The Boys - Season 3 June 3, 2022

[Andalusian girls]

Spoiler: show

ye Starlight's reaction makes sense in a vacuum , but Hughie is not treated like much of a victim in either instance. Kripke is on record saying the sexual assault with Tek Knight was hilarious and intended to be played for laughs, and last ep there's no recognition from any character, including Hughie himself, that he was raped, over and over, by someone impersonating his girlfriend.

the contrast between thems and how the Deep assaulting Starlight in season 1 was played is p jarring. think it's a failing of the writing staff who pride themselves on being progressive to not handle male sexual assault all that differently than the old prison shower rape jokes / 90s Whedon attitude.

[Tyrath]

Oh I am not defending the show's writing on the topic.

Simply that Starlight's immediate reaction wasn't all that crazy from what you'd expect.

[Karbuncle]

As vague as possible so not to be a real spoiler or anything but still putting it in spoil tags

Spoiler: show

Also knowing how the comic ends, I kinda really hope they don't go that exact route. Like parts of the story is pointing that way sure, and it seems fine, but I really hope they don't just... do that

[Souj]

Spoiler: show

Edgar is still MIA, right? Last we saw was Nueman intercepting the vehicle he was in, killing the cops, and and then meeting him face to face.

[chazzyphizzle]

when they lingered on the breast milk and had him mention cilantro she ate i couldn't help but think they are setting up next season's weakening of homelander. im thinking they somehow dose her with small enough quantities of virus to not outright kill homelander but weaken him enough to be hurt. or maybe it was just a one off

[Tyrath]

Spoiler: show

Edgar is still MIA, right? Last we saw was Nueman intercepting the vehicle he was in, killing the cops, and and then meeting him face to face.

Yup

[Petitssk]

Overall, I honestly did not really like this season and I don't think all of the mixed reviews can be attributed towards right-wingers realizing they're being parodized.

I somewhat recently watched the series for the first time and, while I liked the premise, I think it was around season 3 that the lack of likeable characters (also due to terrible decision making) really started to kick in, barring a few notable exceptions at least.

Season 4 seemed to take that even further, adding (or replacing even) some of the more ambiguous villains with downright obnoxious and/or one-dimensional ones (basically all of the minor ones, Firecracker, Sister Sage, although the latter has her moments at least) or making existing ones even less sympathetic (The Deep, Ashley, assuming the latter can be considered one) to the point where I'm just not having fun watching them most of the time. In the same vein, Homelander just doing his thing and having others clean up after him in the earlier seasons was fun to watch - Homelander trying to stand at the top while going through this midlife crisis and being reduced to a bumbling mess every second episode isn't.

The overall premise with the social media aspect etc. is also becoming increasingly painful to watch in today's political climate and the only things the season was gratuitous with, even more so than usual, seemed to be the excessive amounts of squick in every second episode, at least when they weren't killing animals on-screen. This is something that existed in the earlier seasons as well, but at least there were enough good parts to look past it.

Given what happened to the villains and the fact that even the good guys occasionally seemed to be dumber than ever while trying to keep the moral high ground (Starlight), it got grating between Frenchie's sub-plot, which isn't exactly endearing with his frequent drug use, and Billy's constant interactions with his imaginary friends, although that is something I really don't like in general. Hughie was more sympathetic than last season at least.

That is not to say the season did not have its moments and just about anything with Stan and Victoria was great, not to mention A-Train, whose development I did enjoy. Also still liking Ryan's subplot, but then again

Spoiler: show

the latter was basically sacrificed with Ryan being pushed away when the allegedly good guys went about things in the dumbest way possible and, of course, this also served to push Butcher over the ledge or something, due to which Victoria is gone for good, killed by another deus ex machina Butcher asspull since he's just not going to die from the looks of it; wouldn't be surprised if he gave himself another dose the next time something needs to happen and still live for another one. And, of course, many of the characters that made the Vought scenes fun to watch have also been killed off. Feels like too many deaths included for the hell of it and the season ends on a hopeless note for the good guys, only problem being that I don't care about the good guys anymore anyway.

Maybe I'm just looking at the series with the wrong mindset, but it does feel like much of what made the earlier seasons enjoyable was just mostly gone this season, replaced with more squick and questionable plot decisions and character plots, to the point where I mostly watched because I just kind of wanted to see where they'd end up.

[Karbuncle]

Okay but the Butcher thing

Spoiler: show

was foreshadows in Gen V(?), where a character with cancer was given V and the cancer basically became its own entity at some point. Idk you can read an episode synopsis on wiki like I did but someone told me that

So it wasn’t a complete ass pull, it was at least set up in the spinoff show. But if you hadn’t seen that you’d not know. I sure didn’t until someone told me.

The rest of it, I mean I felt it was the weakest season, and I’m glad they’re finishing on season 5. but yah I still like the show and characters. Though some of them weren’t very well written this season, feel like a lot of them just didn’t have anything to do and most of this seasons plot was around Homelander and his plan and the main cast felt like just being along for the ride. They felt like the sub characters this season instead of the main ones.

[Petitssk]

Okay but the Butcher thing

Spoiler: show

was foreshadows in Gen V(?), where a character with cancer was given V and the cancer basically became its own entity at some point. Idk you can read an episode synopsis on wiki like I did but someone told me that

So it wasn’t a complete ass pull, it was at least set up in the spinoff show. But if you hadn’t seen that you’d not know. I sure didn’t until someone told me.

The rest of it, I mean I felt it was the weakest season, and I’m glad they’re finishing on season 5. but yah I still like the show and characters. Though some of them weren’t very well written this season, feel like a lot of them just didn’t have anything to do and most of this seasons plot was around Homelander and his plan and the main cast felt like just being along for the ride. They felt like the sub characters this season instead of the main ones.

Spoiler: show

Okay, yeah, my bad about Butcher - wasn't even thinking about the trailer scene anymore (which I guess was the same thing) and the few scenes in which that tumor or whatever was shown to be moving around inside of him, which kind of should have been sufficiently enough foreshadowing, even without the context. Actually thought he'd randomly gotten another power from another dose he got somewhere, so yeah, definitely stand corrected on that one, although the random granting of another superpower would be a different gripe for me, I guess; little too convenient to be powerful enough to just rip apart someone who'd been show to deal with acid and Homelander lasers to the face, but eh, no point in trying to make sense of powerlevels I guess.

[Tyche]

Ok, so my wife and I watched this tonight and talked about the Hughie and Starlight stuff. Before I read any of this thread. She said she would, if she were being honest with herself, would hold some antimosity while acknowledging the feeling would be wrong. Like, something you feel and then feel disappointed in yourself for having that feeling. I told her I'd simply feel horrified for her.

Also, has the only time Erin Moriarty appeared nude in this series was when she was playing the shape shifter? I couldn't think of another instance off the top of my head.

[arus2001]

Was a sentiment I saw at one point that I kind of agree with. The show would immensely benefit from writers that actually seem to like the superhero genre. As while it may be parody and certainly excessive in gore and juvenile humor, that kind of shock value tends to lose its charm after a season or two, putting more pressure on the plot to do what plot does. We've basically got a mishmash of evil Superman, watered down X-men politics, and sex jokes. Cool power moments aren't really a thing. Heroics are backseat. Instead of emphasizing supes should be the best representatives of humanity, we mainly get the opposite, where even the "good ones" are more shades of gray at best because we just kind of get force fed that power corrupts in this setting. Basically, it's a cynical backlash of MCU succeeding as long as it did.

[Xno Kappa]

.

[Qalbert]

Ok, so my wife and I watched this tonight and talked about the Hughie and Starlight stuff. Before I read any of this thread. She said she would, if she were being honest with herself, would hold some antimosity while acknowledging the feeling would be wrong. Like, something you feel and then feel disappointed in yourself for having that feeling. I told her I'd simply feel horrified for her.

Also, has the only time Erin Moriarty appeared nude in this series was when she was playing the shape shifter? I couldn't think of another instance off the top of my head.

idk that you could see anything but I believe Hughie teleported them out of their clothes once

[Karbuncle]

Any guesses on how they'll end the series at season 5?

Spoiler: show

My guess is they'll figure out a way to harvest/use Soldier Boys V-killing radiation, and somehow apply that globally, thus not killing any Supes but erasing their powers permanently turning all of them back into normal humans. Which is a compromise between the Non-Genocide route Hughie and the gang want and the route Butcher is going, said V-killing either kills Butcher cause his Cancer reverts to normal or kill the cancer and he lives.

That or they somehow learn to combine the Virus from this season with the Radiation from Soldier Boy and use that to kill Homelander(Maybe the virus acts faster than the neutralizing and therefor it weakens him enough to be affected them kills him) while keeping the other supes alive, thus keeping the door open for sequels and spin-offs. Maybe keeping the Virus/Radiation in the back pocket of the CIA/government whatever as a "last resort" to keep supes in check. That'd work.

[Qalbert]

not saying anything specific from the comics but it has colored my expectations

Spoiler: show

I certainly don't expect a happy ending, and any victory will be pyrrhic, imo

[Krandor]

We're clearly heading towards the same ending as the comics, minus the many times mentioned dumbass Black Noir storyline since show Noir is an entirely different person

[Karbuncle]

I don't feel they'll copy the comic 1:1, it might start the season off as leading us toward /that/ ending, but I think they'll throw in some curve balls. I don't expect it to be happy but I really hope they just don't recycle the Comic plot

[Krandor]

We do also have the added wrinkles of Ryan and the post credit scene to close this season, which could heavily change things up

[Koul]

Overall, I wasn't terribly fond of the season? I guess? I feel like season 5 will make it all worth it because so far every season has just been like blue balling us with "will they or won't they kill HL" or it's been "this new sup is strong enough to rival HL!" and that one gets taken out which just turns them into the villain of the week scenario. After 4 seasons, I just want to get to the fireworks factory

[Salodin]

I didn't like Annie this season at all, so her being so pivotal to the plot just dragged it down for me. Also didn't care for the Frenchie arc which had zero payoff whatsoever. Literally off-screen CIAd him out of jail and into the boys like nothing happened at all. Just a bunch of filler time for the character to go back to work as usual.

Way more that I liked about this season than not though. But yeah, glad they aren't gonna drag this out to 6 seasons and a movie, and Im looking forward to the conclusion now that the fireworks are going off.

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