In “The Boys” recap, Butcher leads an excursion to discover what’s happening at a secret Vought facility and Stormfront’s true agenda is finally revealed…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been simmering under the surface during “The Boys” season 2 but Stormfront’s origin, true agenda and her plans for the future have finally been revealed and to quote Billy Butcher … it’s diabolical.
The latest episode debuted on Friday on Amazon Prime with several stunning revelations but none bigger than Stormfront coming clean to Homelander about her intentions that are rooted in principles she learned while being raised in the Third Reich.
There have been hints about this hidden agenda all season long — and plenty of confirmation based on the original Stormfront character from the comic books — but the history behind the character and her connections to Adolf Hitler and World War II were both shocking and terrifying.
We’ll get to Stormfront’s origin but the latest episode also gave background on Frenchie’s connection to The Boys and how he first got introduced to Billy Butcher and the rest of his team nearly a decade earlier. That ties back into the official introduction of Lamplighter — a former member of The Seven, who also has plenty of history with The Boys.
With that said, let’s get to our full recap from the latest episode of “The Boys” titled “The Bloody Doors Off”…
Thank You For Being a Friend
The episode begins with a look at Frenchie’s history before and during his time as an operative working under Grace Mallory and Billy Butcher.
It seems after coming to the United States, Frenchie was a thief who was once obsessed with “The Golden Girls” thanks to the time when he lived in a homeless shelter and that show comforted him late at night. Once he finally made it out of there, Frenchie teamed up with two friends — Cherie and Jay — who he now considers his family much like Dorothy, Blanche and Rose.
Even back in those days, Frenchie was a chemist and inventor, who plotted to rob a bank alongside his friends. In order to circumvent superhero interference, he orchestrated elaborate traps that would stop the chemically-enhanced people from stopping whatever crime he was committing. For instance, Frenchie brought down a Supe named Behemoth, who relies on his rage to trigger his powers.
Frenchie exploded a Xanax bomb that kept Behemoth calm, cool and collected thus he wasn’t able to Hulk out (for lack of a better word) and stop the crime being committed. It was pretty ingenious but eventually Frenchie got caught.
That’s when Grace Mallory shows up and offers to give Frenchie a spot on her team in exchange for his freedom along with keeping his friends Cherie and Jay off the government’s radar. He agrees and that’s how he was first introduced to Butcher and Mother’s Milk as well.
A few years later after the team had already been operating for some time, Mallory revealed some kind of incriminating evidence that could be used to blackmail Lamplighter, one of the members of The Seven. Mallory shows Lamplighter the information she’s obtained and he agrees to help her collect information on Vought and The Seven with a particular interest in Homelander thanks to a suggestion from Butcher.
It became Frenchie’s job to stalk and otherwise shadow Lamplighter’s every move to ensure he follows through with promises made.
Sadly one night in particular, Frenchie followed Lamplighter to a nightclub appearance and after the Supe entered the building, he got a call from Cherie that his friend Jay was overdosing. Frenchie decided that Lamplighter would probably be inside for hours so he fled the scene in order to save Jay’s life.
That ended up being the same night that Lamplighter fought back against the people extorting him as he went after Grace Mallory at her home. He burnt the place to the ground, turning everything into ashes — including her grandchildren.
To this day, Frenchie is still filled with regret that he lost eyes on Lamplighter, which allowed him the freedom to then go after Mallory and her family.
Fast forward five years later to present day and Frenchie is currently planning a surgical operation to remove the tracking device implanted in Starlight.
She’s come looking for help after her confrontation with Stormfront that ended in a standoff with both holding key information against the other. Starlight knows that Stormfront was once a Supe named Liberty, who operated in the 1970’s. Meanwhile, Stormfront knows that Starlight is the person responsible for leaking information to the press about Compound-V.
Starlight is convinced that Stormfront is planning something awful for her so she’s looking to stay off the Vought radar and removing the tracking device implanted into her body is the only way to do that. Frenchie is able to remove the device, which then allows Starlight to join the rest of The Boys at their secret hidden underground lair.
The tension with Butcher is palpable but Annie is able to reveal the information she retrieved after digging into Stormfront’s laptop.
She’s discovered dozens of emails exchanged between Stormfront and Stan Edgar — the CEO of Vought International — about some secret project at the Sage Grove Center, a psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania.
Butcher decides that will be the team’s next stop as they investigate what Vought is doing with this hidden hospital with an even more secretive agenda.
As for Stormfront, she’s still enjoying her time with Homelander as they bust a thief, squash his head like a grape and then fuck over his dead corpse. It’s just as disturbing as you’d imagine.
Later that day, Homelander invites Stormfront into his trailer for a surprise — he bought her roses — but she spurns the invitation for a meeting she says she has to attend at Vought Tower. Homelander is noticeably upset but he watches her fly away while promising to return in 20 minutes. As he stares at the flowers that she didn’t want, Homelander begins seething with anger and he eventually burns down his entire trailer and blames it on an electrical accident while lashing out at his new girlfriend brushing him off for an afternoon.
Elsewhere on set, Maeve receives a visit from The Deep, who arrives with a little bit of information that she requested after offering to team up with him in last week’s episode in order so he could return to The Seven. It seems Maeve asked Deep to talk to his aquatic friends to see if they could retrieve the black box from the crashed airliner that went down during season 1 when she and Homelander attempted to intervene in a hijacking.
If you remember, Homelander killed the terrorists but also accidentally killed the pilots and sliced a hole into the plane. With no way to rescue everyone on board, Homelander made the executive decision to abandon everybody to die rather than saving a few people, who could then expose them for their mistake. Maeve had no choice but to watch in horror as all those people died after crashing into the ocean.
While his underwater pals couldn’t find the black box, they did retrieve a Go Pro camera that could be useful to Maeve in her plot to bring down Homelander.
Before leaving the set, Deep runs into A-Train, who is still unceremoniously being erased from The Seven throughout the filming of this movie. Now they are recording a theme song for him, which is quite terrible, and he’s starting to feel the sting of being rejected. Seeing the hurt in his eyes, Deep offers A-Train a Fresca, which is apparently the introductory drink anyone is given before being pitched on The Church of the Collective.
Later that day at dinner, A-Train meets the founder of the church — a man named Alastair Adana, who knows all about his seven-figure debt, his Compound-V addiction and the fact that he’s being booted from The Seven. At first, A-Train is angry but he quickly composes himself after Alastair tells soon-to-be former member of The Seven that he can help him rehab his image and return to The Seven.
Down with the Sickness
At Sage Grove, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie and Kimiko dress as orderlies while Starlight cuts through a fence to help them gain entrance. She then waits with Butcher and Hughie while the rest of the team heads into the facility.
Inside, the team breaks into security and finds cameras throughout the hospital, which shows patients exhibiting powers of all kinds. Not long after, Stormfront arrives, which obviously startles the team on the outside but she’s not there for them.
Instead, she’s at Sage Grove to check on the progress of whatever the fuck Vought is up to these days. In one room, Stormfront sees a patient use his powers but then he refuses to do anymore until talking to his sister after he was taken for this little experiment. Stormfront agrees but then turns to Lamplighter, who uses his pyrokinesis to burn the subject alive.
The Boys are horrified at what they’re seeing but they still don’t know what’s happening here. So they steal all of the video cartridges from the security room in order to expose Vought’s latest experiment.
Unfortunately on the way out, the team passes by Lamplighter, who immediately recognizes Frenchie and a fight ensues, which then accidentally opens the door to one particularly volatile powered individual named Cindy.
She can apparently manipulate objects with her powers, which means she can move things like telekinesis but with much more violent results. In fact when a security guard tries to shoot her, she turns and closes her fist, which then causes him to literally implode. Mother’s Milk, Frenchie and Kimiko make a run for it with Lamplighter joining them.
He eventually uses his security clearance to enter a safe room and the Boys join him while Cindy opens up a bunch of the patient’s rooms and soon the entire hospital turns chaotic.
At first, Lamplighter is ready to burn all of them alive but when a patient attacks him and Kimiko saves his life, he’s forced to team up with the Boys in order to survive. While trapped with the team as Frenchie tries to build a sleep bomb that will put all the Supes down in order for them to escape, Lamplighter questions why he didn’t stop him the night he burned Grace Mallory’s grandchildren alive.
After we learn Frenchie’s origins (as previously noted), Lamplighter then reveals that he didn’t go to Mallory’s house to kill her family. He went there to kill her but he accidentally killed her grandchildren instead and it’s haunted him ever since. He also never bothered to tell Vought about the incident because whatever information Mallory had on him, it was something far worse for his career than finding out that he was working with a government agency against them.
Now after he was booted from The Seven, Lamplighter is nothing more than an errand boy, serving at Stormfront’s request where he keeps an eye on Sage Grove and burns up anybody who doesn’t follow their plans or orders.
Outside the facility, one patient manages to escape and he runs into Butcher, Starlight and Hughie. The freaked out Supe uses his power to blast everybody with a reverberation that feels like a shockwave — Butcher and Starlight are thrown off their feet but Hughie goes tumbling inside their van, which gets flipped several times.
Butcher ends up killing the Supe but he then finds that Hughie has been impaled by a piece of metal from the van and he needs medical help in a hurry.
Enemy of My Enemy
Inside Sage Grove, Lamplighter finally comes clean about what Vought is doing in the hospital.
As we’ve seen, Compound-V is typically administered in infants, who then develop powers that evolve as the children grow older. Unfortunately the success rate in adults is far more dangerous.
“Infants handle it best but adults … I mean, you saw what happens. Sometimes you get powers, sometimes you get a freak, sometimes you just explode. Vought is trying to stabilize it.”
~ Lamplighter
It seems Vought is trying to find a way to stabilize Compound-V in adults so they can literally give powers to anybody they choose. Injecting a child still ends up as a gamble with what kind of person will eventually develop but by giving powers to an adult, Vought knows exactly who they’re getting and where their loyalties lie.
For now that information will have to stay with the Boys because they need to get out of Sage Grove but first one of the patients attacks with a long tentacle that grabs Mother’s Milk and begins to strangle him. Kimiko is able to save his life and we soon discover the person attacking Mother’s Milk was Love Sausage — a Supe with a giant mutant cock.
On their way out, Frenchie drops the sleep bomb in order to slow down Cindy but she quickly crushes the weapon and prepares to kill everybody. At that moment, Stormfront returns, blasts her with lightning and prevents any further deaths.
It appears that Lamplighter will betray the Boys but instead he covers for them while telling Stormfront that the patients broke out of their rooms after one of the doctors failed to administer the correct amount of sedative for Cindy, who then escaped before freeing more patients. Stormfront scoffs at the carnage but then moves onto secure the facility.
The Boys escape by stealing an ambulance before calling for help from Grace Mallory.
When she arrives, Mallory is horrified to find Lamplighter has escaped with the team and she’s ready to put a bullet in his head for what he did to her family. Frenchie eventually talks her down because the torment Lamplighter has been feeling is far worse than the relief a quick death would grant him.
Mallory eventually lowers her weapon and then asks what exactly Lamplighter can do for them. It appears the Boys have a new ally on their side.
As for Hughie, he’s bleeding out and dying, which then leads to Butcher and Starlight stealing a car in order to save him. Sadly the driver pulls a gun on them and it’s Starlight who has to put him down — and by throwing him to the ground, his head smacks against the pavement and he dies.
Starlight is horrified at what she’s just done — and feels even worse after seeing a kid’s car seat sitting in the backseat. But for now the focus has to turn on Hughie as they race to save his life.
After arriving at the hospital, doctors are able to remove the shard of metal from Hughie’s abdomen but he’s unconscious and needs to remain there for a couple of days while the medicine does its work. It’s that moment after working together to save his life that Butcher and Starlight finally put the tension between them to rest while discussing all of Hughie’s quirks.
They may never be friends but Butcher and Starlight both have one thing in common — they care about Hughie and that’s enough for now.
War for the Culture
Back at Vought Tower, Maeve is taking a shower while Elena prepares to order them some food when she discovers the Go-Pro footage recovered from the fuselage of downed plane. She watches in horror as the video shows Homelander and Maeve abandoning everybody to die as they fly away. Maeve tries to tell her that she had no choice but she plans on using this footage in order to blackmail Homelander to leave them alone.
As for Homelander himself, he’s at home when Stormfront comes to visit him.
She encountered him earlier in the day but Homelander was irate after she blew him off to go to her meeting. He issued a not so subtle threat, which eventually leads to another meeting at Vought Tower where he confronts her about the lies she’s been feeding him.
Homelander knows she didn’t go to a meeting at Vought and the last thing he wants is a liar in his life. That’s when Stormfront finally comes clean to him about everything.
Not only has Stormfront been around since the 1970’s but she’s actually been alive much, much longer.
She shows Homelander a photo standing next to her daughter Chloe, who died just recently after living a full life. That’s because Stormfront was actually born in 1919.
She then presents a picture where she’s standing next to members of Hitler’s Third Reich and then a wedding photo with her husband — Frederick Vought.
Yes, Stormfront was the wife of the founder of Vought International and the creator of Compound-V.
It seems she was the first person Vought gave powers through the creation of Compound-V and she’s been carrying on his mission ever since. Now it appears Stormfront has found a way to finish what her husband and Hitler started by creating an army of super powered people, who will then wipe out all of the impure souls in the world.
“We are in a war for the culture. The other races are grinding us down and taking what is rightfully ours, but we can fight back. With an army of supermen, millions strong. Because that is Vought’s true destiny and you will be the man who will lead us.”
~ Stormfront
Stormfront then devotes herself completely to Homelander as the man who will lead the oncoming race war that she’s planning to start with an army being built out of Sage Grove. Once Vought is able to stabilize Compound-V, Stormfront can give powers to millions of like-minded soldiers and the army of white supremacists will be led by Homelander.
The star-spangled superhero pauses for a moment before then embracing Stormfront in a passionate kiss as he accepts his role in her planned Armageddon.
And the closing moments show a hitchhiker looking for a ride — and the thumb belongs to Cindy, the ultra-powerful patient who has now escaped Sage Grove.
Only two episodes of “The Boys” remain this season so make sure to tune into Amazon Prime next Friday for the penultimate installment for season 2.
