Right off the bat, I want to say that I support and agree with the message/commentary that S3 is trying to say. That isn't the problem, it's the way they try and portray it.

I finished rewatched S3 with a friend yesterday, and we both kept rolling our eyes a lot. The Starlight and MM situation is the worst in all honesty, since Starlight is a hypocrite but MM is excused since PTSD. Starlight has shown to work along the boys several times, and even KILLED an innocent man in S2 bc they just needed his car with zero remorse. However Starlight, aka writers, want to be seen as a morally upright person, bc they don't want to team up with a Murderer. Which considering all the context before this season is absolutely hilarious and just straight stupid.

2nd of all, she spends the entire series talking about how she is no longer scared or needed Vought to be who she is. Which, I can't tell if that she is just outright bluffing or legit smooth brain. Since saying that she isn't scared of Homelander is a complete and utter joke, bc the moment he even puts his hands on her she is going to be screaming and panicking like a mad lad. And with Vought, they're vought. If they never existed she wouldn't have her powers in the first place lmao. So idk why she tries to hard to look and talk all tough, when literally it could all be shattered in a matter of seconds

The next thing is PTSD, which I would say they actually depicted pretty well. However, the difference in treatment between Soldier Boy's and MM's PTSD is horrible. MM's PTSD is treated with the upmost seriousness and something that the viewers should totally sympathize with. And yet, when Soldier Boy has his PTSD melt down, and accidentally killed/harmed people, it's just overlooked. Yell at him calling him a murderer, even though he has openly stated that whenever he has these breakdowns he doesn't mean or want to hurt anybody. And like I said earlier Starlight looks at this and says that he is the bigger threat than fucking Homelander of all people.

It's just annoying how MM's PTSD is treated like it actually matters and Soldier Boy's is actively looked over by everybody except Hughie and Butcher. Which is my last point, they try and depict Soldier Boy has this ultra macho man, omega racist, psychopath. And yet, as I mentioned in another post, he is anything but that when actually on screen. So he just ends up being a really entertaining character, that my friend said outright "if soldier boy is dead, I'm going to drop the show" and was very confused when they called him a "racist piece of shit". I had to remind him about burringham hosing situation, but that's my point here. The way that they wrote Soldier Boy is fun and entertaining, but as a way of telling a message, they completely and utterly failed.

Season 3 is a fun piece of the Television media, but it is a MASSIVE step down, with their messaging and overall quality.

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I'd like to see flashback scenes of the Seven in their prime, when they had Lamplighter on the team, as well as Mr. Marathon.

Karen is honestly the best actor I've interacted with at a convention, top 2 at least.

Her autograph line was long but nobody was rushed through. She took her time with everyone and was happy to chat and hear what you had to say.

For the photos, she understood the assignment. She complimented me on my costume and asked me what pose we should do. I said we should use The Force and she said that's exactly what she was thinking.

These convention photographs are always brief 20 second interactions but she made even a small moment memorable.

Isn't it great to meet someone famous you've admired on screen and find out they're pretty cool in person.

In Diabolical, Homelander and Stillwell’s relationship clearly goes back to the early 2000’s. So are we meant to believe then that Stillwell was mothering him during his relationship with Maeve?

I feel like marie from Gen V will be the one (or a big help) to kill homelander as she managed to tank homelanders laser eyes (unless he intentionally did it to prevent killing her), what do you think?

in the last episode. but I think this is a perfect opportunity to have him get stronger. he's never once had an actual challenge before, now he has. now he would get stronger, training, more drugs pumped into him, something like that. because being stabbed through the ear into your brain is pretty pathetic for him.

Has this warning been shown before? I don’t typically pay too much attention to the warnings bc they usually have been the same.

imagine your parents forcing you to do things like hero pageants knowing your powers are still relatively new and they hurt you to use

Just finished the comics last night, while rewatching the series I’m reminded the reinvention they did with Female/Kimiko is probably their best change up. I enjoyed the comics thoroughly, but the little icing they added like that in the show really did make this one of this best literary adaptations I’ve seen.

I know this one is out there, but;

If/when Homelander were to die, whether it be due to old age or (somehow) in combat, would an autopsy even be possible to perform? Would his impervious skin persist into death? Is just the skin impervious? What about the rest of the organs?

I mean, you just know that Vought, or whomever, would want to do testing on his remains. Vought would certainly would want to study his mutated DNA so that his best traits could hopefully be selected for with future experimentation.

Again, sorry for the odd question. it’s late and I’m having one of those nights with silly questions poking my brain every time I close my eyes.

So after having watched the boys but never read the comics, there's a common source being used here as the inspiration for the "bad superheroes trope" that i don't think everybody is aware of and it lends a great bit of context to everything, especially the enduring issues that the heroes in the Boys represent. This common source is none other than the bunk and hokum that is Fredric Wertham's book The Seduction of the Innocent AKA the book that killed the golden age of comics.

You see back in the 50s America had a major problem with juvenile delinquency. So Rather than come to grips with the fact that those kids were products of two separate generations traumatized by World wars, were dealing with rapid industrialization and changing social and civil issues, the advent of rock and roll, as well as growing up under the cloud of the atomic age and burgeoning Cold War, like almost every generation, parents and the gov't went looking for a single thing they could kill with a silver bullet. something they could blame every social ill the kids had on. They picked Comic books. (later generations would pick video games, the internet etc.). and to be fair some of the comics of the time were gruesome. But in the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearing besides genuinely objective material, The Seduction of The innocent was brought in as an authoritative work on the subject despite the fact that Fredric Wertham was of ill repute in the field of psychiatry and the book itself used spurious data, completely fictional cases and relevant personal experiences were left out. The book was maintained as being authoritative however and the senate hearing is what eventually led to the Comic Book Code Authority and the end of the golden age of comics.

But what does this have to do with the Boys?

In the book Wertham described the "insidious influences" behind the depictions of the most popular superheroes:

Superman represented Fascism and ideas of racial superiority and eugenics.

Wonder Woman was a dangerous feminist who likely was a lesbian (which was viewed contemporaneously as a mental disorder along with homosexuality in general) and whose influence had an emasculating effect on male readers.

Batman was a homosexual and pederast because of his relationship with Robin

People like Captain America and Hour man promoted Drug abuse.

The list goes on but these depictions should look familiar because not only do these exist in The Boys but theyre also the basis for characters in everything from the Venture Bros to The Tick to The Ambiguously Gay Duo SNL Skit. Theyre enduring stereotypes and parody that stem from a common source, and its almost ironic that theyre popular because they essentially helped almost destroy the genre that they now exist in.

Speculation ahead:

There are also comic books that use these depictions to comment on the toxicity of nerd culture but those are controversial books in and of themselves and are off topic for this sub, suffice to say theyre used in that fashion in The Boys as well to make several points IMO:

There are elements of nerd fandom that act in ways and believe in things antithetical to the superheroes that they claim to love. meaning that They have toxic, bigoted or ignorant views that spit in the face of everything that superman and captain america et al. are supposed to represent.

well if those people believe in those things, how can they like those superheroes? if they dont like those superheroes, what would a superhero look like that actually support what they represent? what kind of superhero would those people deserve to have.

And what ends up happening is that authors of these comics pull the superhero caricatures from The Seduction Of The Innocent to say "These are the superheroes these people want and deserve. all the worst views of the fandom are embodied in these caricatures, and like the book itself will end up destroying it in turn."

Anyway Apologies for getting a bit preachy at the end but I thought a phenomenon this popular deserved the context of one of the places these bad superhero stereotypes come from. I hope this was in any way educational, even with my editorializing.

i feel it’s no way that homie survives everything in the end but what if kripke just through a fastball and had homelander actually being victorious against the boys

Title. Watching through seasons 1 and 2 now, why didn't a boys member not just take a crash course in Japanese?

I know it's a very hard language, but with software tools nowadays, you can probably learn to understand basic phrases like "this individual is my brother" (actual plot point, remember) with a few weeks of hard work.

That's before we get into software translators.

I know it wouldn’t include the Black Noir reveal, but would the writers make Homelander hit rock bottom and have him kill the President?

I think it would be cool to see it in live action, I’m just not sure how the whole thing would fully play out with the shows plot.

Tell me what you think!

…is the teenage superhero.

Now before anything starts talking about Gen V: yeah, I know.

But here’s the difference: Gen V isn’t deconstructing and parodying the “teenage superhero” trope. It’s deconstructing and parodying the “superhero school” trope.

A “superhero school” story is something like MHA, where teenagers are learning to become established superheroes. A regular “teenage superhero” story would be something like Young Justice or Teen Titans, where the teenagers are already established superheroes.

Something like that would fit well into The Boys for two reasons I can think of:

1. It fits the setting. The Boys consistently tells us how superheroes would NOT work in real life and how much it would suck for them to exist. And teenagers aren’t well known for being intelligent. What better way to drive home the “Superheroes suck” narrative than having a teen hero accidentally wipe out a building?

2. Teenage stuff sells. There’s a good reason why almost every adaptation of Spider-Man starts with him in high school. There’s a good reason why shows like Gotham and Smallville are so popular. There’s a good reason why the Teen Titans are one of the most popular superhero teams out there. Teenagers. Sell. It would make sense for a money-hungry corporation like Vought to make teen heroes considering how popular they are.

What do you think?