In “The Boys” recap, Butcher and Hughie stay on the hunt with Soldier Boy and Homelander deals with the fallout from Starlight’s shocking revelation…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
You didn’t really think bringing down Homelander and Vought was going to be as easy as Starlight making a shocking revelation to 193 million Instagram followers did you?
Last week’s episode of “The Boys,” which properly introduced the world to “Herogasm,” ended with Starlight going scorched Earth on her former team and the company that funded them when she told the world that Homelander is really a psychopath only concerned with his image and that’s pretty much the same with every so called superhero around the world.
Oh and at the end of the video, Starlight took back her real name as Annie January and told Vought to fuck right off.
Well, the new episode revealed that Annie’s plan to bring down Vought definitely caused them a lot of problems but the entire corporation didn’t exactly come tumbling down just yet. Still, Annie’s late night Instagram Live session put Homelander on the defensive, which somehow makes him even more dangerous despite the fact that he likely felt fear for the first time in his life after nearly falling to Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie.
Meanwhile, The Boys remain a fractured group with Mother’s Milk at odds with Butcher and Hughie after they continued to dose up with V24 to go after Homelander while Frenchie got into a bloody battle with his former boss, which also forced Kimiko to fight without her powers.
Now as we pick up this week, Butcher and Hughie are starting to learn that working with Soldier Boy is a little tougher than they first expected, Homelander does a whole lot of damage control and the end of the episode brings about another jaw dropping moment that will set up the season finale.
With that said, let’s recap the penultimate episode of “The Boys” season 3 titled “Here Comes a Candle To Light You To Bed”…
A Nation Betrayed
It’s time for damage control after Annie decided to reveal the truth behind Homelander and Vought International, which forces Ashley to go on the talk show circuit to calm down an angry nation. She goes on the offensive by calling Annie a jilted lover after Homelander “dumped” her and then Ashley ties her to Kimiko, who is allegedly a member of a supervillain group also responsible for human trafficking.
In other words, Ashley is painting Annie as the real threat while attempting to save Homelander’s fractured image and bruised ego.
Back in the city, Butcher, Hughie and Soldier Boy ended up staying with The Legend, who has opened up his home to the group as they remain out of sight after nearly killing Homelander at Herogasm.
Since that fight went awry, Soldier Boy has been keeping busy smoking copious amounts of weed while banging anything and everything that moves — most notably the Legend’s elderly housekeepers. While that’s keeping him busy, Butcher has been desperately trying to track down Mindstorm — the next member of Payback with a giant target on his back.
Unfortunately, Butcher has struggled to find him and Soldier Boy’s starting to get anxious but worse yet, he’s not going to go after Homelander again until he dispatches the rest of his former team.
Hughie also learns some hard truths about his new “friend” when Legend reveals that Soldier Boy was never quite the savior the press made him out to be. In fact, Soldier Boy never stormed the beaches at Normandy during World War II as he claims.
He showed up two weeks after America had already won just so he could get the photo op.
In addition to that debacle, Soldier Boy’s other claims to fame are much more notorious including rumors that he was at Daley Plaza the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. That’s almost more that Hughie can take but when Butcher returns, it’s time to finally speak to Soldier Boy about what comes next.
Of course, Soldier Boy is only concerned about getting some more lube for his all day sex sessions — he can’t go in raw after all — and he refuses to do anything else about Homelander until he gets through the rest of his former team. That’s when the Legend plays his part by revealing that Mindstorm — who has the ability to read and infect anybody’s mind — isn’t the paranoid fuck that Soldier Boy makes him out to be.
Instead, Legend tells the team that Mindstorm is actually bipolar and he’s even on medication.
That gives Hughie the idea to look at the other locations where Mindstorm owns properties and link them to any nearby pharmacies with prescriptions to lithium. Even Butcher is impressed by Hughie’s power of deduction that gives them a lead on how to track down Mindstorm.
As for Mother’s Milk, he’s still stewing over the events at Herogasm as Annie continues to livestream daily with no action being taken to stop Vought from doing whatever it is they’re doing.
A knock at the door brings Frenchie and Kimiko back into the fold after their near death experience battling Little Nina and her Russian goons. Kimiko is banged up and barely able to walk while Frenchie is stoned out of his mind because that appears to be the only way to stop the pain.
Annie attempts to help Kimiko get comfortable but injured or not, she’s got something more important on her mind. Despite feeling like her powers were turning her into a monster, Kimiko wants to get them back again and she asks Annie to somehow sneak into Vought and get her a dose of Compound-V.
It’s not quite the request that Annie was expecting considering she’s turned into public enemy No. 1 over at Vought but she also thought Kimiko wanted to lose her powers. Instead, Kimiko hands over a detailed letter for Annie to read that explains why she wants to get her powers back so desperately.
The words are so powerful that Annie’s forced to consider Kimiko’s request.
Frenchie also lends a helping hand even as he’s nearly passing out from all the drugs he’s been taking because he figures out that the Russians weren’t dosing Soldier Boy with gas for all those years to keep him subdued. Instead, it was a Russian nerve toxin that was catastrophic for humans but it basically put Soldier Boy to sleep — the only problem is getting some will require a return to Russia and it seems unlikely Little Nina will be so gracious this time around.
And finally, Homelander pays a visit to Maeve, who is still very much alive but being held in a secret prison facility run by Vought.
Homelander reveals to Maeve that Soldier Boy’s attack left several Supes dead and everybody else who survived his nuclear blast had the Compound-V burned out of their blood much like Kimiko did back in Russia. That’s a serious problem for Homelander because the same exact thing could happen to him.
Despite her surroundings, Maeve actually revels in the moment because she notices that Homelander is wearing makeup to cover a bruise on his face, which means he was actually hurt in the fight with Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie. To make things even worse for him, Maeve realizes the sound in his voice means Homelander is legitimately scared and that’s better than any dose of freedom she might gain one day.
Maeve is curious to know why Homelander is keeping her alive, especially knowing the way she was working against him. That’s when Homelander reveals his real end game.
“I’m not letting you live. I’m keeping you alive.”
~ Homelander
After failing to connect with his son Ryan, Homelander has decided he needs another super child to raise — perhaps several who would come up under his expert tutelage — and who better to serve as the mother than Maeve. Homelander tells Maeve that he would never force himself on her but that doesn’t mean he can’t harvest her eggs, which could then be used with his sperm to create the ultimate super baby.
That’s a horrific bit of news to learn but Maeve doesn’t let Homelander win because she still enjoys knowing that he’s been hurt and somebody has him running scared. That’s enough that she could die happy as her days are clearly numbered.
Some Soldiers Should Never Come Home
Following last week’s epic Herogasm, A-Train finally got his revenge on Blue Hawk by grabbing the racist superhero and running him down the street at such a high speed that his face and body got mangled into bloody mush. The run was more than A-Train’s heart could take and he suffered cardiac arrest as a result.
But A-Train didn’t die.
Instead, Ashley wakes him up in bed to reveal the narrative that Vought is selling that A-Train put his troubles with Blue Hawk aside and they fought valiantly together against the terrorist Supe who attacked the party. Sadly, Blue Hawk gave his life during the battle but he donated his heart to A-Train.
That means, A-Train is healthy with a fully healthy heart thanks to Blue Hawk’s “sacrifice” and he’ll soon be able to run really fast again.
Ashley has even more good news because she shares with A-Train a new movie in development at Vought that will cast him as a gang banger from the streets, who gets saved by a white track coach after he intervenes and teaches the troubled young man how to run. It’s the perfect cherry on top of the story so Vought can bury any suggestions that the Supes they employ might actually be racist.
A-Train doesn’t seem to like any part of this but his objections are quickly overruled before Ashley vanishes from his room. Will this actually serve as a turning point for A-Train now that he’s got his full powers back or will he revert back to the same self-serving asshole he’s always been?
Only time will tell.
As for The Deep, he’s still feeling the after effects of his sexual encounter with the octopus at Herogasm that got so rudely interrupted when Starlight arrived.
Now back at home, The Deep gets a visit from his wife Cassandra as he reveals an upcoming appearance on Hannity but more importantly he wants to talk to her about the rut they’ve been having in the bedroom. Deep suggests that maybe they need to spice things up a bit — so he introduces her to Ambrosia, the octopus he was banging at Herogasm.
The Deep tells his wife that he really needs this and he wants to experience this alongside her.
So the three of them hop into bed together, although it’s more like Deep having weird sex with Ambrosia while Cassandra sits there in horror while watching her husband fuck an octopus. Finally when Ambrosia tells Deep that she wants to taste his wife, Cassandra can’t take any more.
She jumps out of bed and tells Deep that she’s leaving and Cassandra will be very interested to see how he gets along without her. Cassandra has been the driving force to get Deep back in Vought’s good graces but especially back with Homelander and now she’s gone.
That means it won’t take long for Deep to fuck things up.
Finally there’s Black Noir, who remains on the run ever since learning that Soldier Boy was alive and coming for his former team.
Black Noir hides out at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant for kids called Buster Beavers and inside he’s visited by the cartoon characters from his favorite place growing up. The bizarre “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” moment plays out with the cartoon characters including Buster Beaver helping Black Noir to remember some terrible moments from his past including when he decided to betray Soldier Boy.
It seems back in the 1980s when Payback was at the top of the Vought hierarchy, Black Noir was up for a role in “Beverly Hills Cop” but Soldier Boy prevented him from getting the part that eventually went to Eddie Murphy. It seems Soldier Boy was such an egomaniac that he couldn’t possibly share the spotlight with anybody else so he nixed the role for Black Noir before taking out his frustrations on the entire team.
Soldier Boy was not only a giant asshole — he was a severely abusive asshole, who used to torture and viciously torment his team any time they dared to get out of line.
Fast forward to Nicaragua and Stan Edgar approached Black Noir with the idea of getting rid of Soldier Boy in favor of an upgraded version being developed by Dr. Vogelbaum at the Vought laboratories. It seems the new Supe was even more powerful than Soldier Boy and he could even fly — in other words Stan Edgar was talking about Homelander.
But there’s only room for one alpha Supe at the top so Edgar suggested to Black Noir that he work with the rest of the team to take out Soldier Boy and hand him over to the Russians, who apparently found some way to subdue him more permanently.
When the time comes, all of the members in Payback minus Gunpowder jump Soldier Boy and work to subdue him before handing him over to the Russians, who would then spend the next 30 plus years experimenting on him in all sorts of atrocious ways. Before he was stopped, Soldier Boy managed to melt off part of Black Noir’s face, which explains why he always wears the mask and he also got his brains bashed out and that’s why he’s had so much trouble remembering exactly what happened in those days.
Black Noir obviously survived and Soldier Boy was handed to the Russians but now he’s back and it’s inevitable that they’re going to meet again.
The cartoon friends tell Black Noir that they know he’s really a sensitive and sweet person but he’s also terrified of a future encounter with Soldier Boy. They explain that it’s finally time to face his fears — Black Noir needs to confront Soldier Boy one last time.
Mind Fuck
With a possible location where Mindstorm is located, Butcher, Hughie and Soldier Boy gear up to go get him.
First things first, Butcher and Hughie have to dose up with V24 and then head off into the woods where they start looking for Mindstorm. Hughie asks Butcher why he’s been feeding Soldier Boy so much weed lately and he finally reveals that the former hero turned Russian hostage is suffering from extreme PTSD, which is why he’s struggled to control that nuclear blast he’s been releasing lately.
Before leaving, Soldier Boy warns them not to make eye contact with his former team member because that will pretty much spell their doom.
Seconds later, Mindstorm appears and he manages to lock eyes with Butcher, who is immediately drawn into a trance before falling to the ground. Mindstorm escapes as Soldier Boy gives chase but Hughie is only concerned with Butcher’s condition.
Soldier Boy tells him that Mindstorm’s powers allow him to lock a person inside their own head where he typically tortures them with some nightmare from their past that they are forced to relive over and over again. The person eventually dies of dehydration because they can’t wake up.
Hughie begs for Soldier Boy to let Mindstorm live long enough that he might be able to bring Butcher back but that’s not how this is going to work. Soldier Boy knows that Butcher would want them to complete the mission even if it means he had to die.
So Hughie leaves Butcher laying on the ground while he teams up with Soldier Boy to go find Mindstorm.
Inside the nightmare visions in his own head, Butcher revisits his youth where he grew up with an abusive father who used to beat him nightly. At the time, Butcher did everything possible to protect his younger brother Lenny, who was not as strong or capable of taking the physical abuse from his father.
Time and time again, Butcher volunteered to take his father’s beatings just to save Lenny — and during so many of these flashbacks, he keeps seeing visions of Hughie taking the place of his little brother. As previously revealed, Butcher sees Hughie very much like his little brother but Lenny died and he’s always blamed himself for what happened.
It turns out years later, Butcher enlisted in military service, which meant he had to leave home and Lenny would be left alone with their father. Lenny begged Butcher to stay but he told his brother that he had to leave and it was time for him to stop being a sniveling, whiny kid always clutching onto his coattails.
Butcher then sees the moment when the abuse got to be too much and Lenny couldn’t handle any more so he put a revolver against his chin and pulled the trigger. Lenny committed suicide and Butcher has never forgiven himself for how he failed his brother.
As for Soldier Boy and Hughie, they eventually track down Mindstorm — after an encounter with a brainwashed priest and nun — but they find the former Payback member hiding in a barn. Just when it looks like Soldier Boy is going to strike, Hughie runs up and teleports them both back to the position where Butcher is unconscious in the woods.
While covering his eyes, Hughie begs for Mindstorm to release his friend and in return he’ll protect him from Soldier Boy by teleporting him to any place he wants to go in the world. Mindstorm eventually agrees and he brings Butcher out of the trance and the nightmare that was torturing him.
Before Hughie could teleport him to freedom, Soldier Boy arrived with a bag to put over Mindstorm’s head so he couldn’t make eye contact with anybody else. As Hughie tends to Butcher, Mindstorm actually whispers something to Soldier Boy — one last attempt to save his life — but it’s a fruitless endeavor.
Soldier Boy beats Mindstorm to death before crushing his skull with his shield.
Butcher and Hughie inquire about what Mindstorm said to him but Soldier Boy just walks away from the bloody aftermath following the death of another member of his former team.
Like Father, Like Son
At a rally for presidential hopeful Robert Singer, Homelander is giving a speech to the audience, which includes Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, but he’s not exactly stumping for the Democratic candidate. Instead, Homelander launches into a diatribe about Starlight’s betrayal while trying to tie her to a human trafficking ring. He also blames the media for not telling the truth and revealing what Starlight has really been doing as she continues spewing these salacious lies about him.
When the speech is finished, Homelander trots off stage and ends up inside a barn at the event being held at a farm. He spots a cow and Homelander decides to pull on the utters so he could make himself some fresh squeezed moo juice.
As he laps up the milk from a metal bucket, Victoria joins him while wondering if perhaps he missed breakfast.
She then tells Homelander that he’s really starting to lose it because rather than stumping for the potential next President of the United States, he’s just been spouting off about Starlight in an unhinged speech.
Homelander’s heard enough because he grabs Victoria by her throat and he’s ready to do some head popping of his own until she presents him with an opportunity. Victoria believes they’d be better served working with each other rather than against one another.
Victoria hands over a piece of paper and tells Homelander that she needs his help with something — and whatever is written on that actually stuns the star-spangled psychopath. He can’t help but wonder where she got this information but we don’t learn exactly what Victoria Neuman knows just yet.
Homelander’s bad day isn’t finished yet, however, because he still has to run into his former flame back at Vought Towers before it’s all said and done.
As Annie sneaks inside to the labs at Vought, she’s able to secure a dose of Compound-V for Kimiko but while she’s there, she spots some of the V24 that Butcher and Hughie have been taking. Annie looks at some notes left by the doctors from the lab and it seems the experimental serum is far more dangerous than anybody expected.
V24 will turn anybody into a Supe for 24 hours but multiple doses result in lesions starting to form on the brain and after three to five doses, the person taking the drug will inevitably die.
Armed with that information, Annie tries to scurry out of the building but not before she runs into Homelander, who once again begins lobbing threats at her but this time she’s not scared. Instead, Annie tells Homelander that she’s seen the real him now and she knows he’s nothing but a scared little boy, who needs approval and he’s never more frightened than when someone openly defies his authority.
Homelander then reminds Annie of his previous threat — if she turned against him, he would go after Hughie and that’s the next stop on his agenda. Annie refuses to back down but she does reveal that the entire conversation was being broadcast to her 190 million Instagram followers, which is just further proof that everything she’s been saying about Homelander is true.
He tries to play it off like they were running lines for a movie but Annie’s trick works because it allows her to leave Vought Towers unscathed.
Back at M.M.’s apartment, Annie provides the Compound-V to Kimiko as requested but she’s also frantically trying to locate Hughie to tell him about the dangers involved with V24.
Before she transforms into a Supe again, Kimiko shares a dance with Frenchie and explains why she wanted to get her powers back. She shows him the letter she wrote to Annie asking for help retrieving the Compound-V and it’s there Kimiko explains that she nearly lost Frenchie because she wasn’t strong enough to save him.
She also confesses that she liked kissing him but that moment also made Kimiko realize that Frenchie is more to her than just a love interest. He’s her family and she wants to protect him.
So rather than run away from her powers, Kimiko is determined to prove that her abilities can be used for good because deep down she wants to be a good person. Frenchie then injects her with the Compound-V, which takes immediate effect as Kimiko’s body heals in a matter of seconds and she’s back to the strong Supe with superhuman healing powers just like before.
Meanwhile, Mother’s Milk has his own set of problems after discovering that his daughter Janine was at the rally with Homelander thanks to her stepfather Todd taking her with him to see his favorite superhero in person. M.M. confronts Todd, who is so utterly brainwashed that he starts spouting off the same talking points as Homelander.
The confrontation ends with Mother’s Milk finally losing his cool and knocking Todd out cold on the sidewalk. He’s once again saddened that his baby girl had to see him turn violent but there’s no way punching Todd didn’t feel satisfying.
As for Butcher, he’s still feeling the after effects of that nightmare sequence where he had to see his little brother die again and he can’t help but think he’s doing the same thing to Hughie. He gets a call from Annie, who has been trying to reach Hughie but he’s not answering.
She comes clean with Butcher about the dangers of taking too much V24 — it turns your brain to Swiss cheese and too many doses is like a guaranteed death sentence. Butcher lies and says that he and Hughie have only taken a couple of doses so they haven’t reached that threshold to where both of them will die.
He promises to tell Hughie the news as soon as he wakes up but Annie is understandably unconvinced.
Annie reveals the same news to Frenchie and Kimiko while telling them that whether he likes it or not, she’s going to save Hughie because she knows Butcher will never do it himself.
It turns out Annie’s instincts were dead on because when Hughie returns from his nap, Butcher contemplates telling him the news but instead he plays it off like no big deal. Butcher didn’t learn anything from revisiting his past because he’s not going to protect Hughie by telling him the truth about V24.
Finally, Homelander is berating Ashley to take care of yet another problem after his public spat with Annie was broadcast to millions. He’s done telling her to do her job when another call comes into the tower — it’s somebody identifying themselves as Soldier Boy.
When Homelander picks up the line, he immediately tells Soldier Boy that he only got hurt because they ambushed him but he promises it won’t happen again.
Soldier Boy interrupts to tell Homelander that the situation between them has changed. He then reveals what Mindstorm told him in the woods about an incident that took place years earlier when Soldier Boy was called into Dr. Vogelbaum’s office for a “genetic experiment.”
“I beat my meat into a cup. Turns out, Vogelbaum made a kid born spring 1981. A boy. You know what the bitch of it is? If they would have kept me around, I’d have let you take the spotlight. What father wouldn’t want that for his son?”
~ Soldier Boy
Yes, Soldier boy is actually Homelander’s biological father.
That bit of news leaves Homelander speechless but that also can’t be good for anybody else in the world now that father and son have learned about each other. This could also mean something even bigger because if Soldier Boy’s DNA was used to create a Supe even stronger than him, it’s entirely possible that Ryan — the child Homelander had with Becca Butcher — could turn into somebody even more powerful than his father.
Perhaps Ryan is the one who will save the world by stopping his father.
We’ll know more next week in “The Boys” season 3 finale, which drops on Amazon Prime on Friday!
