The Boys Season 3 Episode 4, dropped on Amazon Prime Video on 10th June. So it’s time to take a butchers (get it?) at all the easter eggs, hidden details and things you missed in it. There are major callbacks to the comic in this episode and we’ll be talking about what originally happened in them and comparing it to what we get here.
So far the season has had Homelander teasing that he’s going off the deep end but in this episode, he really goes supersonic.
Spoiler alert and as I’m sure you can guess we will be talking about everything so if you haven’t had a chance to check it out then I highly recommend that you check out now.
The episode opens with the real-life American TV show Solid Gold hosting Soldier boy. This series started in 1980 and it ran for 8 years, hosting several singers and dancers, like what we get here. The show was criticised for being pretty corny and the New York times stated that it devolved into becoming a parody of itself due to soap opera-esque storylines that we sewed throughout the series. The tracks were also heavily mimed, meaning that it was all image which of course mirrors Vought.
Soldier Boy performs the song Rapture by Blondie which made its tv debut on Solid Gold. It’s credited as being the first-ever rap video broadcast on MTV but it has a bit of a controversial legacy to it. Debbie Harry is often mistakingly said to be the first rapper which, yeah isn’t true and it devalues Kool Herc a bit who is said to have kickstarted the genre. However, you have others that say she recognised the art form and brought it to the masses which helped to propel hip-hop into the mainstream. There’s some reflection here in Soldier Boy who’s credited as being a hero but really he killed some of Mother’s Milk’s family.
Mother’s Milk is of course a massive rap music fan and we see him watching the performance and remembering when he saw it as a kid with his family. There are also flashes of a toy car and we learned in the newspaper clippings that Soldier Boy forced his family’s car off the road which killed several of them.
Cut to the FlatIron building which was also the headquarters of the Boys in the comics. Hughie confronts Butcher about V24 and though he berates him for taking it, by the end of the episode he himself also injects it too. Hughie ends up punching through a security guard in Russia which actually plays somewhat on the first time that he killed someone in the comics. After being injected with Compound V for the first time, Hughie ended up punching through The Blarney Cock who he and the Boys had been spying on. Hughie didn’t know his own strength and he felt guilty about it for weeks after, until Blarney returned as a zombie due to V basically firing up the neurons in someone after they died. A hamster wrapped in cling film that had been shoved up Blarney’s erm…we’ll not go into that, actually ended up climbing out of him which Hughie ended up keeping as a pet. We even get a potential nod to that Hamster later on out in Russia.
Now when we last left them, Mr Steal Yo Supes (Homelander) had just announced that he and Starlight were a couple. However, what he’s here to talk about is the birthday rant and how the media are reporting on it. Homelander cites it as being fake news and he pays lip service to there being powerful people within Vought that pull the strings. We then cut immediately to Stan Edgar meeting Victoria “Nadia” Neuman, the three of which all have major arcs in this entry.
Homelander ends up ousting Edgar through Vic who exposes him during a press conference. Edgar here uses whatever he can to try and keep Homelander in line and he even suggests her using FCC fines for him dropping F-bombs on tv.
This show’s main theme at the moment is all about power and what people will do to attain it. We of course have Homelander, the most powerful man on Earth who’s dismantling the beuaracracy to get to the top. Edgar, who’s attempting to use red tape to stop him and also Billy, who’s taking V24 at the expense of his own principles. Starlight wants to quit the Seven but she’s being coerced into staying with them. The Deep was willing to eat his best buddy Timothy just to get back in the group and there are also several characters in the group that fit this theme.
Supersonic was warned not to join the team but the allure of power was too much. A-Train is running on borrowed time and if he uses his power again he could potentially have a fatal heart attack. So he’s now trying to gain power through other means, namely by using his image to give him ins to social causes.
Lastly is Hughie, someone completely powerless who’s now stuck with feelings of jealousy over his 
supes-girlfriend and her new “boyfriend”, Homelander. When talking to Starlight later on he says he’ll save her for once but Homelander arrives and spoils the fun. He signs Hughie’s fleshly minted cast and almost pressures him into talking about their sex life. Though he stands up to Homelander, Starlight is the one who steps in. I think it’s this feeling of inadequacy that makes him end up attempting to gain power himself which we’ll talk about later on.
Hughie also carries on wearing band t-Shirts and we can catch him donning one for Foreigner.
Neuman is terrified that Homelander will come for Zoe in retaliation and by the end of the episode she ends up injecting Compound V into her as a way to protect her. Now at this point, Billy and Frenchy go to meet Little Nina. In the comic the main arc that this episode is based on started at Issue 11 and it followed The Boys as they went to Russia to investigate supes whose heads had been exploding. In it, we discovered that there was a variant of V that had been placed into certain ones which made them a ticking time bomb. This was overseen by Little Nina who was selling this version on the black market on behalf of Vought.
There’s a scene in the source material where she met with James Stillwell who in the comics was the CEO of Vought. Also huge shoutouts to everyone who pointed out that the kid who was a teleporter at Red River was actually Madelyn Stillwell’s son. Whether he’ll come back or not we don’t know but him being able to teleport explains how he managed to escape the explosion at the end of the first season.
Thank you to everyone who corrected me on that.
Now in the comics, Nina was a completely ruthless killer who had over a 2,000 body count like Ryan Arey’s mom. There are rumours were that she had taken over the St Petersburg racket after killing her father and she was brought in by Vought to help stage a coup. She was tasked with injecting all the Russian ones with the explosive form of V and that they would then launch a coup on the government to take over. Nina believed that at this point she would swoop in, set off a radio frequency to make their heads explode and that she would be seen as a saviour. However, Vought gave her a dud and they were going to be the ones who appeared to save the day. They also put an explosive on her plane which we’ll get to in a bit.
Now on the opposite side of this, The Boys were investigating it all and they met with Love Sausage, a Russian Supes who made a cameo back in Season 2. Nina had also been hired by vought to take them out but they killed her goons and Butcher went to her plane. Here he found the Vought employee, learned the plan and then he told him to put the explosives in her vibrator. It was said that after Nina killed her father that she refused to feel the touch of a man. As the plane took off she went to use it which blew it up and it crashed into the side of a mountain. Butcher then went to where all her supes were and using a radio device that actually worked he blew all their heads off.
Butcher pays off Cherie’s debt and gives Little Nina an extra 100k for her troubles. However, Nina still wants the girl but they seemingly put their differences to the side in order for the Russian mission to play out.
A-Train goes to Ashley who belittles him for wanting to go after Blue Hawk. Ashley says Black Lives Matter is her favourite hashtag and talks about her Instagram being all black squares which were what was used at the time to show unity with the movement. When it comes to Vought it’s all just social gestures without actually meaning it and this is seen in the commercial for his energy drink Turbo Rush.
This commercial is parodying the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad in which she gave a can to a police officer. Completely de-escalated the situation and was a bit tone-deaf. Jenner got a load of backlash for it and A-Train clearly is questioning whether he’s doing the right thing, though he does end up falling back in line to the detriment of Supersonic.
Theory Time
Now there is this weird thing around soft drinks in the series that might just be a coincidence but I still think it’s worth talking about. Fresca was brought up several times in season 2 as being something the church of the collective constantly drank. There were theories it helped with the brainwashing and Turbo Rush also being used to control the police might hint at something else.
Big reach but that’s why it’s called a theory!
Comic Call Back – BIG SPOILERS
Next, we see Maeve training with her sword in her room. Going to be dropping some heavy spoilers for the comics on this bit so if you don’t want the show spoiled then skip to the next section.
In the source material, Maeve was the constantly drunk alcoholic that her reputation now paints her out to be. However, she did have a moment of clarity towards the back end of the run and she went head to head with Homelander. Using her sword she ended up attacking him however because this was a prop, it broke in half. This could later be referenced in the sex toy scene as I believe hers snaps in the same way that the sword did in the comics. Maeve was murdered by Homelander and I think this scene is setting up a showdown between them.
Ok, now it’s safe
Now at this point Starlight goes to her about the weapon capable of taking down Homelander. Russia is the perfect place for this too and we see several pieces of Grafitti of the character symbolising their hate for him. Homelander is very much a representation of Western Superiority and they run broadcasts on the TV mocking not only him but also Hughie. This is played on CMN a parody of CNN.
Mother’s Milk wears a Ruff Ryders t-shirt further carrying up the motif of him wearing hip-hop bands. Little Nina has found the location of the lab but she wants Kimiko to carry out a hit on a target first. This involves Kimiko dressing as a woman of the night and in the comics, Butcher hired these same sorts of ladies to distract the pilots on Nina’s jet.
Also, I know what they’re called yeah, Youtube is just a bunch of see you next Tuesday when you mention anything like that.
Starlight goes to Supersonic and tries to recruit him into the #Homefight. He jokingly plays off still being in love with her but I think it’s clear he actually feels that way and is just gauging her reaction.
At a meal for the Seven, Homelander gives them all tacos, showing how he doesn’t respect him at all and it’s clearly used in a derogatory way, along with the constant Spanish that he drops. This mirrors the end of episode 3 when he quips at Supersonic in Spanish.
Black Noir sketches a cool cat and this reflects him doing childlike drawings in the series.
At this point, A-Train brings up Blue Hawk, a racist supe that we discovered curb-stomped a man returning from work last week which was a nod to American History X. Blue Hawk very much represents police brutality and blue is of course a colour that’s synonymous with the police force. Huge shoutouts to David Ruiz who pointed out in our last post, that in the army, the term ‘Blue Falcon’ means a lazy soldier and Blue Hawk may also be based on the supe Groundhawk from the comics and The Boys Diabolical.
With some help from Cassandra, Deep brings up that Blue Hawk and Homelander share some of the same base, so he decides not to do anything.
Ashley gets a tip on the press conference and Homelander ends up belittling her. She ends up doing the same to Cameron Colson showing how he’s having a negative effect on everyone around him. She also uses the Homelander Dildo, cementing the idea that she’s now using him to carry out negative acts.
Look at me getting all psychoanalytical on the subtext.
This idea of Homelander enforcing people to act negatively is seen in A-Train who confronts the Deep outside the Seven’s office. Homelander did the same thing to A-Train at the start of the season. This is also pulled from the comics and after A-Train joked about Starlight giving him, Homelander, and Black Noir a BJ in front of Stillwell he hit him. Homelander was very much about keeping things business in front of the big guy and the team is clearly starting to fall apart.
A-train knows Deep got the plane tape and the Deep knows that he leaked Stormfront’s past. Supersonic ends up trusting in him but he ends up snitching on their plan in order to get back in his good books. It’s all a quest for power and the only person who doesn’t seem to want it is Kimiko who hates the fact that she has to kill.
She enters the mansion to the sound of Poison by Bell Biv Devoe before we hear a Russian version of I Will Survive, maybe a bullet to the head ey?
This scene in which she heals is very similar to the one in X-2 in which Wolverine pushes a bullet out of his forehead after being shot.
There are of course all the dildos that are all in line with members of the Seven. Kimiko questions whether she’s doing the right thing which is then mirrored by Neuman who announces Edgar’s corruption on NNC, which, no prizes for guessing it’s also a satire of CNN. Homelander says it’s the dawn of the Seven and that anyone hiding is now no longer going to have his protection. Cut to Ashley’s office where we see that the Seven mural behind her now has all its members. This juxtaposes its earlier appearance in the series where it just had 5.
Homelander travels to Vic, crosses some boundaries a bit and hands over the evidence that Edgar was planning to turn her in too. As he later says, he taught her to play both sides which is something that he’s done throughout the series. He of course has right-wing politicians in his pocket and Neuman is an AOC parody that’s on the left. He also loves the Supes but he was the one who tipped off butcher about Stormfront.
Victoria is just playing whatever side she can and it is possible that she will follow her comic book counterpart and end up in the Whitehouse. She takes Compound V to protect her daughter showing that she does have an Achilles heal. This makes her weaker than Edgar who was willing to throw her in harm’s way if it came to it.
Hughie goes to Butcher and pleads for V which he ends up taking due to how weak he feels. At Vought Tower Homelander and Edgar end up having a talk. This feels like it massively pulls from a scene in the comics in which he went to Stillwell. He remarked that his heart rate stayed steady throughout which is reflected in Homelander’s comments here about how relaxed Edgar is. In the end, Homelander surmised that Stillwell was the real superman because of the calmness and power that he had.
Edgar tells Homelander that now he’s out the way, the world no one will cover for him and they’ll realise that he’s bad product.
In the comics Stillwell delivers this devastating speech to him:
“Think about it. This is par for the course with you. When have you ever done anything remotely interesting or original? What have you thought of to do that the lowest speck of this pointless species couldn’t, where they to be granted your level of power? And what next, destroy another airliner? Dismember more families, that kind of thing? A spoiled child’s personal Auschwitz. It’s so petty it’s actually quite embarrassing.”
Now James was a perfectionist and he viewed V creating this sociopath as being a failing that he wished he could forget.
He ends up leaving and it’s gonna be interesting to see where things go.
The Boys go to the lab and Mother’s Milk brings up Rocky 4, a film that is of course about the US vs Russia.
After discovering a suped-up hamster called Jamie they’re ambushed by SWAT and this leads to Butcher unleashing his own powers along with Hughie.
Now the name Jamie actually calls back to the comics and after Hughie saved it from Blarney Cock he called it that. However, when the villain showed back up he referred to him as Herbie.
It all builds to a head when they come across Soldier Boy whose body is inside a container. This is similar to how the Winter Soldier was stored in both the second and third Captain America films.
Similar to Bucky he’s clearly been captured by the Russians and experimented on it, riffing on the Captain America backstory that he of course plays into. Now he has powers like Havoc from the X-men and he can shoot concussive blasts out of his chest. There’s a feeling of Terminator to the music and he ends up taking out Kimiko
She’s no longer healing and I think they might end up injecting her with more V in order to save her life. This might jump-start her healing again and we see in Hughie that his broken arm is now back to normal after injecting it. Mother’s Milk says there’s no team anymore and this gut-punch is mirrored in the threat that Homelander gives to Starlight. The original Superman film had he and Lois going for a flight together and though the scene is initially set up like that, it’s got a big reveal.
Homelander messes up Supersonic’s face so bad I couldn’t even tell if it was him when doing the breakdown and he says that is what will happen to Hughie if she steps out of line. He says that they are who people are shipping and them alone. This might mean that if she even sees Hughie again that he could end up killing him. However, on the opposite side of this, he has access to V which will level the playing field. The Boys taking the substance in the comics was something that they did early on but the series has weirdly done things the opposite way around. The focus on the Seven didn’t come until much later and a lot of the things that they’re referencing in the show now happened in the first omnibus. This is the same with V but it has added some tension to it.
The Boys Season 3 Episode 4 Round-Up
I really can’t wait to see how the show evolves and I’ve loved these first four episodes. We’re now past the halfway point and you can see it all falling into place with Homelander getting worse and worse and worse.
Episode 4 pushed the stakes even further and with him ousting Edgar and also killing Supersonic, there’s no knowing where things could go next. Personally, I think that we’re due for a showdown very soon but he might end up holding onto Starlight so that she can’t warn Hughie. I also think Maeve’s death is probably right around the corner and with Edgar out the way he’s gonna be fully off the leash.
Another great episode and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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