Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video
The final season of The Boys is off to a fantastic start with higher stakes, raised tensions, notable deaths, and a little more substance underlining the shock and awe of it all. That’s not to say it isn’t still a bloody good rip-roaring time, but with episode three, “Every One of You Sons of Bitches,” it feels like there is a running theme coming home to roost after a lot of story and some skilled maneuvering. Villain and hero alike – it’s always been a little hard to tell here – everyone seems to have daddy issues.
Anyone who has been watching the show already knows that Homelander is a bit unstable. We see that he’s having even more issues, signified by the voices he’s hearing and some unsettling high-pitched music while lights flash from the pictures being taken. The leader of The Seven makes another rash decision, announcing to the gathered press that Soldier Boy is not only a hero, but also his father. Someone he’d just recently sent into a dangerous situation without all of the proper intel. These two already had a lot of problems, but this is just the most recent reason for them to be at odds. In the hallway, Soldier Boy lets his son have it, calling him, “Just the softest, wettest boy.” It sounds dirty.
Look, there is this weird sexual tension between Soldier Boy and Homelander, ever since the recently thawed “hero” had to ask his son, “Did you f— me?” I guess Kimiko isn’t the only one who has been watching too much porn, because before Soldier Boy even said it, I was asking, “Is this some kind of incest thing?” That line came right after Homelander had sincerely (for him) said to his father that he needed him. It got worse this episode with the milk bath. Homelander decided to make his “old man” see his impressive nude form, for reasons. One of the underrated moments this week has to be when Soldier Boy has sex with Firecracker, thinking he’s sticking it to his delinquent son, but the woman he was gun-flirting with earlier actually sets the record straight and tries to help Soldier Boy understand how his offspring views him. This is something that will likely come around to change their relationship somewhat.
The character of Homelander has had a good number of father figures, and we get a brief montage of all of them calling him a disappointment. He was always more of a momma’s boy anyway, so it’s no surprise that this maniac hallucinates a nurturing mother figure, one he brutally executed years ago and made a shapeshifter imitate, as an angel. She feeds his delusions of grandeur. Near the end of the episode, he’s reunited with one of those aforementioned “fathers” in the form of Stan Edgar. Homelander might be reconsidering being a father himself after having to beat his own son, Ryan, nearly to death.
Ryan is not having a great time, shown first by all of the people he’s having to kill to keep his whereabouts a secret, and Butcher isn’t polite with the boy either when they meet, considering the Mallory of it all, before he asks him to go on a suicide mission to take out Homelander. Butcher isn’t Ryan’s biological dad, but he should be doing a much better job with the lad. Instead, he buys him a pint and tells the kid how he just killed his own father, as well as where he left the remains. The thread they’re aligning on seems pretty thin: “We both love the same woman, and we both hate the same cunt.” It isn’t much, not enough for them to stick to the plan when the virus is gone, as Butcher talks down to Ryan, calling him a “stupid kid.” It’s some tough love, but in the end, it was probably meant to protect him in the worst way possible. No one accuses Billy Butcher of being good with people. This action, however, sends Ryan straight into that meeting with his dictator father to face some harsher parenting. He fights his biological donor in a monument to the man, destroying effigies of his parental unit as they tussle. Ryan really can’t win here. Butcher is kind of there for him at the end, the man whom he was talking about killing with Zoe earlier in the episode.
Zoe is another angry youth, still bitter about Butcher killing her mother, Victoria Neuman, and stranding her at Red River. The superpowered girl with mouth monsters had been living with her grandfather, Stan Edgar, and sneaks a ride back to the hideout with Frenchie and Kimiko, apparently to try and kill Butcher, but she finds her father instead. Sameer, the man she thought was dead, and she are both understandably upset about having been lied to. Frenchie doesn’t want to let them go, but Kimiko is trying to turn over a new leaf, live a better life, and let them leave. I’d like to compliment the compassion, though there is still a chance for their story to have a tragic conclusion after this reunion.
There’s also the whole Maverick of it all, another young man who lost his father, but this one is really dead, because we know that Hughie killed Translucent back in the first season. Edgar lied and said Homelander did it, but leave it to The Deep to tell the truth in the worst way possible, “Saw it with my own eyes. No cap, on God, bro.” As if the awkward conversations with Hughie weren’t weird before he knew, his method of trying to talk Maverick down later is just as bad, “Cold comfort, but I… I killed my dad, too.” Maverick is kind of cool about it, though, taking the mind-bullet for Hughie, whether he meant to or not.
This is just an epidemic that affects almost everyone in this episode in some way. Mother’s Milk talks about his father to Stan Edgar, the man who was in charge of his dad’s greatest foe, as they share cigars. MM even laughs maniacally when he finds out that Soldier Boy, the person who caused the death of his grandfather, might be unkillable. Hell, even The Deep is suffering from the idea of wanting to impress his father-figure, knocking out his own partner (maybe he was acting suspicious), just so he could deliver Edgar to Homelander like a true sycophant.
It’s nice to have a through line, something that ties all of the story elements together so neatly. It’s especially good when we realize this has been building over the years, and so many elements are allowed to culminate and shine in one episode. We don’t have much time left with some of these characters, but I can certainly hope for more content like this with them, getting to dive into deeper themes between all of the exploding people.
