Warning: This review contains full spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episodes 1-2, which are available to stream now on Prime Video. You can also check out IGN’s spoiler-free review of the first seven episodes.
We’ve reached the endgame of The Boys universe as we know it. There may still be future spinoffs like Vought Rising in store, but the core saga of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and his team battling Homelander (Antony Starr) and the Vought empire is ending with Season 5. The gloves are off now, and Episode 1 reminds us of that by delivering a big, dramatic death scene. So it’s a bit unfortunate that Episode 2, by comparison, feels like such a return to business as usual for the series.
In fact, there’s a bit of a whiplash effect to watching these two episodes together. Episode 1 serves as a pretty strong start to the new season, one that feels all too appropriately timed to the current political climate. But Episode 2 falls back to a more familiar and, frankly, dull status quo. The more things change, the more they stay the same, apparently.
Episode 1 works because, again, it’s depressingly right in line with the current political climate. We see Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) locked away in one of Vought’s patented “Freedom Camps,” along with various other anarchists, resistance members, and people who had the audacity to post something mean about Homelander on social media. As showrunner Eric Kripke has noted, the season was largely written before the most recent presidential election, but you wouldn’t know it just from the political commentary on tap here.
It’s fascinating to see how these characters are reacting to their imprisonment, because it doesn’t necessarily play out like you’d expect. MM, for one, seems oddly chill and even zen about being a political prisoner. No doubt the copious amounts of prison moonshine are helping on that front, but you also get the sense that he’s happy to be focused on the path ahead without the distraction and worry of having to care for his family any longer. He’s happy just to fight his fellow prisoners and wait for the day the hangman comes calling.
As for Hughie, Episode 1 serves as a nice reminder of how far this formerly weak and timid character has come over the course of these five seasons. Hughie may not have Temp V any longer, but he does have that most important super-power of all – hope. Quaid gets ample room to shine in Episode 1 as he bonds with a fellow prisoner and makes it clear how valuable and rare a thing like hope is in this current climate. Later, we get a great scene between Hughie and Homelander as the former proves to be one of the few capable of staring into the face of Vought’s all-powerful overlord and not flinching.
That’s something Hughie shares in common with his former nemesis, A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). The most important sequence in Episode 1 comes late in the game, when Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Butcher and A-Train spring the trap and attempt to bust their friends out of the camp. What starts out as a fairly comedic jailbreak quickly devolves into a desperate battle for survival and what proves to be A-Train’s final, heroic stand.
A-Train’s death is easily the high point of these two episodes. It feels very fitting to have the character go out doing exactly what he couldn’t or wouldn’t do back in Season 1. He dodges out of the way of the innocent civilian, finally derailing his momentum and giving Homelander the last edge he needed to win their little race. From there, A-Train can do nothing but bleed and laugh in the face of the man who once inspired overwhelming fear in him. A powerful death scene, and one that reminds us just how weak and vulnerable Homelander is, despite everything in the world seemingly going his way.
But, sadly, the momentum generated by Episode 1 and its major death don’t completely carry over into Episode 2. It feels like Hughie and friends were broken out of prison just so the series could revert to a more familiar set-up. Once again, everyone’s reluctantly serving under Butcher while they hatch a scheme that will supposedly bring down Homelander once and for all. Season 4’s ending suggested a radically different and more dangerous game plan for the final season. But here, it feels like we’re back where we were before everyone was arrested.
What follows is some standard The Boys relationship drama/lovemaking scenes before the team pivots to testing its newly completed supe virus on members of the Teenage Kix. This new storyline proves entertaining enough (particularly once it becomes clear just how far gone Rock Hard is these days), but it all feels like the series is dragging its heels a bit. It’s too early to take the fight to Homelander again, so let’s kill off these social media-addicted losers instead. This episode tries to find more of an emotional throughline with the Countess Crow/MM subplot, but that feels a bit half-hearted and underdeveloped in the end.
Mostly, it’s Homelander himself who carries this episode. Antony Starr is doing a great job playing a character who’s rapidly spiralling into madness even as he seemingly has the world at his gloved fingertips. It’s a joy to watch Homelander hold a one-sided conversation with A-Train’s coffin, only to convince himself that the answer to all his woes is bringing back dear old Dad. And, of course, that reunion immediately goes south in a way only The Boys could manage.
It’s equally fun having Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy back in the picture, especially with all the added tension that now exists between father and son. Will this character help Homelander along his path, or will he be the ultimate source of his undoing? We don’t know, and that makes him a welcome X-factor in this conflict.
Though, initially, it doesn’t even appear that Soldier Boy will make it out of this episode alive. His apparent death yields another memorable Homelander scene and a reminder that, truly, no one is safe in this final season. Which makes it a little disappointing when the episode ends with Soldier Boy sitting up on his gurney. Instead of proving that no one is safe, the series winds up simply reiterating that it’s too early in the season for such a major development. Clearly, it’s going to take some time rebuilding the momentum that’s lost after Episode 1.
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