The first three episodes are up.

I probably won't watch until late tomorrow or the weekend.

I hope the pent up anticipation matches the quality for the entire season.

some the episodes drop on the Amazon Prime app on Thursday nights. I randomly checked for episode 5 last week and it was available on Thursday instead of Friday.

I couldn't watch on Thursday because Game 6 of the Celtics/Warriors finals was going down at the same time I found it.

I'm hoping this sixth episode drops a day early, but I have the feeling Amazon is going to hold out until Friday since it supposed to be off the walls.

right this moment.

Time to see if this Herogasm episode delivers.

plays the Homelander character. It's a shame he probably won't get any awards for how well and easily he plays such a deranged anti-hero so masterfully. I hate to say this because I am entertained by the character, but I don't see how he isn't killed by the end of the season given how far the character is already going in this first three seasons.

I am going to miss this show dearly when it runs its course. It has the right mixture of over the top action with humor and decent character development.

and no he won't get any awards, and that's a shame.

not sure i've seen anyone like him.

they've done a great job of making this show feel fresh and interesting. If things hold as they are, this feels like the best season.

To paraphrase from Chappelle's Show, Homelander is habitually line stepping on each episode and keeps on going over the line more and more. Like I said before, I am curious how the show will credibly resolve his storyline since he can't end the season on this progression.

It's pretty funny I feel so justified looking for a show about folks with superpowers for some sense of reality in resolving a storyline. I just hope I'm not too letdown by the end of the season.

I forget how fucking nuts his show gets. I was not ready for the Termite shit, and I can’t I unsee it.

This shit even veered into Snowfall territory for a second.

with all the Homelander as Trump stuff?

the flattery round table meetings.
the gutting of departments, and placing your own lackeys like the Deep
the Soldier Boy attack stuff was basically 45's initial covid reaction

it's a trip how much culture war stuff makes it into this show in general. I'm not really mad at it, I'm enjoying the fuck out of this season. just wondering if they're turning it up *too* much .

all these cheat codes they're trying to use to take out Homelander seem like they're gonna end badly.

really could have done without the hospital musical tho

in which members of Congress played a role. so, hard to say anything is too much in that respect.

at the end of the day is completely subjective, but the show started to stay towards political/social satire with the Stormfront storyline, so the stuff that going on this season isn't totally out of the blue.

The only thing that was a bit too on the nose and wasn't subtle at all was when the whole Iran-Contra/crack-cocaine pipeline to black folks in the US was spelled out in one of the episodes, but I suppose there a generation of folks that might know of that occurring and sadly this show is the first instance of it being brought to light.

I do imagine there's a grip of folks that are probably turned off by this season that happen to be Trump supporters for sure. I wonder how much the ratings are being hurt in that sense.

how do you draw parallels to trump without being on the nose? his whole thing was lacking nuance/sophistication and being completely on the nose lol.

reminds me of the criticism of 'dont look up' from many on the left.

why should creators have to walk on eggshells and not satirize arguably the most satirize-able cultural figure and followers in modern history? fear of conservative backlash? i dont get it.

>
>reminds me of the criticism of 'dont look up' from many on the
>left.
>
>why should creators have to walk on eggshells and not satirize
>arguably the most satirize-able cultural figure and followers
>in modern history? fear of conservative backlash? i dont get
>it.

And as far as this show goes, the comics are not very subtle, so I didn’t expect the show to be, but I get the OP’s point. Like them, I’m also enjoying the show, but when things get too on the nose I do kinda roll my eyes. I don’t know what the balance there is, but I think that’s partially what’s preventing it from entering the realm of shows that get serious award consideration, if that makes sense.

If you have to spell out everything, you’re not giving your audience a whole ton of credit. I liked Don’t Look Up more than most, but that’s the point people were making about that movie (and McKay’s other work), not that it should cater to climate change deniers. It’s why I don’t like Banksy’s art even if I probably agree with 99% of his opinions lol.

while political culture war stuff isn't new to the Boys, i never saw it as ramped up in a single episode as this one, with the trump paralells being the brunt of it.

and yeah numba_33 mentioned Stormfront which was on the nose as it gets but most people didn't get the reference. Shit, i didn't catch it until mid/end season.

I don't care what Trump supporters think of the show, and its def interesting how much they're choosing to lean into this stuff.
Like i said, i'm still enjoying it (trump stuff included), but I also don't feel like it's what makes the show great. So curious if they're gonna keep turning this up

I guess some fan forum had been debating it and the showrunner felt the need to explicitly state it. I haven't watched any of this season yet, but I always thought it was pretty obvious.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/boys-showrunner-confirms-homelander-trump-192140015.html

I read the books a couple of years ago but I think they came out during Obama's administration. So we didn't quite have anyone to compare to Homelander back then. I don't know how the comic's characterization would hold up when closely compared to the show.

Some of the alt-right people really thought Homelander was some kind of anti-hero, or at least a bad guy with some gray area who they thought the show would redeem somehow. Like, real-life people had that interpretation, not straw man internet commenter characters written into the show.

These clowns were just waiting on "heroes" like Trump and Homelander to come into their lives.

the sight beef Trump and Jeff Bezos had or still have between each other. I wonder if that had any influence in how this season went down.

I imagine even if ratings for this show tank or suffer as result of right wingers and/or Trump fans jumping ship, Amazon will probably still show support. If memory serves me correct, the show got greenlit for a fourth season two or three episodes in this current season.

That's part of why I enjoy it, tbh. The forceful bluntness of the satire. No misinterpretation possible. (One would think.)

link: https://slate.com/culture/2022/06/homelander-fans-herogasm-boys-amazon-trump.html

swipe:

The Boys’ Right-Wing Fans Just Had a Mind-Blowing Revelation
MAGA-heads and Bitcoin bros love Homelander memes, but they’re turning on the show that spawned them.

BY REBECCA ONION
JUNE 25, 2022 5:40 AM

The pinned tweet on the Twitter feed for The Boys is a screenshot of one of the many one-star reviews the third season of the show has accumulated since it kicked off this month with an episode that featured an extremely, uh, vivid gay sex scene. “With each season it gets worse,” writes the reviewer Aj. “VERY political and VERY anti male. Plenty of male butts and wieners though! enjoy.” “Enjoy!!!” added @TheBoysTV.

Things have been getting interesting this season for fans of Amazon’s superhero satire that offers weekly skewerings of fascism, corporate capitalism, clout-chasing, toxic masculinity, and the very idea of fandom, in no particular order. “The Boys subreddit is chaos right now,” tweeted writer Ryan Broderick last weekend, after an episode aired that featured Blue Hawk, a vigilante with a tendency toward over-patrolling Black neighborhoods, having a violent freakout at a Black community center, yelling things like “All supes matter!” “Threads are getting locked, users rage-deleting whole accounts. …. Fans who thought Homelander was cool are in a meltdown.”

Homelander, a lab-created superhero in an all-American costume, is blonde, handsome, and all-powerful—also insecure, and hair-trigger in temperament, a guy who, in Season 1, lets a whole plane full of people die to save himself the embarrassment of admitting he botched their rescue. But back in 2020, after that first season aired, a few Trump fans showed up at the Million MAGA March wearing Homelander costumes and Trump masks, a fact showrunner Eric Kripke and Homelander actor Antony Starr commented upon with incredulity. These right-wing Homelander freaks are probably few and far between, but you find them in the corners of comment sections, as on a YouTube clip titled “That Scene Where Homelander Has a Meltdown And Kills Everyone,” which depicts the character’s Season 2 fantasy of mowing down a crowd of protestors with his laser eyes. (If you’re still thinking of starting The Boys, just know that there will be blood.) Under the clip, one user commented, “What’s hilarious about this scene, for me, is that during it my dad said ‘Homelander should just laser beam a couple of them to shut them up’ and I laughed and said he couldn’t do that. Then this happened and we both laughed like crazy.” A debate ensued over whether it was “immoral” to find this funny. “Sometimes you have to use force to get things done,” another commenter wrote.

It’s that sense of the character’s transcendence of the norm that fans respond to. Bitcoin enthusiasts who turned the eyes of their Twitter avatars into lasers to promote investment in cryptocurrency (“laser eyes channel action even as they protect from dilutive distraction,” one explained) used a meme of Homelander, taken from this scene—a side view of his face, murder eyes blazing, his mouth open in delight—to spread their hashtag: #laserrayuntil100K.

Homelander’s appeal is about power and domination, but also about the actor who plays him, perfectly, as a campy villain with bullying tendencies. Human Ken doll Antony Starr, who has extremely blue eyes and a thin, bitter line of a mouth, projects an unpredictable mix of petulance and steely confidence, shifting in and out of modes on a dime. Starr’s micro-expressions have launched a thousand GIFs: Homelander looking down, then, realizing the camera is on him, donning a manic smile. Homelander dreamily tonguing a bottle of pumped breastmilk. (It’s a whole thing.) Homelander acknowledging his fans’ applause with a super-fake display of charisma. Homelander saying “Really?,” Starr compressing his lips to their thinnest and hardest. Homelander saying “I can do whatever the fuck I want,” delivering an open-eyed, squeeze-mouthed stare.

Kripke admitted to Rolling Stone that Homelander’s similarity to Donald Trump, which he’d acknowledged in the past, was, in the show’s third season, growing more “bald.” “The world is getting more coarse and less elegant,” Kripke said. “But part of it is where Homelander’s story naturally goes. He has this really combustible mix of complete weakness and insecurity, and horrible power and ambition.” Like Trump, Homelander is willing to ally himself with Nazis if it serves him—he’s not picky about their ideology so long as he gets to dominate. Like Trump, Homelander is fatphobic, disgusted by anyone whose body deviates from his idea of perfection. He’s even got a little bit of the former president’s germophobia. In the first season, Homelander kills a man by inserting his fist in his chest, then withdraws his hand, looks at his sullied gauntlet, and wipes it on the dead man, muttering “Dammit.” It makes sense that in this week’s episode, which features the comics’ much-anticipated Herogasm sequence, he doesn’t actually partake in the superhero orgy. The Homelander of the comics, a much more muscle-bound and straightforwardly evil supe, is all over it. Starr’s Homelander shows up only at the end, and only because he’s looking for another superhero he wants to kill. He has no time for pleasure, only for domination.

Homelander, like any watchable, well-played villain, invites identification. “Been rewatching The Boys before I watch season 3, and Homelander is literally me,” posted @MovieCucks on Twitter, along with a meme of Starr in costume and the text “Just be yourself and force others to do whatever the fvck you want.” The show recognizes this appeal and plays with it. The Boys isn’t a subtle show (the episode that riled up that Amazon reviewer involved an Antman-esque supe shrinking down and crawling into his lover’s urethra), but it’s good at showing how this kind of a person—unhinged, cruel, barely hanging onto a tiny bit of a sense of social obligation—brings out the worst in everyone around them. In Season 3, Ashley, the PR person at Vought (the corporation that creates and controls—or tries to control—the world’s superheroes), has the world’s most stressful job: making sure Homelander toes the line. Their relationship gets more terrifying as Homelander loses more of the inhibitions that keep him from lasering people. He always seems to be three seconds from parting Ashley’s head from her body. In one memorable scene, he says to Ashley, with Starr-perfect delivery, “Is your idiot brain getting fucked by stupid?” Later, Ashley repeats the line to someone who’s displeasing her. She’s 95 percent terrified by him, 5 percent turned on by his raging sense of impunity. Later in the season, she debuts a new blazer: white with red stripes, just like Homelander’s American-flag cape.

Perhaps it’s the third season’s new, more baldly dominating Homelander that’s got his fans finally seeing the light about the show’s intentions. Trump, of course, could always charm those who liked him by being the most “authentic” celebrity they knew. Early on in Season 3, Homelander, who is still trying to project a bland, all-American, “just glad to be of service” public image, has to repeatedly apologize for having dated the secretly Nazi supe Stormfront (Aya Cash) last season, using the canned, Vought-approved line “I’m just as human as all the rest of you.” During a live TV special celebrating his birthday, a heckler goads him into cracking his shell, finally saying what he thinks, which is that he is superior and wants to act that way. “I am done being persecuted for my strength,” he yells. He feels better, and it works. If, at the beginning of the episode, he has been behind the likeable female supe Starlight (Erin Moriarty) in the audience reaction polls, by the end, he’s gained 21 points “with white males in the Rust Belt.” With this twist, he realizes that he can (as the meme goes) do whatever he wants. And his fan base consolidates. “Sure, his language is a little salty, but he’s just saying what everyone else is too afraid to say,” one of those fans says.

What more could The Boys do to drive off its confused right-wing fans? This week, a poster to r/OutOfTheLoop shared Broderick’s tweet and asked what had happened, and why the subreddit was banning “political” threads. A mod for r/TheBoys explained, sounding exhausted, and providing a window into the stalled-out circle of discourse around this show. “We get multiple political threads posted every day that are basically the same topic rehashed over and over again,” the mod wrote. “Right-wingers are finally understanding that the show is making fun of them, they get pissy and complain about the show. A user on the sub posts about it making fun of them. Something something ‘the show makes fun of both sides.’” (Side note: I’d argue that it does. Every season, Vought engages in a new kind of “woke-washing”; this season features a spoof of the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial; the show’s AOC stand-in is secretly a head-exploding supe.) Then, the mod went on, people say, “‘Actually it doesn’t really make fun of both sides, it makes fun of liberal fake wokeness from a leftist perspective,’” then, at last, “the thread devolves into people calling each other … random racial hate speech … rinse and repeat, twenty more times that day.”

On r/TheBoys now, it is much easier to find thoughtful threads where users are picking apart the show’s subtext, debating whether it’s even possible to talk about the show without getting “political,” and marveling at the idea that anyone could watch this sly gore-fest for years and still be surprised by its politics, than it is to find people defending Homelander, Blue Hawk, and Stormfront. It may be that this recent exodus was the last hurrah for that confused specimen, the actual, real-life Homelander fan. “Me who leans right politically, learning that apparently I’m supposed to be boycotting The Boys and upset that Homelander is compared to Trump,” posted a user on Thursday. Underneath it was a gif of Antony Starr rolling his eyes.

of sorts.

not a new thing of course. I'm in a FB group for the Sopranos, and literally half the group doesn't understand that Tony's racism towards Noah (Meadow's bi-racial boyfriend) was supposed to be a shitty reflection of Tony. Since Noah was a bit of a douche, it doesn't seem like people can grasp that both things can be true.... so without fail, you see a lot of "haha buckwheat, charcoal biquette" comments when he comes up.

a few weeks back, a few posters started pumping up Noah, posting a bunch of stuff like what a bad ass, (he stood up to Tony, deflowered and dumped his daughter.. legend!) It was mostly just a means of trolling the racists in the group, and it worked because some were noticeably getting upset.. "enough aleady!" (insert the word 'woke' anywhere), announcing like a little kid that they're leaving the group. it was pretty funny.

circling it back to this it seems they wanted to be more deliberate in the yes, this is Trump, you idiots, and not in a good way, type of thing. it doesn't necessarily change my own feelings about it since i don't really care what some reddit bro thinks of the show, but it's interesting.

>of sorts.
>
>not a new thing of course. I'm in a FB group for the Sopranos,
>and literally half the group doesn't understand that Tony's
>racism towards Noah (Meadow's bi-racial boyfriend) was
>supposed to be a shitty reflection of Tony. Since Noah was a
>bit of a douche, it doesn't seem like people can grasp that
>both things can be true.... so without fail, you see a lot of
>"haha buckwheat, charcoal biquette" comments when he comes
>up.
>
>a few weeks back, a few posters started pumping up Noah,
>posting a bunch of stuff like what a bad ass, (he stood up to
>Tony, deflowered and dumped his daughter.. legend!) It was
>mostly just a means of trolling the racists in the group, and
>it worked because some were noticeably getting upset.. "enough
>aleady!" (insert the word 'woke' anywhere), announcing like a
>little kid that they're leaving the group. it was pretty
>funny.
>
>circling it back to this it seems they wanted to be more
>deliberate in the yes, this is Trump, you idiots, and not in a
>good way, type of thing. it doesn't necessarily change my own
>feelings about it since i don't really care what some reddit
>bro thinks of the show, but it's interesting.


That all begs the question how responsible the show runners and actors are for how the audience wants to interpret the show. Somewhat odd that a comic book show makes it possible to have this discussion. I suppose that shows how odd reality is in this country.

I am somewhat curious how Antony Starr is viewing this since he isn't American. That article describing him as 'Human Ken doll' was such a wild dis to how well he's playing the character since he could easily go overboard given how heightened extremes are on this show.

i think its because i dont hear about maga much anymore. maybe i just disconnected but its more of a memory now so it seems a bit dated. i know we're not in the clear at all but it is different than when trump was still in office.

either way its definitely a nitpick.

Not even because of the orgy, but that fight scene, holy mother of God. I was on pins and needles. And that shit *never* happens during a superhero movie, lol. I'd forgotten what it was like to watch heroes fight and wonder if they'd die.

i'm assuming Homelander doesn't fall this season but i have no idea how much he's damaged between Starlight, Butcher, Soldier Boy etc...

but damn just craziness all around in this episode

the blue hawk drag was deeply satisfying, even though it may be the ultimate sacrifice

i'm less engaged in the Frenchy/Kimiko stuff though. It's not bad, it just feels disconnected rn and less interesting than the main story.

lol @ 'imagine'

>i'm less engaged in the Frenchy/Kimiko stuff though. It's not
>bad, it just feels disconnected rn and less interesting than
>the main story.

Yeah, it's a testament to how much suspense and tension are building in our main plotlines that Frenchy/Kimiko, which has more or less been "the heart" of the show to this point, feels like a distraction. And it definitely gives the vibe of one or both of them dying at season's end-- lots of stuff about how they both want out, they both need the other, they both loathe who they've been, etc. Feels like one of them makes an ultimate sacrifice. I don't know, maybe I'm just assuming, but their stuff has really felt like "there's no escape but death" this season.

Homelander definitely has his hands full. There's obviously no chance he dies, though, lol. The show is just so centered on him. It did lead me to wonder what consequence he might face, though. Maybe the loss of some of his power. Maybe capture at the hands of Butcher/Vought.

But more realistically, it just leads to his further ascension. A run for President certainly feels directly in line with what they've been building toward, lol.

>lol @ 'imagine'

I laughed hard.

to mention the acting Laz Alonso did in the episode as well. I thought he showed so decent range during the episode, which could have easily gone to shit given the heightened circumstances his character was put into.

I given how finite the majority of the characters story arcs are at the moment, I have to imagine the fourth season will be the last one.

it's MM

his gassing Solder Boy flopped miserably (even worse when SB was like "who?") his buddies sold out in a sense by injecting V, his daughter is being raised by a homelander groupie...

dude's got the most integrity of anyone on the show... with maybe Annie following, so it makes sense for them to team up.

shit was so tragic every time he squared up

>Not even because of the orgy, but that fight scene, holy
>mother of God. I was on pins and needles. And that shit
>*never* happens during a superhero movie, lol. I'd forgotten
>what it was like to watch heroes fight and wonder if they'd
>die.

rarely do you get to see such a well earned ass whupping actually doled out.

I cheered in my living room. It gave big Stormfront vs. the women, vibes.

Actual stakes! Actual characters! Lighting! Coherent camera angles! No massive plaster of muddy CGI sheen over the whole thing! It's a miracle!

>Lighting! Coherent camera angles!

Sometimes it's like the directors don't actually want us to see the action.

a show with flying people, and laser eyes, and exploding heads, and 12 foot dicks...

is that Mother's Milk's baby mama could go from him to THAT dude. maybe i missed it but has this ever been explained? lol

the big reveal in this episode seemed so obvious, yet i never even considered it. great execution.

really, this show is so fun. it's just a god mix of like, literally everything

there a moment of mild shock then "of course"

She knows str8 up what's up with Homelander/Soldier Boy and the like. Why does she put up with dude's hero worship?

it appears as if MM's obsession and need to take down the Supes (as result of his trauma from Soldier Boy) drove him from his marriage and being an up close father to his daughter. It also looks as if MM in a sense drove his ex to the current boyfriend since it appears he is the opposite of MM in numerous ways.

As much as the tugging at the heart string moments bothered me in the seventh episode, I do like how the different plates were spun in terms of how so many characters are at odds with each other for various reasons.

The big reveal at the end was nicely done given how completely different Homelander's origin was explained in the comics. A very small part of me wonders how much Garth Ennis likes how much this show has diverged from his comics, especially given how different the AMC Preacher show diverged from those comics as well.

based on eighth episode. I won't reveal what happened since I'm guessing folks will wait until tonight to watch, but pretty it's remarkable how much the show runners have diverged from the comics in terms of plot points and have managed to make the show far superior to the comics.

Going to be sad to see this show go away once the last season ends in what I'm assuming will be the end of 2023 or more than likely 2024 since I heard they show will just started filming the fourth season in August.

Antony Starr should really get more work as result of this show. The layers he brings to such a deranged character is pretty rare. Almost reaches Bryan Cranston-Breaking Bad level in terms of how well he plays Homelander. It would be been way easier for him to make Homelander a mustache twirling over the top villain given how over the top the show is.

Also curious where A-Train story goes in the last season as well.

and Starr was perfectly good in it, but pretty one note. it's nothing as impressive as we're seeing here.


>Antony Starr should really get more work as result of this
>show. The layers he brings to such a deranged character is
>pretty rare. Almost reaches Bryan Cranston-Breaking Bad level
>in terms of how well he plays Homelander. It would be been way
>easier for him to make Homelander a mustache twirling over the
>top villain given how over the top the show is.

its hard to take him seriously as a villain anymore w/ how many ppl put hands on him this season. the power scaling in this show doesnt match up to the characters billing at all

i wonder if with someone like Maeve, he can't bring himself to go full force against her, because he ripped Noir's guts out like it was nothing, and I doubt Starlight's ex boyfriend was much of a task (what was that dude's power anyways?)

They made it pretty clear he's been mentally unraveling with all of this. I have to imagine that plays a massive role in him not just dusting the heroes he's been fighting.

An emotionally unstable Homelander should be more of a threat, not less