The Boys: Are Back in Town

The Boys | Season 2 | Episodes 1-3
Feature image

For a quick read, go to Review. For a complete summary, go to Recap.

KBear Recap [Read time: 5-7 min]

Defense Secretary Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) and his staff meet with Vought International CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) and his staff on having the supes in the military. Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) destroys a supe terrorist hideout. Homelander (Antony Starr) eulogizes Translucent at his funeral; Annie January/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) sings to an empty glass coffin. Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) is rehired to take over Madelyn Stillwell’s old job. When she tries to pick a new team member for the Seven, Blindspot (Chris Mark), [a blind supe] Homelander smashes his ear drums to let Ashley know he’s in charge. Stan Edgar picks a new supe to join the Seven, Stormfront (Aya Cash). She has a huge online following and isn’t impressed by either Homelander or Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott). Homelander confronts Edgar about her hiring. Edgar informs him that he knows Homelander is the one who provided Compound V to terrorist. He adds that Vought International isn’t a superhero company, it’s a pharmaceutical company and he doesn’t have to consult Homelander about anything. Frustrated, Homelander visits Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten) and his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti). She is powerless to do anything about it.

Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) watches the funeral on his phone. He, Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Kimiko Miyashiro (Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) are staying under a pawn shop in New York with drug dealers. They find out the drug dealers are also smuggling people, one of them being a supe terrorist. Hughie persuades the team to contact Susan Rayner (Jennifer Esposito). Before she can share her suspicions her head explodes at the scene. Milk and Frenchie contact Billy Butcher (Karl Urban); he returns but Hughie isn’t happy. Annie and Hughie meet on a subway car. He wants her to meet with an old acquaintance to get a sample of Compound V to give to the media. Annie goes to a shady motel and records Gecko (David Thompson) letting a man chop off his arm for $400. His arm grows back. She ‘runs’ into him at a diner and blackmails him to steal a sample of Compound V at the Vought lab where he works. The Deep (Chance Crawford) is at a bar in Ohio getting drunk watching the funeral coverage. He is arrested for drunkenly freaking out the kids at the water park he works at, a supe named Eagle the Archer (Langston Kerman) bails him out of jail. He introduces him to Carol (Jessica Hecht), a representative from the Church of the Collective. To get the Deep to join their cult, she offers to get him back in the Seven.

Episode 2: Proper Preparation and Planning

Butcher looks over notes he made to find Becca’s house again. At Susan Raynor’s funeral, Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) sees an edible arrangement, she knows it’s from Butcher. He meets her in a parking garage. He tells her about Becca and what he wants. Butcher tells the Boys he met with Mallory, if they hand her the terrorist the CIA will scrub their records. The Boys go on the hunt for the terrorist in a party supply store. Kimiko finds the terrorist, Kenji, (Abraham Lim), they hug, Frenchie realizes that earlier she was trying to tell him she has a brother. Butcher tries to shoot him, but Hughie knocks him over to stop him. Kenji has telekinesis powers and hits them with the aisles of party supplies. He and Kimiko run off. Butcher finally comes clean and tells them he saw Becca, Mallory will help him find her if they get the terrorist. Kimiko and her brother are sitting on swings discussing what they have been through. Kenji tells Kimiko the Americans destroyed their village. He is now a member of Shining Light, he’s in America to get payback. The siblings have a super fight and Kimiko subdues him. The Boys arrive in their van to pick them up. Butcher punches Hughie and threatens to kill him if he comes between him and Becca again.

Homelander plays catch with Ryan. He wants Ryan to use his powers. Becca and Homelander disagree on how Ryan should be raised. Becca drives to a guard post, her house is in in a Vought compound. She demands Vought protect her and Ryan from Homelander. A Vought rep tells her corporate has decided not to interfere, they don’t want to make Homelander mad. He assures her that he will get bored and move on. Homelander tells Ryan the truth about his childhood. Becca demands he leave; Homelander threatens to tell Ryan his life is all a lie. With his super hearing he heard Becca talk to the Vought representative. Carol administers a personality test to The Deep. She tells Eagle the Archer she’s not making progress with him. Eagle gives The Deep some tea laced with drugs to set him on a psychedelic journey. The Deep’s Gills (Patton Oswald) talk to him. The Gills tell The Deep what’s wrong with him but assures The Deep he deserves to be loved. They sing You Are So Beautiful together.

To promote Stormfront’s admittance into the Seven, Vought has the Seven’s three female members on a press junket called “Girls Get it Done”. Maeve gets a call that Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude) is in the hospital, she bails. Starlight and Stormfront keep being asked the same stupid questions about being girls and superheroes. Stormfront gets tired of the questions and gives the press some attitude. Annie is impressed. The press asks Starlight about A-Train (Jesse T. Usher), she’s shocked when they tell her he’s there. A-Train strolls out while Annie tries to hide her terror. When she talks to him privately, she finds out he remembers what happened that night. Later at the junket, Gecko gives Annie the Compound V. A-Train sees the handoff, he searches her, not knowing she put the Compound V in Stormfront’s backpack. Maeve is at the hospital and finally tells Eleana how horrible Homelander really is. She has been keeping Eleana on the down low to protect her. Annie tells Stormfront she agrees with what she’s saying, Stormfront advises Starlight to drop the mask and to tell people to fuck off. Annie retrieves the Compound V. After the junket, A-Train shows up at Annie’s place threatening to expose her, she turns the tables and blackmails him about killing Popclaw. A-Train leaves defeated.

Episode 3: Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men

Hughie listens to Billy Joel on a yacht. He tries to ignore Butcher’s apology for punching him, he tries to punch him back but doesn’t land a solid blow. Grace calls Butcher to check on Kenji, she asks how Kimiko is dealing with it, Butcher threatens to neutralize her if necessary. Both Frenchie and Kimiko hear him. Kimiko joins her brother, and they talk about their time in camp. He asks her to let him go. Watching the newscast about Compound V, Hughie informs Milk and Frenchie that he and Annie are behind it. They are thrilled and proud of Hughie, Butcher isn’t impressed and warns them to keep their guards up, things could go sideways. Frenchie brings Kenji a bag of chips and a can of soda. He asks Kenji to teach him their sign language. Kenji tells Frenchie how Kimiko stopped talking when their parents were killed and how they created their own sign language in camp. He won’t teach it to Frenchie. Frenchie leaves the chips and soda can. Even though his hands are bound, he’s able to crush the can and use it to cut his binding. Hughie calls Annie and leaves her a rambling message. A NYPD helicopter orders them to stop, Butcher stole the yacht they are on. Kenji crashes the helicopter.

Homelander is having breakfast with Becca and Ryan. He tries to teach Ryan to fly and pushes him off the roof, Ryan isn’t hurt. Becca confronts Homelander who grabs her arm and threatens her. Ryan pushes him off her and his eyes light up. Homelander is proud to see this and tells Ryan he’s like him. Ryan tells him he’s not like him and hates him. A-Train leaves a club in the middle of the morning, his heart is racing. At Vought Towers, a movie director, Adam Bourke (P.J. Byrne) gives a presentation to the Seven on the new movie they will be filming, The Dawn of Seven. Stormfront doesn’t like its portrayal of women. Ashley receives a message and quickly leaves. The existence of Compound V has been leaked to the media. She asks Stan Edgar about it; he tells her not to worry. After the presentation, A-Train catches up with a happy Starlight and asks her what she has done. She warns him if she goes down, she’s taking him with her. Maeve talks to Elena on the phone, she’s sure her father knew about it. Elena thinks they can use this to get away from Vought. Homelander walks in and asks who Elena is. He didn’t know Maeve had any friends, she mentions the big news, which Homelander hadn’t heard yet. Eagle the Archer and The Deep discuss the news. Carol joins them and tells The Deep it’s his time to rejoin the Seven. Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is on TV calling for congressional investigations on Vought, the Vought team is trying to figure out how to spin this. Edgar sees a picture of Kenji and knows what to do. He meets with the Seven and orders them to get the terrorist. A-Train and Maeve don’t want to bail Vought out of trouble. Homelander rallies the team, telling them they aren’t doing it for Vought, but are doing it for themselves because they are family. Stormfront is impressed.

The Deep attacks The Boys with sharks. The yacht starts sinking so they board the yachts speed boat. The Deep shows up riding a whale, Butcher runs the speed boat into the whale. Hughie is stuck inside the whale; he won’t get out because he’s given up. Milk convinces him to get up. Milk tells Butcher he’s pushing them to hard, especially Hughie. He tells Butcher that Hughie is his canary. If Butcher loses his canary, he won’t know when he’s gone too far. The Seven arrive, they won’t let The Deep join them on the hunt. A-Train speeds through the storm tunnel but stops because of his heart, Homelander sees this. Starlight finds Hughie and blasts him because Homelander is behind her. He orders her to kill Hughie and threatens to kill them both if she doesn’t. Butcher emerges from the shadows with a surprise, Kenji causes the street to fall on Homelander. Kenji makes a run for it, Kimiko follows him. Stormfront catches them in front of an apartment building and blasts them with her lightning. She callously kills the apartment building’s black residents. She catches up with Kimiko and tries to kill her, but Kenji rescues her. She brutally breaks his hands telling him to open his eyes, she likes to see the light fade out. She snaps his neck and calls him a yellow bastard. Homelander arrives but he’s too late to kill the terrorist himself. In a photo op at a relief station where the Seven passes out supplies, Stan Edgar blames the damage on Kenji and praises Stormfront from preventing more. The Boys are back at their hideout watching it on TV, the event reunites them as a team. Homelander jealously watches Stormfront receive the public acclaim.

KBear Review [Read time: 1-3 minutes]

The episode picks up after last season’s finale, the government and Vought are working together to defeat the new supe terrorist threat. Black Noir wipes out a terrorist base, killing everyone but a small child who he plays or terrorizes with a toy. What a cutup. Translucent is buried in a clear coffin, of course it’s empty since Hughie blew him up into pieces, but the Vought brass cover story is he died fighting the supe terrorist overseas. Ashley is hired to replace Madelyn who Vought blames for the supe terrorist. Homelander immediately tells her he’s in charge now and makes a blind supe deaf to prove his point. Homelander finds out the big boss Stan Edgar only sees him as an underling. He appoints a new member to the Seven, Stormfront, a social media quiz. She isn’t impressed with the other members of the Seven, nor how they operate. She isn’t taking any gruff from anyone, Annie is impressed. Before you like her too much, they show at the end of episode three that she might be the worse supe. Butcher is missing for most of episode one, the rest of the Boys are hiding with some drug dealers Frenchie knows. They use Mother Milk’s medic skills to batch up their fellow dealers. These guys have a side business of smuggling people, one of the people they smuggled in is a supe terrorist. They inform Susan Raynor whose head explodes in a bloody scene. They are forced to contact Butcher for help. We find out that after seeing his formerly dead wife Becca and her son Ryan, Homelander dumps him in front of a restaurant. He doesn’t know where Becca’s home is and makes a deal with Grace Mallory to help him find Becca. The Boys only have to turn the supe terrorist over to her. It’s not that simple, because the supe is Kimiko’s long-lost brother. After the U.S. government destroyed their village, he joins the terrorist group that kidnapped them to get revenge. Kimiko tries to protect him but she can’t protect him from Stormfront who is a murderous, racist bitch. She takes great pleasure in killing him. I guess she isn’t the cool feminist she pretends to be. Both Annie and Hughie are in bad shape, their only solace is working together secretly to bring Vought down. They get a sample of Compound V to reveal how the supes are created, but Vought is able to use the supe terrorist threat, Homelander created, to get out of it. Annie is rightfully terrified, with Homelander threatening her, and A-Train coming out of his coma, but she’s able to [barely] hold it together. Hughie is pretty much out of it, but regains purpose with the rest of his team after Kimiko’s brother is killed and they have a new threat to confront.

The first three episodes were great, a fantastic way to reintroduce us to the Boys’ world. The world is expanded with all the new threats and characters. The new big bad is Stormfront, played by Aya Cash. They do a good job of hiding how terrible a person she is, but when they reveal her real personality, they do it with a bang. She is going to give Homelander a run for his money. Antony Starr is great as ever as Homelander, he’s just smart enough to get himself into trouble, and powerful enough to get himself out of it. It’s harder for him to keep up his phony persona, the cracks keep show. The Deep is such a loser that it’s funny, Chance Crawford is doing a great job with him. The writers are introducing a Scientology subplot with him. I really like that they are developing Kimiko as a character, starting with giving her a name and allowing Karen Fukuhara to do more than act like a feral animal. Billy Butcher is still the bastard we all love, but Karl Urban is displaying more of his desperation. Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty as Hughie and Annie still bring the purity of their characters, but show how the actions of the first season have smudged up their souls. Annie is tougher now, but she still fights to remain a good person. The show’s humor is as irrelevant and bloody as ever. Exploding heads will be a theme this season. The chase scene on the open seas was great, ending with running into the whale. I hope no one was eating when that happened. I can’t wait for the rest of the season.

Season Two Trailer