The Boys Season 4, episode 2, was largely centered around the unraveling of the titular group at the Truthcon festival. MM and Butcher fell out because of the latter’s erratic behavior, which was a side effect of the worms crawling in his head thanks to his overuse of the Temp V. But when MM, Kimiko, and Frenchie were overwhelmed by Splinter and Firecracker, Butcher ended up saving them. Was it enough to get him into MM’s good books? No, and Butcher was forced to leave the team and go on his solo mission of saving Ryan from the clutches of Homelander. Talking about Homelander, he scarred Ryan for life by making him kill a guy who was just doing his job of making Ryan look cool, and then he reprimanded Ryan for not being okay with a “few broken eggs.” The third episode of The Boys Season 4 is about the rivalry between Firecracker and Annie. So, let’s talk about it.
Spoiler Alert
Did MM Convince A-Train to Rebel Against Vought?
Episode 3 of The Boys opens with Homelander introducing Firecracker, Sister Sage, and Ryan to the public as members of the Seven. Kessler and Butcher cook up a plan to drug Ryan after bringing him over for a casual meeting and then putting him in a safehouse that’s specifically built to hold supes. Now, Butcher wants to keep Ryan with him so that he can educate him to be a good person, but Kessler wants to train Ryan to become a superhero who can kill Homelander. Since Kessler is apparently Butcher’s only partner in crime at the moment, it doesn’t look like he has the option to defy Kessler. Firecracker gets busy giving interviews and spewing her alt-right nonsense. Noir, Deep, and A-Train pose for photos, and Sage and Homelander have a serious conversation about building a sense of trust so that they can work together without any hiccups. That said, one look at a depressed Ryan worries Homelander because he simply can’t understand why a kid like him doesn’t like to kill. Annie takes Hughie to a lawyer, who basically tells him that the power vested in Daphne by Hugh can’t be reversed because he has given the power of attorney to her of his own volition. So, if Hughie really wants to make decisions for his comatose dad, he has to be on good terms with his mother. Frenchie enters the Starlighter headquarters and tries to have a private conversation with Colin, probably about the fact that he is the guy who killed his whole family in the past. However, a man radicalized by Firecracker’s propaganda enters the premises and tries to kill the aforementioned lawyer. Thankfully, Frenchie jumps in to save him and incapacitates the maniac. Later on, Frenchie gets intimate with Colin instead of blurting out the truth. We briefly see Singer and Neuman having a conversation about outright banning the involvement of supes in civil services and the armed forces. Neuman seemingly agrees to do what Singer wants her to do, but she knows that it is going to affect her relationship with Homelander. Then the episode shifts its focus back to the titular team, where we see Kimiko telling a high-on-pills Frenchie that she wants to take down the Shining Star Liberation Army’s New York wing. MM tells Hughie and Starlight that he wants to convince A-Train to help them out because he has already shown some initiative by freeing those Starlighters.
Butcher talks to Ryan via the Mortal Kombat-esque Tournament of Heroes game and asks him to come to his house for a chat. Ryan is hesitant, but Butcher emotionally manipulates him by bringing up his health, and it seems like it has done the trick on Ryan. Firecracker tries to seduce Homelander, but he tells her to focus on the meeting of the Seven. Then, he proceeds to demote Ashley because Sister Sage is currently doing her job, and he makes her the Vought mascot. Ashley leaves the meeting room in the most awkward manner imaginable. And as if that’s not hilarious enough, it’s revealed that the guy who has taken the mantle of Black Noir is narcoleptic, which means that he randomly falls asleep. Sage points out that due to Deep’s complacency, someone (well, we know that it’s A-Train) stole the footage that was used to free the Starlighters, and that’s why he won’t be the head of the Crime Analytics department anymore. Deep’s octopus girlfriend tries to make him feel better, but her magic doesn’t work on him. Ashley lets off some steam by partaking in her usual sexual ritual with Coleman. Ryan shows up at Butcher’s house, and he immediately offers the kid the spiked cookies, but since Ryan isn’t hungry, he doesn’t eat them. That means Butcher has to actually talk to Ryan until he is hungry or comfortable enough to eat those cookies. MM hacks into Nathan’s phone and brings A-Train to the stadium where he used to practice. MM tries to convince A-Train to act against Vought and their evil practices before things go colossally wrong. It seems like A-Train doesn’t want to help out MM and the rest of the heroes, but the fact that he listens to everything that MM has to say means that some part of him is willing to do the right thing.
Why does Firecracker hate Starlight?
Kimiko and Frenchie enter the Shining Star hideout, and that’s when Frenchie’s drugs properly kick in. So, while Kimiko takes care of the terrorists, Frenchie hallucinates about his past, all the people he has killed, and the fact that he is keeping Colin in the dark. Kimiko comes across a familiar face from her past, and although this scarred girl tries to kill Kimiko, she doesn’t retaliate. Frenchie asks who she is, and Kimiko doesn’t give him a straight answer because she is angry that he was of no help during the fight. The scene then shifts to Butcher and Ryan, who are seemingly connecting with each other pretty well. That said, Butcher becomes concerned when Ryan brings up the fact that Homelander is teaching him how to be okay with killing people. But instead of panicking, Butcher realizes that there’s a sliver of a chance that Ryan isn’t going to become as evil as Homelander because he knows the difference between what’s good and what’s bad. So, he doesn’t feed him the cookies, and he just shares his existential thoughts with his stepson. At Vought Tower, Anika (from the Crime Analytics department) is brought in for questioning because she donated a few clothes to the Starlight House. Sister Sage promises her that nothing is going to happen to her if she tells the truth about her involvement in the leak of the footage of the innocent Starlighters. But as soon as she says that Starlight asked her to track something, Homelander kills her. A horrified Ashley shreds her resignation letter because she knows that if she tries to leave Vought, she’ll be killed since she knows way too much about the supes and the inner workings of Vought.
Elsewhere in Vought Tower, Starlight confronts Firecracker about her consistent river of rage against her. Firecracker reminds her that they were on the same pageant circuit as kids, and Annie started a falserumor about Firecracker’s promiscuity. The memories of Annie’s rude behavior come rushing back to her, and she profusely apologizes to Firecracker for tarnishing her reputation. But since Firecracker is more powerful than Annie now, she refuses to forgive her, and she wants to humiliate Annie as much as she humiliated Firecracker in the past. MM and Hughie reach the ice skating rink, where Neuman is supposed to meet Homelander and Sister Sage. Neuman takes pictures with the cast of Vought on Ice and then goes up to the guest room for her meeting. Hughie almost cancels the mission after learning that MM is working with A-Train, but MM tells him to follow his orders because he is the boss at the moment. So, Hughie gets up into the AC vents and overhears Sage pitching the idea of killing the president and invoking martial law. That way, Victoria’s hands will be clean, and she’ll be able to disband the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs and erase anything that’s critical of the supes, thereby allowing the supes to take over America completely. Homelander and Sage also want Neuman to come out as a supe so that America has a supe president sitting in the Oval Office. Neuman doesn’t want to do that, but Homelander starts spewing supe supremacist rhetoric to get her to do his bidding. This conversation is interrupted by Hughie’s sweat droplets, which prompt Homelander to go berserk. Hughie is miraculously saved by A-Train. Most of the cast and crew of Vought on Ice are murdered. MM makes it out of there alive too.
What Causes Homelander to Have a Meltdown?
Frenchie, Kimiko, and Annie trauma-bond over a bottle of whiskey. Kimiko tries to confront Frenchie about his ongoing drug addiction, but Frenchie rebukes Kimiko for being too concerned about him. Hughie goes to the hospital and decides to talk properly with his mother. He asks her why she left him, and she says that she was suffering from postpartum depression. One night, she tried to kill herself. Since it didn’t work and she realized that she was ruining Hughie and Hugh’s lives, she left to sort herself out. Hughie realizes that he knows nothing about Daphne, and he has been mistreating her all this while instead of trying to understand her. But, by the looks of it, Hughie has buried the hatchet, and he is going to be on amicable terms with his mother. At the end of The Boys Season 4 episode 3, Kessler and Butcher have a huge verbal battle because Butcher decided to let Ryan go back to Homelander just because he thinks that he is a good kid. Kessler says that the bottom line is that they have to figure out how to train him to be an anti-supe weapon or how to kill him because the world doesn’t need two Homelanders roaming around. Back at Vought Tower, Sage and Deep get intimate with each other, but a bloody orbitoclast (which is used for lobotomies) on the table hints at something sinister that will probably be revealed later on in the show. Homelander realizes that Ryan has met Butcher, and he gets insanely angry. Ryan runs off into his room as Homelander loses his cool. That’s when Homelander’s alter-egos show up and tell him to go back to his origins to fix this recurring issue of not being able to handle a bit of pressure. Homelander realizes that he still has a bit of humanity left in him, and he needs to eradicate that in order to be truly ruthless. A few glimpses of an office in a basement mean that, in the next episode, Homelander is going to go where he was experimented upon to deal with his past once and for all. Is that going to make Homelander more unhinged than he is already? Let’s see.
