The Boys Episode 6 aired on 24th June, and the Herogasmic entry is airtight with easter eggs, hidden details and also several callbacks to the comics. Throughout this post, we’ll be going in deep as we run A-train on everything that happens in it. So sit back, shut up and pull out your soldier boy because this is about to get diabolical.
Now the opening of the episode somewhat mirrors the ending and this idea of moments repeating has been seen throughout the series. We had the scene in which Starlight clenched her fist behind her back which was then followed up at the end of episode 3, Mothers Milk watched Soldier Boy on the TV before he then watched him being tortured in Russia and so on and so forth. In the opening and close of this episode we get videos filmed on cellphones that have their own meanings. The first is an absolutely hilarious parody of the Imagine video by Gal Gadot that was dropped at the beginning of the pandemic. This was pretty tone-deaf and it featured a number of celebrities singing the John Lennon classic. Gal was trying to talk about the world at the time and how they were all in it together which is something Deep also says.
“Doesn’t matter how you are, or where you’re from; we’re all in this together.”
It got criticised because people were obviously losing their lives and livelihoods and Deep here is talking about how everyone is fighting the threat of supervillains even though the Supes are the only ones that actually stand a chance.
The video at the end is Starlight exposing the Truth about Vought and Homelander to her followers and she’s actually putting herself in harms way whereas for the celebrities it’s just a hollow gesture.
Starlight doing this also mirrors Victoria Neuman.
Absoilutely hilarious way to open up the episode and I know the creative team got a lot of flack when they were writing this season because they said they’d have elements inspired by certain aspects of the pandemic. There’s a number in this episode but I think they handle them really well and always take the p*** out of both sides on it.
Now the video is filled with celebrities including Patton Oswwalt, Josh Gad, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjani and Rose Byrne.
Cut to Crime Analytics and we see that Deep has fired everyone there. One thing I didn’t notice last week but did now that they’re standing side by side is that Ashley’s new CEO suit is based on Homelander’s cape. She’s already copied some of his sayings and this shows that she’s very much mimicking him possibly because she’s afraid.
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We see footage of Soldier Boy entering Chimp Country, the Carole Baskins-esque animal sanctuary that Crimson Countess was trying to build. The footage here reminded me a lot of the Winter Soldier one in Civil War and Deep also says that his face might be CGI.
In Civil War Bucky was framed for an attack on the United Nations and it was later revealed that he was wearing a computer controlled mask that altered the look of his face.
Homelander is worried that the entier thing is gonna blow up literally and he mentions Soldier Boys statue being outside of Vought Tower. This was something that we saw in Season 2 and we also opened the season of it destroyed in Episode 1, potentially foreshadowing what could be coming down the line.
Ashley says that Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess were like Kurt and Goldie, a nod to Russell and Hawn who’ve been together now for 39 years.
Theory Time
Now Soldier Boy very much represents someone who can oust Homelander and it is possible that he’s cloned from him. In the comics, we discovered that Homelander was built using genetic material from Stormfront but for the show the character was gender-swapped to become Homelander’s love interest. Therefore it could be possible that they ended up giving this role over to Soldier Boy because Homelander does need to be a clone of someone as he doesn’t have a father.
We also learn that Black Noir sold him out in Nicaragua we also find out that Black Noir was the teammate who sold him out to the Russians. In the comics he had a completely different storyline but learning this later on in the episode makes a lot of sense with what we know. Black Noir was set on becoming the face of the group and he hated having to wear a helmet.
He clearly wanted the fame that Soldier Boy had and he might have seen getting rid of him as a way to get to the forefront of the group.
Anyway, that’s the end of theory time.
NEW SUBHEAD
Now Homelander questions Soldier Boy with Noir and he sees him as his loyalist ally. In The Boys Diabolical, they ended up having a fight when Homelander was worried that he’d expose him for murdering loads of powerplant workers but Noir ended up covering for him and they’ve been best mates ever since.
However, Noir ends up leaving Homelander and he cuts out his tracking device embedded in his arm. This explains how Soldier Boy was able to track Crimson Countess and if you cast your mind back to the first season then you might remember that Homelander tried to listen out for the sound of it in order to find Translucent.
The Boys
Cut to a motel where Butcher, Billy, and Soldier Boy are lying low. We see the fast food they have is Vought A Burger which we last saw in Laser Babies Day Out when a cup from there was next to the scientist’s alarm clock.
Soldier Boy wants some, let’s say ‘racially insensitive’ sauce and he can’t understand why they no longer do it. Hughie ends up having blood come out of his ear and it is possible that the effects of Compound V24 could be slowly damaging both him and Butcher. This is a black market drug that hasn’t been fully approved yet and I’d love it if it was revealed that every time they used it that it killed them slightly.
This would mean they’d have to weigh up having to fight the supes at the cost of their own lives and I think that would be a great reveal later down the line.
Soldier Boy brings up D-Day and how everyone was high on amphetamines which is actually regarded as a fact. According to several studies the drugs were given to soldiers so that they could beat the exhaustion that one would feel from hours of fighting.
Butcher brags about killing Gunpowder to which Soldier Boy says that’s like killing Emmanuel Lewis. This actor was best known for playing Webster and his short stature in which he’s only grown six inches since his time on the show.
Hughie tries to lift Soldier Boy’s shield but he’s unable to. The way this is shot is very similar to the Mljonir scene in Age Of Ultron and it very much cements he’s not really worthy.
Hughie also wears a footloose t-shirt and this continues his musically based clothes. Soldier Boy doesn’t know about all the changes in technology which of course is similar to Captain America who even kept a book on things he had to catch up on in The Winter Soldier.
The Rest of the Gang
Cut to Kimiko now on her feet in the hospital. She’s eating a Brave Maeve Rainbow Pop is of course playing on not only the pride flag but also delicious Fruit Pastille lollies…, wish they’d sponsor the channel…anyway…she’s trying to reach out to Frenchy and she suggests watching the musical Singing In the Rain following on from last weeks 1943 Girl Crazy which made her spin-off into a fantasy.
She’s attacked by Little Nina’s forces and in the comics, something similar happened with Payback when she was rested up and recovering.
Next, we join Mothers Milk and Starlight who are preparing to go to war. On Mothers Milk’s wall, we can see a poster for the Black Panther Movement with the words move on over or we’ll move on over you.
This image wasn’t originally used by The Black Panthers and in fact it was put in place to change racism in Alabama. Even though 80% of the population was black they weren’t allowed to vote and this was used as a movement that organised voter registration in black neighbourhoods.
The image of a Black Panther ended up being adopted because it’s an animal that attacks when it feels threatened somewhat showcasing Mother Milk’s state of mind. He gives a speech similar to Stan Edgar in Season 2 and he talks about how he’s expected to turn the other cheek whilst Butcher and Hughie can do what they want.
He’s loading his guns for them, potentially following the arc in the comics that we talked about in last week’s video.
Anyway cut to a promotional video for A-train to Africa which we discover is now being made. Rather than Getty Images, we have Vought Images over the top of it and later see that this has temporary VFX in it. A-Train is badly bluescreened into it showing that he’s not really part of it nor has he really been there.
It’s also on Vought Soul showing how they’re not really aiming at the mass markets and are just pandering to help boost A-rains image amongst black people. Last week he only brought in Blue Hawk because he wanted to boost his image but this backfired when he paralysed his brother. Now he wants some actual justice and asking for this makes Ashley pull out her hair. This is similar to her comic book counterpart Jessica Bradley who ended up pulling her hair out at the end of the run when she was set up as a Patsy by Vought.
She goes through all the times Vought have had to cover for his murders and also brings up Popclaw who he killed in the first season. He actually seems like he might have changed and later on he ends up apologising to Hughie for killing his girlfriend.
Ashley tells him to go f**k himself finally standing up to a Supe showing how she’s now no longer afraid of them like how she was with Homelander last week.
Deep goes to Homelander in the corridor and behind him, we can catch a poster of the Seven in front of the Brooklyn Bridge. This is riffing on artwork from the comics and in those they actually ended up crashing a plane into it when trying to carry out a rescue mission on 9/11.
Cassandra has figured out Soldier Boy is heading after the TNT twins, who are based on the Wonder Twins from DC comics. Similar to them their powers activate by touching hands but we learn that they just throw orgies these days organised for the supes, ey.
In Homelanders Room he has a talk in the mirror that reminded me a lot of the Gollum Scene in Lord Of The Rings. This was recently riffed on in Moon Knight and we discover that Homelander has multiple personalities, namely one that always pulls him out of trouble.
Homelander is a complete sociopath in both the show and comics. In the latter, a character disguised as him ended up carrying out lots of heinous acts making him believe that he was, in fact, insane but here we see that there exists this darker side to him that very much enables his behaviour.
Cut to the Soldier Boy movie which is a parody on both Rambo 2…or like…first blood part 2 I think it’s called and Rambo 3…which…surely it should be first blood part 3 or Rambo 2…look nevermind. Now the setup to the scene here is a satirising the interrogation one from the second film but the Russian and Afghanistan plot was something that featured in the third film.
Soldier Boy gets angrier which slowly makes his radiation levels rise, showing that the power is linked to his temper. They watch an advert for Starlight Diapers and Soldier Boy asks if men really walk around like that which…ehhh no comment. He also brings up Billy Cosby and how he used to make strong drinks. Cosby was of course arrested and jailed a couple of years back for drugging women which, yeah yikes.
Herogasm
After Billy gets an address for Herogasm they load up on Compound V24. Now at this point, we get to Herogasm which…probably…probably not gonna be able to show any of this but I can talk about what happened there in the comics.
This was a six-part storyline that started in the third omnibus and it opened with Homelander holding a press conference which is where he gave us some dire news. Turns out that the Battelite of Marith’rai war station had been spotted by Saturn and that it was on the brink of forming a new crisis.
All the villains and heroes had put their differences to the side and they were going to head out to destroy it. What really was going on though was that they were heading to McFarlane Island off Costa Rica for non-stop sex. Yaaaay.
No prizes for getting who the island is named after. There was a tonne of sex and non-stop messed-up orgies on pretty much every page but here’s a lovely picture of Starlight who refused to take part much like how she does in the show.
Now the Boys also ended up heading out there to spy on the Vice President and Secret Service. In the comics, Victoria Neuman is a character called Vic The Veep who’s basically the VP that works for Vought. Stillwell had summoned him to tell him that they were going to launch a coup within the next year in which Vic would end up becoming the President so that Vought could control everything.
The Boys ended up kidnapping a secret service agent and we also learned that at least half of the organisation now had been replaced by Red River candidates which you’ll probably remember as being an organisation that showed up earlier in the season. Black Noir also ended up sticking his thumb up Hughie’s Butt at one point which is when he called him Good Soldier, a nod to the same as from The Dark Knight Returns.
Homelander
Now as for the Supes, Homelander actually had sex with Soldier Boy at the event as the latter was desperate to join the Seven and he pretty much coerced him into it. He rejected Soldier Boy and said he should try again next year which is when Homelander realised that he could do whatever he wanted to.
Homelander then flew up to the sky and destroyed a passenger plane and at the award ceremony, he planned to announce the takeover. Homelander wanted nothing more than for the Supes to unite and rule the world and he put everything in place so that he could announce it at this event.
Homelander even paid off a prostitute to go and keep Stillwell company but he realised that he was being distracted and went to the show. Just as Homelander was about to announce it, Stillwell entered and Homelander ended up leaving the event completely broken.
The secret service agent also ended up helping The Boys and he died sacrificing himself so that he could try and save the country from Vought’s infiltration. Here it’s a lot more simplistic with the event basically being a playboy mansion type thing that the Supes hang out at. Hang out with their wang out Goddamn.
Over on VNN Today a Today Show Parody, Homelander says it’s safe to go out and that there is no problem, which again feels like it’s riffing on pandemic responses. After the show, Victoria and Starlight end up having a confrontation in which she admits that she’s the head popper. Victoria offers to protect her and she says that she wants to work together but in exchange for her protection she wants her own image boosted.
Starlight
Starlight ends up going against her and Victoria demonstrates her power by making her nose bleed. Throughout the season we’ve had hints to how her powers work with her exploding jaws and body parts instead of just heads. I actually think that this shows she can control one’s blood similar to the way that Magneto controls metal or something. However, it has to be in her sightline so potentially if she was blinded she could be easily defeated. In the comics Starlight actually blinded A-Train at one point because she turned her blasts up to their full power which could be something that Annie ends up doing to Victoria.
Elsewhere Frenchy is brought in by Little Nina and she talks about the abuse suffered at the hands of his father. Bit of a change-up from the comics as in Issue 37 he seemed like a nice guy.
Kimiko shows she doesn’t need powers to mess people up and she manages to escape and save both Cherie and Frenchy. Later on, she says that she was always the monster and it wasn’t Compound V but Frenchy tells her she’s not. Throughout the season she’s wrestled with whether she’s a weapon and I think she’s probably had my favourite arc in the entire season. Forgot to point out as well that last week’s musical number might have also been based on the Scrubs episode due to it taking place in a hospital.
With Starlight and Mother’s Milk, she asks him why he taps his fingers on the steering wheel. About 20 minutes into Season 2 Episode 4 he also did the same thing when they were on the road with Hughie which she picked up upon.
Turns out this OCD came from the night that Soldier Boy killed some of his family and he views taking down the villain as finally getting him out of his head.
Back to Herogasm
At Herogasm they come face to face with Love Sausage who in the comics is a character that ends up working with The Boys. He helped them out in Russia and also appeared at several points to take on Payback. In the series, he popped up in the second season when he choked out Mother’s Milk which…bit awkward.
Now we also see the Starlight Vibrator and several Supes with nods to Batman, Johnny Storm with his Johnny on Fire, Iceman from the X-men and Termite returns.
In the comics, we had a scene at Herogasm where there was an Ant-man-type character who got told he smelt like pussy.
I also think there’s Big Game from the Boys comics there but I can’t show you to see so, go watch for yourself.
Outside Soldier Boy and the group spy on it and we learn that he founded it in 52 with Liberty who as we learned in the second season was actually Stormfront. Starlight takes a photo of Deep having sex with an octopus to blackmail him and I’m glad he found someone to love after he ate the last one…I’ll never..never forgive you.
After Hughie arrives Starlight tries to get him to clear the house otherwise people will die but he refuses to. This is obviously gonna cause further strain with them and the pair teleport outside. I love how when Starlight goes back in she’s wearing much baggier clothes because Hughie doesn’t know how to teleport them yet. Hughie ends up wearing a Neil Young T-shirt so at least he brought some spares.
After getting covered in the white stuff at the party, Mother’s Milk ends up wearing The TNT Smile Time Hour T-shirt from their merch which I think is the first time that he’s worn a none related Hip-Hop T-shirt in the show. This show is also likely riffing on The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour which itself was a play on things like Sonny and Cher and the pop acts who used to host tv shows in the seventies.
He comes across Soldier Boy and tries to gas him which was how the Russians knocked him out in the video last week. He takes it like a bong hit and it’s only on Butcher’s intervention that Soldier Boy steps back. He calls him a hypocrite because Butcher gets to take out Homelander who he of course believed killed Becca.
In the comics, he got her pregnant and the foetus burst out of her, which Butcher then killed.
We get a split-second shot of a Steve Garvey baseball mitt and Bat for the Los Angeles Dodgers who he played for from 1969 up to 1987.
Getting PTSD flashbacks Soldier Boy ignites and he kills the TNT twins and he completely destroys the house.
Outside A-Train runs not only Blue Hawk but also himself into the ground. This is one of the most brutal death scenes I’ve seen in the show. He drags him to his death but in doing this he also causes his heart to give out and he collapses on the floor. My guess is he’ll recover and that he’ll blame it on Soldier Boy. However, I don’t think that he’s gonna be around much longer and potentially he might have to actually stand for something and sacrifice himself in order to stop Homelander.
This is something that Flash Characters have done before and Wally West actually ended up replacing Barry Allen for 20 years because the latter ran so fast into the speedforce that he disappeared when trying to save people in Final Crisis. He, of course, took accountability for Robyn but he hasn’t made up for Super Sonic yet whose death he also ended up causing.
Termite is stamped out by Homelander and he says to Billy that they made a deal to fight to the death.
This confirms that their interaction in Episode 1 was real and that it wasn’t a fantasy, like what we saw in Episode 2. This conversation was playing on the Brooklyn Bridge encounter that the pair had and it very much sets up what’s to come down the line.
Homelander says Soldier Boy was his idol and he mocks him for wearing a cape which, yeah makes sense with his views on the world.
The Big Fight
The action scene is probably the biggest fight that we’ve had in the series so far and Butcher, Hughie and Soldier Boy all team up to try and take down Homelander. It’s big, brutal and they have a Beam-O-war with their eye lasers. This is a trope often used in anime and comic book movies and it was even made fun of in episode 1 with the Dawn Of The Seven movie.
They attempt to wrestle Homelander down which feels like the scene in Infinity War where the Avengers and Guardians restrain Thanos.
Homelander manages to escape though and after Starlight him, Vought and Soldier Boy it seems like he’s gonna be fully off the leash. Earlier in the season he brought up his plans to Starlight and now that the secret is out there it’s gonna be interesting to see if he finally goes through with it.
In the comics he didn’t actually get exposed, rather he ended up taking down the White House and President of his own accord but it seems like they’re going in a different direction here. Now I actually don’t think he will go all out and try and destroy everything because the character has a need to be loved. Rather I think he’ll try and pass her off as being a liar who’s doing it for attention and that he’ll end up weaponising his base against her. Homelander’s biggest issue is his ego…and also like, I dunno if they have the budget to have him destroy the US so they might go that route instead.
In the scene we also see Starlight’s phone case which is based on her and the live stream is filled with the hashtag “Vought Lied People Died”. This popped up last season during the rally with Stormfront and Homelander and it’s of course playing on the saying where you insert someone or something’s name in front of it. It’s been used recently by a lot of politicians and countries during the pandemic and it was also heavily played upon throughout the Iraq War with Bush and Blair taking focus.
We end with Starlight saying that she’s quitting the Seven and what a way to close out. I know I’m sounding like a broken record at this point but I think the series is getting better every week and this was another brilliant entry. Shocked at how far they went with Herogasm and also how much they’re ramping things up.
I’d of course love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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