Problems escalate…

Episode 5 is a spiral. The spiral of being unopposed, of getting what you wanted and having no one to speak up and say you’re wrong.

We see it in Homelander who is finally able to exact revenge on all those who he believes are against him. We see it in Hughie who’s finally got what he wanted and we see it with Butcher who has sunk to the bottom of his already impressive decline.

Part of this analysis is also the sense that complete agency is as corrosive as absolute power is corrupting.

There are three arcs here – Hughie, Homelander and Butcher.

Hughie – the naïve fool, the loser and coward. You might want to paint him as an everyman but he’s not. He’s the person we fear we might be – standing in front of opportunity and unable to get out of our own way. Too frightened to do the right thing, too naïve to understand who we are and what we might do.

Hughie, bullied, morally empty and always blowing whichever way the strongest will leads finally gets what he wants – to be able to do what he likes without fearing the consequences or suffering being reliant on anyone else. When he explains what he really wants to Starlight, we see just how badly he’s understood who he is but also how he fits and what makes him loved.

Starlight doesn’t need him to save her, but Hughie is entirely unable to see how the world might work if he’s not at the centre of it. Hughie is just as self-absorbed as both Butcher and Homelander.

In a moment of disappointment for everyone he ends up being the guy who can’t stand that his wife earns more than him and does everything he can to change that situation.

Hughie has discovered that being free to do whatever he wants comes with downsides – that there is no community in complete agency. To act completely as he wishes he has to either degrade those who would be his friends or abandon them. He manages to achieve both in his addiction to being the person he’s always dreamed of and it’s quite pathetic to watch.

As for Butcher? He’s 110% Butcher. He has one goal now and that’s to kill Homelander. He’s abandoned everything else and twisted everyone around him towards that goal; discarding and ruining them as he goes. There is no one to oppose him and those who he can’t use he discards.

Butcher is self-absorbed and given entirely free rein to whatever he wants. You might think; so far so much the same as before. Except here we see Butcher not simply manipulating, destroying and abusing those around him. We see Butcher reaching the point where there’s no one in his life who deserves to be treated as a human being. Butcher has abandoned all pretence of being human and seeing others as the same.

As for Homelander – we see Edgar’s prophecy coming true. Homelander continues to clean house and as he does so we see that nothing he does, no space he makes for himself can fill the yawning void at the centre of his being.

Homelander is a gaping pit of need which he’s covered over with sucking the life from those around him. Except they’re nearly all gone and as he becomes more and more lonely that void rises ever closer to the surface of who he is.

What kind of end comes for someone like Homelander? In the real world he’s a Putin or a Mugabe or a Stalin – paranoid, devastating and cruelly evil. There’s no sure end for these kinds of people. They’re as likely to die of old age as they are to be assassinated.

Unlike the trappings of power and the asymmetry it forces on those without it as they struggle to relate to the powerful, this episode puts each of our three main characters in a place where we see their souls corroded because no one is able to tell them ‘no’.

Each of them is alone. Each of them is surrendering what makes humans human – their social networks, obligations and commitments. We might rail against people knowing our business but it is that people know us which helps set the boundaries of our lives.

It’s relationships which remind us to offer aid, to help others and to show compassion, anger and to seek justice. For the hermit there is no justice because there can be no relationships which go wrong and need restoring.

Homelander is discovering this but he’s so small minded we only see him struggle like a trapped creature – unsure of what binds him and growing more angry and desperate with each effort to be free.

Butcher understands what he’s doing and is burning as he goes. Of all of the characters in The Boys he is the most frightening, the most dangerous because he does what he does with insight into both the cost and the consequences.

As for Hughie? He remains written as the naïve fool – following others to where he thinks there will be sunlit uplands. By the time he knows what he’s lost it will all be too late.

As usual the women have almost nothing to do. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose as the critic and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr said and it remains a big problem with the show. A problem I don’t understand because it’s easily fixable. The show has done much to tone down the problematic excesses of the comics without losing the edge or outrageous flair so I honestly don’t understand why the women get less to do, have less agency and literally less to say.

Why should Kimiko either be silent and powerful or have a voice but no power? If that’s not the very problem in microcosm I don’t know what is.

On a brighter note we do finally have more of Soldier Boy. His powers are interesting and his experiences harrowing. I am really interested in seeing where this goes and whether Butcher can hold him to their deal. I’m equally interested in seeing how he squares up to Homelander.

Verdict: A challenging episode in some ways, disappointing in others, but 100% difficult to watch the individual degradation of these protagonists as they squirm to make the world entirely in their image.

The Boys remains as scabrous as ever.

Rating? 7 bad choices out of 10.

Stewart Hotston