And then the romantic suitor tells Termite that he wants to take things to the next level. Luckily, Billy Butcher ( Karl Urban) is monitoring from afar, and comes in to save the day: throwing Termite into a bag of cocaine and shaking him up like a powdered sugar dispenser for a delicious Sunday waffle. So, after the premiere for a movie called Pocket Romance, we find Frenchie (Tomer Capone) monitoring the afterparty for its hard-partying, showboating star, Termite (Brett Geddes). Termite has the power to grow very small and (presumably) very large, and shows this off in front of his adoring party guests.

"The Boys," Amazon Prime Video's ultra-cynical superhero hit, sets its sights on American imperialism and toxic masculinity.

Season 2 gave us airborne sex and a Scientology-like org in the publicity-hungry Church of the Collective. In Season 3, with plain old humans getting in on the Supe action, the show takes a greater interest in the sad, sordid lives of the in-betweeners: superpowered D-listers who’d never be considered The Seven material. It’s theoretically interesting to give The Boys a taste of the Supe life, so they can experience for themselves how easy it is to give into one’s worst impulses when immune from consequences; under V24, the vengeance-obsessed Butcher splits an uncooperative witness’s head in two as smoothly as he would a melon. When The Boys’ leader, Butcher (Karl Urban), is offered smuggled vials of the stuff, his distrust of the Supes is no match for the enticement of finally being as powerful as his enemies. “You need 5 million people” who are extremely angry (but in the vulgar language the show is known for). Unsurprisingly, Season 2’s explorations of hate as a politically animating force made for blistering parody during the Trump years. A best-drama Emmy nominee for its outstanding second season, “The Boys” is something of a mutant itself. Instead, the Superman-like Homelander (Antony Starr) and the Wonder Woman-esque Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) appear in movies based on their exploits and smile toothily from the sides of buses and soda cups, offering scripted romances to increase their Q ratings and anodyne political messaging that works around, rather than addresses, the prejudices of the day.

New and crazy adventures await William Butcher (Karl Urban) and his team in their attempt to eliminate Vought's Supes. Plus, Billy seems more relentless than ...

Let us know in the comments section below. The task to portray the first live-action adaptation of Soldier Boy has been entrusted to Jensen Ackles. 44-year-old Ackles is coming off a fifteen-year run as Dean Winchester, the demon hunter in The CW’s Supernatural. His credits also include voicing Bruce Wayne in the Batman: The Long Halloween animation movies. In the comics, Soldier Boy was introduced in 2009’s Herogasm miniseries created by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, and Keith Burns. Soldier Boy’s role and powers mock pretty much the ones of Marvel’s Steve Rogers, including his shield as a melee weapon.

Prime Video's action-packed satire asks, "What do the good guys do when the bad guys just keep winning?"

What makes The Boys’ approach to this familiar territory stick—like a speedboat plunging straight into the innards of Lucy the Whale stick—is its unrelenting winks to the world in which we actually live. But generally speaking, The Boys remains one of the more in-touch satires in streaming, putting a fine point on a metaphoric dagger too many other shows wield like a blunt butter knife. So to get what they want, The Boys have to decide what parts of themselves they’re willing to lose. (If there’s an argument to be made for a The Boys movie, then it’s seeing those cruel, icy orbs on the big screen.) So, in a painful action-packed dramedy of errors that never lets up, The Boys season three takes aim at a daunting question: What do the good guys do when the bad guys just keep winning? Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), Frenchie (Tomer Kapon), and even Butcher (Karl Urban) try to do the same.

Amazon's adaptation of The Boys remains just as violent and over-the-top in season 3. New this season is Soldier Boy (played by Supernatural's Jensen ...

This straightforward throughline makes the season’s highs hit harder and its lows easier to ride out — particularly when The Boys is riffing on current events that, in our incredibly rapid news cycle, will feel stale by the time it airs. But in 2022, our disasters are more diffuse, and our leaders less prone to forcing the same arguments ad infinitum. After all, the series, which kicks off its third season with three episodes this Friday, isn’t best read as a takedown of superheroes — or as a violent satire on current events, even as the show lambasts celebrity culture, right-wing media, and yes, the Trump presidency.

Roxana Hadadi is a TV critic who also writes about film and pop culture, with the closed captions on and motion smoothing off. Photo: Amazon Prime. Dicks ...

The fight scenes continue to be well-blocked and well-staged, in particular a few in the season’s back half that are less about splashy choreography and more about brawny brutalism between their participants. Whatever can happen will happen, and whatever can go wrong will go wrong — but not wrong enough to leave a lasting impact in the world of The Boys. Sadism is still there: brain matter splooging out of a skull, the sticky smear of a body dragged along pavement, a supe punching through another person’s abdomen (a scene that happens twice with two different sets of characters). Fatherhood as a burden is still there: more memories of Butcher’s abusive father, and two more story lines with the same dynamics. But whatever wounds these men inflict upon each other are wiped away by The Boys’ unwillingness to genuinely change the structures in which its characters operate: Vought is still untouchable, the American government is still duplicitous, the criminal underworld is still full of Russians. There’s a rinse-and-repeat quality to both the heroes and the villains that means nothing much changes by the end of this season, as The Boys settles into the same cyclical narrative patterns as the cinematic universes it claims to be mocking. That American freedom is a myth and that the country’s gung ho ideology is built on propaganda and lies? Combine those decades of political awfulness with the concurrent superhero monoculture takeover of movies and TV, and certain patterns of stasis begin to emerge.

Showrunner Eric Kripke explains how that explosive scene from the Season 3 premiere has a surprising practical effect.

That tunnel inside is really the urethra inside that giant penis. What was supposed to be an act of pleasure turns into a bloody mess. The Boys has never been shy about its gratuitous violence or sexual exploits ever since it first premiered on Prime Video back in 2019.

It's Homelander's party, and he can go Nazis if he wants to. A recap of “The Only Man in the Sky,” episode two of the third season of 'The Boys' on Amazon ...

Could he actually develop some empathy for the supes he’s always thought of as inherently wrong? But it’s hard to know how Kimiko could’ve avoided the public violence, especially since it’s a Countess fireball that makes the biggest mess. Poking and prodding him with the suggestion that Soldier Boy routinely molested him, Butcher winds up provoking a gunfight that he barely escapes. He gets the information he wants — whatever happened to Soldier Boy happened during a mission in Nicaragua, working under none other than Grace Mallory! (Oh, and Soldier Boy did slap him around a little, but it never went further than that.) He tries to resist Butcher’s invitation back — he can’t abandon his family again — but we know it’s only a matter of time. She knows that he does want to be with his family, but he can’t be at peace when he still has unfinished business. After getting shot by Gunpowder (more on that later) and watching Ryan’s emotional stop-motion animation of Becca’s voice-mail, he realizes Grace Mallory might be right, it might be time to get out of the game like Mother’s Milk did. Thankfully, the fight ends with an honest admission: Hughie thought things were finally going his way, but the Neuman revelation has shown him how blind he was to the truth. But the couple’s fake fight is organic enough to morph into a real one, tied to Hughie’s awareness of his relative physical weakness. While Annie is preoccupied with the birthday boy, Hughie is too impatient — and too insecure about his reliance on his superhero girlfriend — to wait for her to investigate Neuman further. But as soon as he hears the news, he pivots from bored obligation to actively encouraging the woman to go through with the suicide. He pays a visit to the Red River Institute, a group home for the super-abled owned by Vought, where it turns out Neuman (and her latest victim, Tony) grew up.