THE BOYS Season 3 Episode 5 Breakdown & Ending Explained | Review, Easter Eggs, Theories And More

This video is sponsored by Manscaped.

The Boys Season 3 Episode 5 dropped on 17th June 2022. This legendary entry is packed with easter eggs, hidden details and callbacks to the comics.

We last left The Boys in Russia, after they freed Soldier Boy from the clutches of his captors. After this episode, I think it’s clear he’s gonna Superman that Ho…melander and possibly team up with the Boys to take down the big bad in the show.

We’re gonna be breaking it all down but full spoilers ahead so if you haven’t had a chance to check it out then I highly suggest you check out now. 

Now last week we talked about how the Russian plot plays on the one started in Issue 11 of the comics. Though it diverted heavily from it and the mission to kill Little Nina, it did end up dovetailing into the story of The Legend who explained the history of Vought to Hughie. He’s played by Paul Reiser who you might recognise from Stranger Things and for being that damn punk Carter Burke in Aliens.

Damn chump.

Episode 5 changes things up slightly from the comics and in those he was a Stan Lee parody that wrote and illustrated comics for the supes.

This was a big PR move by Vought to make them look like the good guys whereas here the ex-VP of Vought who was in charge of hero management.

Because he’s produced so many movies I’m wondering if he’s meant to be the Kevin Feige of this world but let me know below exactly what you think.

Now in the comics, we learned why he was helping the Boys and he detailed the history of Vought to Hughie after he killed the Blarney Cock. He said that they’d been trying to get into the arms race for decades and during the second world war they built planes for the army. They massively undercut all the other contractors so they got major amounts of money from the army but their planes malfunctioned a lot and often ended up killing the pilots.

Then they turned their hand to creating rifles and during one of the big skirmishes an entire platoon that used them was wiped out because they wouldn’t fire and the soldiers ended up having their heads impaled on their rifles which Legend said showed they had at least one use.

After this Vought ended up trying to push their supes into the military but as we’ve seen, they’re highly defective due to their personality disorders. The comics actually had Vought’s plant in the Whitehouse, Vic The Veep, stop the army from interfering with 9/11 and this is when the Seven went in. The show had the plane crash scene play out but in the comics it’s way more f**ked up with The Seven actually causing it to crash into the Brooklyn Bridge, killing thousands there and everyone on board.

The Legend ended up suppling the Boys with info on The Seven and we learn why this was in the comics. Turns out that one of his sons was part of the platoon that got wiped out because of their rifles and since then he vowed to take down the company. We also discover that his other son was the Blarney Cock and the reason that he held off telling Hughie was that he wanted him to kill him first. Said he was a right **** which is also touched upon in this show when he says he hates his kids.

Soldier Boy

We start off watching a recording of the Russians experimenting on Soldier Boy after his capture in Nicaragua. This starts on the 8th of July 1986 and we can see from the timestamps that they torture him for several years.

Erik Kripke and Jensen Ackles both worked together on the show Supernatural and we can also see the date January 24 which is the birthday of the latter character Dean Winchester.

They also talk about his high radiation levels and though this wasn’t shown in his entrance last week, the trailer actually changed out the sound effects to add the clicking that we typically get with a Geiger Counter.

Soldier Boy could well be the weapon that is used to kill Homelander and huge shoutouts to Dr DBunk on our last video who theorised that Soldier Boys’ new ability can actually take away a Supes power similar to Leech from the X-men.

Erik Kripke talked about this in the Entertainment Weekly recaps and said that Radiation can wipe out the supes powers so it might be something in the future that takes down Homelander and levels the playing field a bit more.

These experiments are of course also riffing on the Winter Soldier experiments that were carried out by Hydra on Bucky for them to turn him into a weapon. Mother’s Milk is watching over this on an old timely tv and this mirrors him last week watching Soldier Boy on Solid Gold on a similar sort of set. You have the high points and low points in his career starting off both entries.

Soldier Boy killed the scientist experimenting on him but he was gassed and put on ice. I think that Vought might try and spin his return similar to Captain America’s origin story and they may make it so he looked like he died sacrificing himself before he was discovered years later, in status.

Mother’s Milk figures out Billy killed Gunpowder and he says that no one should have that power which is a sentiment Butcher says later to Maeve. V24 in this series makes the characters that take it into addicts and we’ve seen Billy getting withdrawal symptoms, Hughie looking at his arm on a high and in this entry, we see him vomiting. There’s a quick flash of a character that Billy witnessed in a vision who’s labelled in the cast list simply as the Teen. Originally he said ‘what would Becca think of this?’ and I think it might be Billy’s brother Lenny.

Lenny ended his own life and he was the person that stopped Billy from going too far. Characters have remarked that Hughie is very much a fill-in for Lenny as in he’s the person who holds Butcher back from becoming the monster inside of him.

We’ll talk about this later on in the video as I wanna go over what happens to Butcher in the comics and how this episode is teasing it. I’ll give you a big spoiler warning before we go into it but it’ll be the end of the post so stick around until that.

Cut to the Vought board and we see Ashley has been appointed CEO. She goes to give a speech about how her mother died at 17 from Cancer but Homelander interrupts this, takes the main seat and ends up talking down to the members after they ask him how he’s going to handle their margins going down on the earnings call. But Homelander clearly has no idea what they’re talking about.

Homelander is ousting all the people in professional positions and swapping them out with supes who have no idea what’s going on. The major failing in 9/11 that the legend talked about was because they were all morons who had no idea how to de-escalate hostage situations or actually land planes. After all, they’re basically just celebrities with no experience in anything outside of standing and waving at parades.

The Deep ends up firing most of the staff from Vought Crime Analytics and we once more join Anika who has appeared in every season now. First introduced to track down Translucent, she was also put to work by Black Noir in Season 2. I believe that she was drinking Turbo Rush when we first meet her and later on she has some chocolates with nuts in them. In the second season Black Noir ended up making her put her nutty chocolate bar in the bin because as we know, he’s allergic to dem nuts.

What nuts?

Deez nuts.

Cassandra has brought some cupcakes with ‘you had me at sprinkles’ written in the box and they also have Crime Analytics with anal spelt out in it.

Kimiko is slowly starting to heal and she’s taken to the hospital leaving just Billy and Hughie.

Supersonic’s death is blamed on a drug overdose possibly riffing on the death of Marilyn Monroe. Her death was ruled as being through an overdose of barbiturates, however many have theorised that she was actually murdered.

Hughie wears a Hall and Oates t-shirt and the Maneater arrives in Starlight. She says because he’s used Compound V he’s out of touch, they’re out of time and he offers her an Almond Joy which is what Anika eats later on in the episode.

These chocolate bars actually appeared in Season 2 when Starlight and Hughie got them from the vending machine. Nice little callback.

Later on, Black Noir is used to take Maeve down and these bars may be getting dotted about to help when he inevitably comes for either Hughie or Annie. He’s now Homelanders weapon and as we learned in episode 3 he did use to be normal but the attack in Nicuagra severely scarred him and likely left him brain-damaged. Season 2 showed us that Edgar had complete control over him and now that Homelander has access to all the things he did, he now controls the character. He’s likely got reduced brain functionality now and this explains why he sits about drawing cats and stuff.

Minor Comic Spoiler

In the comics, he was way more powerful and one of the big villains but they’ve clearly changed things up here. I don’t feel like I’m spoiling things as the show is diverting from the comics now, but if you don’t want the comics ruined, skip ahead about a minute. In the comics, Black Noir was a clone of Homelander that slowly sent him insane by dressing up as him, committing heinous acts, and then sending him photographs so that he believed he blacked out whilst carrying them out. He realised he could get away with this kind of stuff and then got worse and worse. Black Noir had actually been created to take Homelander down if it ever came to it and not being able to carry out this mission sent him insane. So he slowly gaslit Homelander until he attacked the white house and it was at this point he was called in to destroy him.

Now Black Noir in the show seems completely different but we know from The Boys Diabolical that he still has the purpose of taking down Homelander if he goes Rogue.

Ok, it’s safe now…

Hughie talks about how Compound V made him feel like he was no longer weak and he very much wants to save Starlight for once which will likely push him into using it again.

Soldier Boy sneaks back into the US and we catch Billy getting a visit from Maeve who’s brought Compound V with her at Butcher’s request. He’s very much addicted to it and I think Hughie being on it too has enabled him to get more. In Season 2, Mothers Milk said that Hughie was his Canary but after he took it, Butcher thought it was fair game.

Butcher says he hates being on V and I think this will be something that drives him into going down the same road he does in the comics. He also says that all Supes have to go and like I said, we’ll talk about this in more depth towards the end.

We get a nod to the classic saying “with great power comes great responsibility” but Billy switches it up to say that it turns you into a right c***.

Maeve and Butcher get it on and weirdly in the comics she was hooking up with Legend quite a lot, working as his inside ma…well woman.

Cut to the hospital and we catch Little Nina threatening Frenchy to work for her once more, blowing smoke in people’s faces who are on oxygen and worse. They stop at a poster with Homelander on it that says Brave, very much showing that the Supes infiltrate every aspect of people’s lives and even their deaths.

Little Nina wants Frenchy to kill a kid and this very much reflects several of the other characters in the show. Nina wants to use him as a weapon which he doesn’t want to be, Butcher used Kimiko as one and Victoria was also used by Edgar to propel Vought to whatever ends he wanted.

Kimiko is actually over the moon that she can’t heal and she struggles to lift hospital equipment meaning that she’s finally out of the life. However, I think she’ll get injected with V once more and will be forced back into this life once she hears Frenchy is in Danger. In the comics, Little Nina was actually killed in Russia so they are diverting quite heavily from that.

Cut to Starlight confronting A-train who denies snitching on Supersonic but in Ashley’s office, we get it confirmed that he did. A-Train is obviously on his way out due to his inability to use his powers and thus he’s been trying whatever he can to keep himself relevant. This led him into the Turbo Rush ad, snitching on Supersonic and it later makes him want to work alongside a racist supe so that they can create some positive PR.

Inside Ashley’s office, she gets a bouquet from Senator Lindsey Graham and similar to Edgar she’s dipping her toes into politics to benefit the company. Later on, when Starlight goes to see her, the room is filled with flowers, showing how many have reached out to try and get in good favour with the company.

Blue Hawk gets called in and he’s very much a metaphor for police brutality. In the press material, we even see that he carries a truncheon and he might even end up killing A-trains Brother Nathan who we learn will never walk again.

Cut to Soldier Boy returning to New York. Like Captain America, he’s a man out of time but whereas Cap was accepting of the modern world, Soldier Boy has the same views as your grandad who you have to keep telling off at Christmas dinner. You know the guy.

He walks past a poster of Robert Singer and we know that he’s a veteran due to his campaign video. Soldier Boy seemingly recognises him and it’s even possible that the pair encountered each other at one point. In the comics, Singer, or rather Dakota Bob is the President and his campaign trail will likely lead to this with Victoria becoming his VP like her comic counterpart.

He ends up detonating in the street and this seems like it’s aping the Civil War comic run in which a supervillain also did the same thing. In the Marvel Universe, this led to the Superhuman Registration Act and it’s gonna be interesting to see if this leads to Supes being restricted.

Homelander is still getting a lot of praise on the Vought News Network and we cut to Janine watching a report of him. Mother’s Milk arrives and he’s angered by this, likely because it reflects his childhood. Milk remembers watching Soldier boy with his father and Grandfather and he’s completely enamoured by his appearance on Solid Gold. However as we learned this was all an act and Janine seems to be falling for the same thing, in the same circumstances as he did.

Milk is wearing a Stop The Violence t-Shirt and this is a nod to the movement by Krs One. Milk is annoyed that Todd is spouting off all this Vought propaganda and he’s also a teacher meaning that he not only influences Janine but also the kids in his class.

The rest of the entry kinda centres around Soldier Boy with Hughie and Butcher venturing to the attack site. Here they meet Mother’s Milk and we also see Hughie is wearing a This Is It t-shirt, a nod to Michael Jackson’s tour.

A-Train and Blue Hawk go to the community centre to try and put a spin on the latter’s brutality but this ends up escalating even further. Blue Hawk says he’s not racist because he has friends like A-Train but as we know the pair only met for the first time in the scene before this.

Social Commentary

There’s some clear social commentary here with slogans like Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter and Supes Lives Matter being dropped. A-Train represents not only the black community but also the supes community. After his brother Nate gets badly injured I think he’s gonna have to decide who he actually wants to stand with. A-Train has had a really interesting arc throughout the series and I think he’s starting to see bad things happen when he refuses to act. He’s currently trying to stay in there with the Supes but this has led to Supersonic’s death, his brother being injured, and if we’re being honest, Homelander doesn’t care about him at all. He’s someone who’s appeared in mock-up protests for his drink Turbo Rush but I think he’s actually going to have to pick a side now and stop hiding behind the image.

We have seen that Vought completely disregard black people and this was shown by the fact they wanted Noir behind a mask. However, they clearly brought in Blue Hawk to do this as a PR stunt but it’s massively backfired. Still, though the spin continues and Blue Hawk blames it on Antifa.

Across town, they meet the Legend who lives in the penthouse and his home is adorned with famous faces. This includes Grace Jones, Burt Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, Steve McQueen, Roy Schieder, Elizabeth Hurley and a couple I’m not sure about so let me know below if you do. He has countless Hollywood stories namely one about Marlon Brando giving him an offer he couldn’t refuse and they also jack the coke joke from Peep Show – “no thanks, I’m full”.

He also has a fake leg and this is something that he takes off similar to a scene in the comics in which The Legend does the same thing. They get onto how Soldier Boy doesn’t really age and he brings up Pheobe Cates who you might know as starring in Gremlins, Drop Dead Fred and that scene from Fast Times At Ridgemont High. He talks about how he was 63 and they had a massive age difference.

There’s also mention of Kelly Le Brock and it’s clear that the guy has been around the brock.

Ey.

We discover he’s handed over Soldier Boys costume to him along with the address of Chimps Don’t Cry superstar Crimson Countess. We see her poster hanging up in the wide shot of the room and she goes out with a bang.

Cut to the Cameron Coleman show and I just want to apologise for a mistake last week. I corrected myself for saying Rocket Romance however I said Cameron Colson instead of Cameron Coleman. I let myself down, I let my parents down but most importantly I let you guys down. I see you, I feel you, chump, I grow.

He brings up Soldier Boy and also talks about Stormfront’s followers, The Stormchasers on 4chan who we first heard about last season.

Homelander is knee-deep in conspiracy theories that Soldier Boy is only doing this because Edgar wants revenge. In the build-up to the show last year there was talk about how there would be some social commentary on the pandemic and I’m wondering if this is what they were referring to. Homelander says it’s safe to go to restaurants and movie theatres even though the threat of Soldier Boy is out there and though it might be a reach I am wondering if this is the part they were talking about.

He ends up seeing Maeve in the Seven Office and after he smells Butcher on her he realises she’s switched sides. She ends up telling him that when they were together that she hated him and this is reflected later on in Crimson Countess who says the exact same thing to Soldier Boy. The pair were both in relationships for the sake of PR and both end up falling victim to the person that used to love them after they realise they’ve been betrayed. For Homelander it’s working with Butcher and for Soldier Boy it’s her being part of his takedown in Nicaragua.

Black Noir is unleashed on her and she may be taken hostage. In the comics, this was a room that both she and Homelander fought in and she ended up trying to use her sword on him but it didn’t work because it was just a prop. Last week we saw her training with this same weapon and they may do a similar scene down the line. We learn that her disappearance has been given a cover story and that she’s apparently at the Global Wellness Retreat. Ashley is terrified of Homelander and is happy to lie for him but Starlight is finally fully standing up to him.

Mother’s Milk refuses to take compound V24 whereas Hughie signs up for it straight away, showing its addictive qualities. Milk represents someone who just says No and Butcher ends up ostracising him later on because of it.

Now it’s been a bit doom and gloom hasn’t it? However, we get a really fun and upbeat scene with Kimiko and Frenchy. Throughout she’s been fantasising about being in a musical and after watching a clip of Judy Garland she gets up and starts dancing through the halls with Frenchy. This is from the 1943 movie Girl Crazy and the pair mime the song I got Rhythm.

Really fun scene and we cut to Crimson Countess who lives out in Chimp Country a retreat for monkeys. Get a lot of Carole Baskins vibes from this and she’s currently working as a cam girl. We see ‘Sir-Cums-Alot-779’ who is played by Seth Rogan in his second cameo in the franchise. Rogan is a producer for the Boys and he also showed up in Laser Baby’s day out along with Evan Goldberg.

This romantic moment is interrupted by Butcher and then ends up chaining Crimson Countess up which, is probably what she had in mind anyway.

As we touched on earlier, they handed Soldier Boy over and though we don’t find the exact reason out it’s clear that he was abusive and that Vought probably wanted him taken out. We know that they’ve been using Victoria as a way to legally remove the Supes that cause issues and it might be a similar situation where they wanted to get rid of him but didn’t know how to do it. They, of course, created the cover story for him and if it was just the Russians they would’ve likely out and out said it rather than doing what they did.

The file that Maeve gave to Butcher actually had some hints towards it and it said he’d been dealing narcotics with La Cosa Nostra. Though this was also done with the CIA he may have been making money on the side and potentially this is why they took him out.

Guessing we’ll find out more later on but that’s the end of theory time.

Starlight shows up after being called by Mother’s Milk and Hughie shows her his teleportation powers. Unlike Teddy Stillwell, he can’t shift his clothes yet but he might learn how to do this down the line.

Butcher betrays Mother’s Milk, mirroring the one by Maeve and Crimson countess and he drugs him so that Soldier Boy can come in. Butcher is very much someone who views people as weapons and he of course did this with Kimiko. He’s now doing it with Soldier Boy and appearing as an ally to him so that he can help take out Homelander.

I kinda feel like the design of Soldier Boy here is meant to mirror Captain America in Avengers Infinity War which was supposed to be based on his persona the Nomad. Soldier Boy is of course heavily based on Caps design and him becoming a criminal of course reflects Soldier Boy’s status here. They show that he doesn’t mind turning against those that he views as being on the wrong side, mimicking the Civil War storyline that led to him going on the run.

Soldier Boy kills Crimson Countess and he walks out of the fire which is when Hughie stops Starlight from attacking him. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and they get what you call a team-up.

Annie is devastated and once more it carries the idea of couples separating. Going forward I think that the three will attack Homelander to take him out before he gets too strong. I don’t know if they’ll stand a chance though as he, of course, has Black Noir at his disposal and there’s also the fact that Hughie isn’t trained. It’s basically going to be Butcher and Soldier Boy vs Homelander and maybe Black Noir which sounds like a big battle. There’s no way to really predict how this will go as it’s not part of the comics and in them, there were three versions of Soldier Boy. The first was about during the Second World war but he and the second one were killed. The third was Homelander’s love who was a bit of a moron and he also got killed as well.

The Boys Season 3 Episode 5 Summary

So, really no way to guess how it’s going to go but what I am sure of is how much I loved this episode. This was my favourite in the season so far and there were so many big moments in it.

I feel like the show just keeps getting better every week and the quality of it is constantly improving on what’s come before.

Really brilliant entry and we also had it announced in the week that Season 4 is coming very soon as well. I’m hyped and I’m so glad we’re gonna be getting more of the Boys as it’s such a great series.

Butcher – spoilers ahead 

Now as promised, I thought we’d talk about the teases that they’re giving towards Butcher. Full spoilers ahead for the ending of the comics.

In the source material, we discover that Butcher continues his quest to wipe out all Compound V on Earth and this leads to him tackling those that it’s still inside, namely The Boys. We’ve seen in the show that the effects of it last way longer than 24 hours so there is potential that it might become something permanent in the characters. This could lead to him trying to kill the Boys at the end of the series. In the comics, he wiped out Mallory, Kimiko, Mothers Milk and Frenchy. He built a device to kill all the Supes similar to the one Little Nina had but Hughie managed to stop him. We learned that just in the same way Lenny held him back from going fully off the deep end that Hughie had to and subconsciously Butcher wanted him to defeat him. The ending was pretty sad with Butcher even smiling as he died.

I do think this episode really teased towards this eventual outcome but let me know what you think.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the show so make sure you comment below and let me know.