The Boys: Dawn of the Seven to Sage Grove

The Boys | Season 2 | Episodes 4-6
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KBear Recap [Read time: 5-7 min]

Episode 4: Nothing Like it in the World

The Church of the Collective are interviewing church members on video to pick a candidate to marry The Deep (Chance Crawford). He and Carol (Jessica Hecht) view the tapes. She picks Cassandra (Katy Breier), The Deep asks doesn’t he get to choose who he wants to marry, Carol reminds him this marriage is to rehabilitate his image. Frenchie (Tomer Capon) is getting high while Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) watches the news. She rebuffs him when he tries to kiss her. Frenchie goes to see Cherie (Jordana Lajoie). He tells her he tried to kiss Kimiko to make her feel better, Cherie asks wasn’t it really to make himself feel better. She advises him to let Kimiko grieve and give her some space. Kimiko goes to the rally Stormfront is speaking at to kill her, Frenchie follows her and persuades Kimiko not to do it.

Homelander (Antony Starr) watches a news report that has Stormfront (Aya Cash) calling for a public protest. She calls for people to be their own hero. Homelander goes to his cabin where Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) has him suck milk from her fingers. Homelander watches Taxi Driver with Madelyn and tells her he empathizes with De Niro’s character Travis Bickel. He complains about Stormfront taking his place in the Seven. Madelyn tells him to start all over again, she changes back to her real form the Doppelganger (Dan Darin-Zanco). A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) sees Shockwave (Mishka Thebaud) at Vought International headquarters. Homelander tells A-Train he is out of the Seven. He gets in the elevator with Annie (Erin Moriarty) and threatens to kill her for not killing Hughie (Jack Quaid), for still being with him. Annie tells him she’s not with Hughie, she asks Homelander if she’s lying, he detects that she isn’t and lets her live. Homelander and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) are on a talk show together. The host Maria Menounos asks about Compound V, they both say how hurt they were about this revelation and blame it all on Madelyn. Maria asks them about the lack of diversity in the Seven, Homelander answers this question by outing Maeve’s relationship with Elena, expressing how happy he is about it. Later that day, Homelander looks at memes bashing him and praising Stormfront. He confronts her, she tells him he can’t connect with the whole country. He has fans, she has soldiers. Stormfront believes he’s the type of man all of us should be, she wants to help him, and her door is always open. Homelander tells her he doesn’t need her help. Homelander is back at his cabin, Doppelganger changes from Madelyn to Homelander and offers to suck his penis. Homelander breaks his neck and declares, “I don’t need anyone but myself.”

Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) meets with Grace Mallory (Laila Robins). She tells him she dreamed about Lamplighter killing her grandkids. Grace gives him a dossier on a supe named Liberty to investigate and gives him the info to find Becca (Shantel VanSanten). Butcher passes the dossier to Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and puts him in charge of the investigation, he’s leaving to get Becca and he isn’t coming back. Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) wants a Vought tech, Anika (Ana Sani) to track Butcher. To her discomfort, he is staying with her until she finds him. Butcher breaks into the compound where Becca is being kept. He hides in her car. She drives to a secluded spot with no cameras. They kiss, she tells him she’s so sorry he thought she was dead. Becca couldn’t call him, she persuaded Homelander not to kill him by saying she would kill herself in front of Ryan and tell him it was because of Homelander. They work on a plan to break her and Ryan out of the compound. Becca meets up later with Butcher and they make love in the backseat. They discuss what’s been happening in their lives since they’ve been apart. The two meet again one last time, Becca tells him she isn’t leaving, she knows that Butcher doesn’t want Ryan, she knows he’ll figure out a way to get rid of him. She won’t leave Ryan because she doesn’t want Vought to raise him. Butcher angrily calls Ryan a supe freak. Becca tells him the hate he carries was there long before she met him. On video, Anika and Black Noir spot Butcher as he leaves the compound.

Hughie meets up with Annie, she still feels bad about trying to ‘kill’ him the other day. She thinks that revealing Compound V only made things worse. Hughie tells her these things take time; he gets a call from Milk that they have a mission to Raleigh, NC. Annie tells Hughie she can’t take any more of this and starts crying, Hughie convinces Milk to let Annie join them on their trip to North Carolina. On the car ride to Raleigh, Annie and Hughie joyfully sing We Didn’t Start the Fire, annoying Milk. The trio stop at a diner and Milk and Annie bond over doughnuts and ice cream, Milk picking out doughnuts with his father, Annie getting ice cream with her dad. Milk tells her his father died 16 years ago. When they walk out the diner a truck hits a car, Annie wants to help, but Milk and Hughie stop her, so they won’t be detected. At the motel, Annie and Hughie meet at a vending machine to discuss candy. Hughie jokes her choices in candy makes her a serial killer. She asks Hughie about Milk’s OCD; Hughie hadn’t noticed it. Annie understands wanting to have control, she tells Hughie how afraid she is that Homelander will kill her. The two go back to her room to make love. The next morning, they arrive at Valerie’s (Dawn Lewis) house to ask her about Liberty. She’s hesitant at first to talk to them, but Milk tells her how his father was an attorney who sued Vought, and the company drove him to his grave. Valerie tells them that Liberty killed her brother over 40 years ago [we see a gruesome flashback to the incident]. Vought forced her family to accept a $2000.00 settlement. She identifies Liberty as Stormfront. Back in NYC, Hughie meets up with Annie to give her an Almond Joy candy bar, she breaks up with him. She tells him they can’t afford to feel good or safe. They all are alone.

Episode 5: We Gotta Go Now

We are on the set of the Dawn of the Seven. Maeve is gay in the movie, Homelander arranged it to torture her. A video of Homelander is online showing him in a warzone killing an innocent civilian. His popularity is down 9½ points. While filming the scene ‘Girls Get it Done’, Extra reports The Deep married Cassandra. People are outside the set protesting Homelander. He wants to handle the public relations himself, Stormfront offers her help. A-Train tries to rewrite his part because it has him leaving the Seven. The Deep and Cassandra are doing a TV interview with Katie Couric. Annie’s mom, Donna (Ann Cusack) surprised her on set. Stormfront is being nice to Donna. Annie doesn’t want to deal with her mom. Stormfront indicates to Annie that she knows that Annie did the leak. Seth (Malcolm Barrett), Evan (David Reale) and Ashley (Colby Minifie) are with Eleana (Nicola Correia-Damude) and Maeve presenting them a cheesy LGBTQ+ public relations campaign. Eleana wants no part of it, she wants to go to her sister’s, but Maeve needs her to stay close to protect her from Homelander. Maeve plans on finding a way to take him down. A-Train sees the commercial The Deep did for the Church of the Collective with Stormfront. She tells him she used to be a member until they let all kinds of people in, looking directly at A-Train. He catches her racist hint. A-Train tells Ashley he can’t do his lines. She responds that he has two choices, leave with dignity and severance package, or be fired for taking Compound V, which gave him heart problems. A-Train does the scene as written. Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) holds a protest outside Vought International headquarters about Homelander, he flies in. Ashley is terrified about what he’ll do. He makes a speech that is badly received. Homelander viciously wipes out the crowd, fortunately it’s only him imagining doing it. Homelander is distressed, he goes to Stormfront for help, she’s on the phone talking to Torchlighter. Maeve shows up at The Deep’s book signing, she’ll say he isn’t that bad if he helps her with something. Annie sneaks into Stormfront’s trailer, she gets on Stormfront’s laptops and sees a message about Sage Grove. Stormfront walks in and catches her. She threatens to expose Annie for leaking the info on Compound V to MSNBC. Annie coolly threatens to tell everyone that Stormfront is Liberty. Stalemate! Homelander stops by Stormfront’s place later to say thanks, her social media advise has his popularity rating up by 5%. The two begin having sex and destroy her apartment.

Billy Butcher is at a punk club, he starts a fight and gets his ass kicked, it’s exactly what he wanted. Hughie calls Butcher to tell him about Liberty. He tells Butcher he isn’t mad about him leaving. Butcher isn’t his usual asshole self, Hughie tells Milk that Butcher was nice, Milk knows that means trouble. Butcher shows up at his Aunt Judy’s (Barbara Gordon). She is keeping his dog Terror. He takes his dog for a walk and asks him what anything was for. When they get back from their walk, Milk and Hughie are waiting for him. Butcher angrily walks out but notices Black Noir on a roof across the street. To keep him from killing them, they call a phony gas leakage report bringing the fire department to the neighborhood. Hughie helps to set traps in the house for Black Noir. Butcher plans to sacrifice himself to protect Hughie and Milk. Hughie calls bullshit on his plan. Butcher orders Hughie to move, Hughie won’t, and Milk tells Butcher he’ll have to move him too. They go to Judy’s taffy room to make their stand; Hughie finds out she’s a dealer. Judy tells Hughie he reminds her of Butcher’s deceased brother Lenny. He was the only one who was able to deal with Butcher. She thinks he needs someone like that now. Black Noir breaks into the house but set off the traps. Black Noir throws a smoke bomb, they leave the taffy room, Butcher stays to fight him. They fight, Milk joins in the fray, Hughie shows up firing a gun, Black Noir easily defeats the trio. Butcher tells him he has pictures of Ryan, proof of Homelander being a rapist. The pictures will be released if any of them are hurt. Black Noir gets a call from Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), there is a camera on Black Noir, Stan was watching all of this. Butcher and Stan make a deal. Butcher says goodbye to Terror, he apologizes for nearly throwing in the towel, he promises his dog he’s going to get Becca back. He gives Terror a Homelander squeeze doll for the dog to screw.

Kimiko does a hit on some Russian gangsters; Frenchie is following her. She meets Cherie in a church to receive her payment. Frenchie doesn’t understand, he tells her it’s poison for her soul. She signs she got her brother killed; Frenchie doesn’t understand since she won’t teach him her language.

Episode 6: The Bloody Doors Off

Eight years ago, Frenchie, Cherie, and Jay (Michael Ayres) are high and discussing The Golden Girls and their bank robbing plan. In present time, Frenchie takes out a tracking chip out of Annie’s shoulder. Butcher and Kimiko watch a Homelander and Stormfront interview on TV, they simultaneously realize the two are having sex. Annie descends into their lair, Kimiko sees her and remembers Annie, she gives her a warm hug. Butcher isn’t as welcoming, he and Annie exchange barbs. She tells them about the Sage Grove Center, Butcher want to investigate. Kimiko, Frenchie, and Milk go in as orderlies. Another flashback to eight years ago, Frenchie is in custody for trying to rob the bank, Mallory walks in and gives him a choice, work for her, or they will send Cherie and Jay to ADX Supermax. Annie makes a hole in the fence to get the fake orderlies in. Butcher is back at the van with his rifle out to cover them, he forces himself not to shoot Annie. She and Butcher get into an argument with her accusing him of being a bigot and bully just like Homelander. Before he can answer, they see Stormfront arrive. Inside the facility, Milk, Kimiko and Frenchie find out Vought is making more supes. They see Stormfront enter the facility, Kimiko has a panic attack, but Milk calms her down. One of the patients wants to go home, Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore) burns him alive. Our orderlies try to sneak out with Frenchie in the gurney, but he and Lamplighter stare at each other and Frenchie jumps off the gurney and pulls out his gun, Lamplighter tries to set him on fire but accidently burns a patient’s door. A bald girl, Cindy (Ess Hödlmoser) steps out, it’s clear Lamplighter is terrified of her. He tries to calm her down, but she uses her mind to squash a guard who shoots her.

Lamplighter, Milk, Frenchie, and Kimiko run; Cindy frees all the other patients. The patients riot and start killing the staff. Lamplighter refuses to take our crew to the front door and use the access panel to get them out. A patient who spits acid breaks in and tries to vomit in Lamplighter’s face, Kimiko stumps the dude, and his own acid burns him. Lamplighter relents and agrees to take them with him. In the Sage Grove supply room, Milk asks Lamplighter what’s going on at Sage Grove, he won’t give a straight answer, he snarks that maybe I like watching people burn. Lamplighter tells Frenchie he remembers him and asks why he didn’t stop him from burning Mallory’s grandkids, he jokes maybe Frenchie likes to watch too; Frenchie goes berserk. Flashback to five years ago, Milk shows the engagement ring he bought to propose to his future wife, Frenchie and Mallory are happy for him. Lamplighter arrives in his full outfit; they laugh at him. Mallory is blackmailing him to spy on the Seven. Mallory orders Frenchie to follow him.

Frenchie plans on using the drugs in the medical supply room to make a knockout drug. Frenchie wonders why the Seven didn’t come after them, he figures out Lamplighter didn’t tell the Seven about them. He calls Lamplighter an animal for killing Mallory’s grandkids. Lamplighter didn’t know they’d be in Mallory’s bed, he meant to kill Mallory. He saw Frenchie following him, he asks again why Frenchie didn’t stop him. Milk wonders the same thing. Flashback to that night, Frenchie is shadowing Lamplighter to his movie premiere. He gets a call from Cherie, Jay is overdosing. She begs him to come right now to save Jay. He leaves Lamplighter at the movie premiere to save Jay, Cherie is mad at Frenchie for leaving them to begin with. Frenchie makes the knockout bomb. Lamplighter finally explains what Vought is doing. They aren’t trying to make supes. The patients are test subjects, they’re trying to stabilize Compound V. Lamplighter is there to burn the evidence. Frenchie finally explains what happened that night. Jay died a few months later from another overdose. Milk asks why he didn’t tell them; Frenchie asks what difference it would it make. Milk tells him they would have let him off the hook. Frenchie: “What makes you think I want to be let off the hook, huh?” Suddenly a giant ‘sausage’ grabs Milk by the throat but Kimiko saves him. They try to use the knockout bomb on Cindy. Stormfront returns and fries her. She calls for Lamplighter, he blames the incident on a dead doctor and doesn’t mention The Boys involvement.

They receive the call that Hughie is alright. Frenchie apologizes to Kimiko for trying to save her when she never asked him to. He knows saving her doesn’t absolve him from his other sins. He’ll leave her alone now. She looks at him compassionately. Mallory drives up, they have Lamplighter in an ambulance. She’s ready to shoot him. Lamplighter wants her to kill him. Frenchie begs her not to kill him. He tells her it won’t help her. It will only end his torment. No one can punish him more than he has punished himself. She lowers her gun and asks Lamplighter what he has to offer. We see a bald headed woman get in a car, Cindy isn’t dead, she’s alive hitchhiking.

An escaped patient with EMP powers turns the van over with Hughie in it, Butcher shoots him dead, but Hughie gets shrapnel. Annie tries to cauterize his wound but can’t because the EMP patient took all the power in the area she needs to charge up. They leave so they can take him to a doctor. Annie and Butcher try to commandeer a car from Dennis (Jason Gray-Stanford), when he pulls out a gun to shoot them, Annie kills him. She’s able to cauterize Hughie’s wound now, but when she looks in the backseat, she sees an empty baby car seat. Butcher is driving to the hospital, he tells Annie she did what she had to do, Annie doesn’t want his look of respect or approval. Before she would have cried for that man, now he was in their way. Butcher and Annie get Hughie to the hospital in time. They bond on how big a dork Hughie is. The two agree he never gives up on you and is too good for either of them.

Homelander and Stormfront apprehend a criminal, they kill him and screw over his corpse. He wants Stormfront to see the flowers he bought her, she tells him she’s going to a meeting at Vought Tower, but instead she goes to Sage Grove. Homelander impatiently waits for Stormfront in her trailer, he burns it down. Stormfront shows up and he accuses her of lying, he went to Vought Tower, he angrily grabs her by the neck. Later, Stormfront meets Homelander at her apartment. She apologizes for lying and shares the truth on who she really is. The old lady in the picture she shows him is her daughter. Stormfront was born in 1919 in Berlin. She was married to the founder of Vought International, Frederick Vought. Both were members of the Nazi party; he gave her the first successful Compound V shot. Stormfront wants to fight back against the other races with an army of supermen. Homelander will be their leader, he is everything she and Frederick could hope for. She tells him she loves him with all her heart, they kiss.

The Deep delivers a camera from the plane wreckage to Maeve on set. He finds A-Train to try to recruit him to the Church. Elena accidently finds the camera; it shows the incident on the airliner. She is in shock. Maeve explains she’s going to show it to Homelander to get him to leave them alone. She explains she was afraid and should have stood up to him. Maeve asks why Elena is looking at her that way.

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The Deep delivers a camera from the hijacked airliner showing what Homelander did on the plane. Maeve hopes to use the video to blackmail Homelander to leave Eleana and her alone. Elena looks at the video and sees Maeve’s inaction, making her look at Maeve differently. That didn’t work out like Maeve hoped. The Church of the Collective picks a wife for The Deep, he wanted the hot one, but Carol chooses one who will improve his image. The church wants him to recruit A-Train, who is being pushed out of the Seven. The Dawn of the Seven begins filming and the real Seven is no where as heroic as their celluloid counterpoints. Vought tries to exploit Maeve’s relationship with a LBGTQ+ campaign that Elena wants no part of. There is tension between Annie and Stormfront, she suspects that Annie was behind the Compound V leak while Annie learns that Stormfront is the racist supe Liberty. Homelander is jealous of Stormfront’s growing popularity while his drops when he’s caught on film killing an innocent civilian in a war zone. Stormfront shows him how to use social media to pump up his popularity. This gets him on her side, and in her pants. The two begin a sexual relationship, where Stormfront confesses to him that she’s over 100 years old and a Nazi, and she wants him to lead the white race in the coming race war. I don’t think Homelander is all into that, but he does want to keep sexing her up. Let’s not forget that the man has no morals.

Annie has pretty much become a member of The Boys. She was already in with Hughie, now she’s in with everyone, including Butcher. After having a nasty confrontation with Homelander, Hughie persuades Milk to let Annie come along on their trip to Raleigh. Hughie and Annie have a goodtime on the road trip, and Annie and Milk bond. They find out Stormfront is Liberty. Annie goes on another mission with The Boys to Sage Grove, they find out Vought is conducting experiments on the patients. They confront Lamplighter, a former member of the Seven, and someone that Frenchie has history with. We learn that Frenchie was a bank robber who Mallory recruited to her team that consisted of Milk and Lamplighter, who they were blackmailing to help them. Lamplighter burned Mallory’s grandkids in bed, he set the bed on fire because he was trying to kill Mallory. Frenchie was supposed to be following him but left to save one of his friends who had overdosed. Frenchie had carried this guilt all this time. Lamplighter also feels guilty for killing Mallory’s grandkids. He’s still a monster, burning alive the patients who get out of line. One person he’s afraid of is Stormfront, the other is Cindy. Frenchie persuades Mallory not to kill Lamplighter so they can use him again against the Seven. While on this mission, Hughie gets hurt, and Annie and Butcher work together to get him to a hospital. They bond after Annie kills a man while they steal his car. Annie worries that she doesn’t feel as bad as she once would have.

These three episodes were great, we see more of the Seven’s dysfunction. Homelander kills Doppelganger after using him to imitate Madelyn; Doppelganger goes too far when he imitates Homelander and offers to give him a blowjob, would Homelander have accepted it if he was still imitating Madelyn. We and Doppelganger will never know. Stormfront happily shows her racist side to A-Train and shows her cruelty at Sage Grove. She and Homelander are a match made in Hell. Kimiko and Frenchie have their problems but begin to work them out at Sage Grove. Butcher falls apart after Becca won’t leave with him, he goes to his Aunt Judy to see his dog and sulk. Milk and Hughie go check up on him and they are forced to fight Black Noir. Butcher makes a deal with Stan Edgar to get Black Noir off them. Finally, we get some back story on Milk and Frenchie. Milk’s father was an attorney who fought Vought, they harassed him to death. We know who Milk is on this crusade. Annie also points out he has OCD. Frenchie was a bank robber who had a fluid relationship with Cherie and Jay. To protect them, he joined Mallory’s team. Frenchie was close to Milk and Mallory. That changed when Lamplighter burned her grandkids in her bed. They thought Frenchie blew off his assignment to follow Lamplighter, not being there to stop him from killing Mallory’s grandkids. Frenchie left to save Jay, but because of the guilt he felt for letting Mallory’s grandkids die, he kept this info to himself, allowing them to hate him. Tomer Capon was outstanding in this episode. Giving background info on Milk and Frenchie deepens their characters and the show. New characters are introduced, Lamplighter, Butcher’s Aunt Judy, his dog Terror, Cindy from Sage Grove, and the gigantic penis that nearly strangled Mother’s Milk. If you had told me one day, I’d watch a giant penis nearly strangle a man, I wouldn’t have believed you. Thanks, Boys, for giving me that image. I’ll never be able to look at a large sausage link the same way again. We are set up for the season’s final two episodes. As the Seven breaks more apart, the Boys begin to solidify.