The Boys Episode 8 closes out Season 3 in a way that will melt your brain. The finale is filled with easter eggs, comic callbacks and some major moments that you know we had to talk about.
Foreshadowing
What I love about this season is that it ends much like how it began and in episode one we got some amazing foreshadowing to the final few scenes that play out here.
We, of course, opened the season with The Dawn of The Seven Movie and in that, we saw Vought Tower in flames with a toppled statue of Soldier Boy in front of it. Come the close of Episode 8 we also get this exact same thing happening with Vought Tower slightly destroyed after the big battle and the Soldier Boy statue toppled over.
It brings everything together really well from the first episode in the season to the last.
What’s gonna happen to Ryan?
Well, he’s not a character in the comics so f**k knows.
However, for years it’s been theorised that he’s going to turn into Soldier Boy. This is because early on in the series he spouted off several of the states in America. This is something Soldier Boy also did in the comics and because of this a lot of people thought that it was foreshadowing his eventual turn to him. However, when Jensen Ackles was cast as the character many brushed it to the side as being something that was wrong but I think there might actually be some truth to it.
In the comics, there were 3 versions of Soldier Boy with the first one being a World War 2 hero much like what we have here. The third one also took a big focus in the comics and Ryan may end up taking his Grandfather’s mantle at some point in the future.
Now we start with Ryan at Grace’s home and he’s actually wearing the colours of Soldier Boy in the comics, namely blue, white in red.
He’s throwing fastballs against the earth, symbolising that there’s no father figure in his life to play catch with. Baseball is Homelander’s favourite sport and if we jump back to episode 6 in season one we also had a similar scene to this. Homelander threw a fastball off into the sky and this is of course mirrored in Ryan here.
Turns out that Victoria did give him the location of Ryan last week and this is such a tense scene to start the episode with.
At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that Grace survived this encounter and she oversees Soldier Boy being put into containment. Guessing this means that he belongs to the CIA now and they might attempt to study him in order to find a way to destroy Compound V in the Supes.
Now Ryan holds himself accountable for the death of Becca and he thinks his father’s mad at him because of her death. However, he reassures him that accidents happen and that he’ll always be there for him.
Protest at Vought Tower
Cut to Vought tower where we see a protest playing out. Lots of similarities to the Turbo Rush ad and they have both pro-Homelander and pro-Starlight fans going off at each other.
It’s obviously a left vs right metaphor. The Starlight the signs have plays on We Can Do It, Believe Starlight #MeToo playing on Believe All Women, Follow The Light and Fight Like A Girl. Homelanders side has snowflakes written on a couple of things, God Guns And Homelander and Keep America Safe.
They also start up a chant saying Starlight Lied, Children Died which as we’ve mentioned in other videos is a play on the old (insert politician name) people died. This hashtag also popped up during the live stream at the end of episode 6 when Starlight was live streaming.
Maeve is Moved
Starlights side has come to get Maeve out of Vought and we learn that the Attorney General is coming with a warrant to search the building. Ashley and The Deep peer over her in her white cell which mirrors the scene in which Vogelbaum and another scientist look over a young Homelander.
This is shown in the recap section for the episode making me think it’s done for that reason but it might be a reach.
Maeve is knocked out using Novichok a poison that becomes important later on and when we see her being escorted by a SWAT team she’s wearing the same mask that Soldier Boy later has. She wakes up out of this, possibly hinting that Soldier Boy might end up being brought back for the fourth Season. Ackles absolutely killed it as the character and with him surviving the episode I’d love to see him return.
Poisonings
We discover that Frenchy has placed Novichok into a Starlight perfume bottle and this has ties to the Salisbury Poisoning that happened in March 2018. Russian Agents ended up placing the poison inside a perfume bottle that they attempted to use on a former Russian agent and his daughter. After its use, the capsule was disposed of but unfortunately, it was found by the boyfriend of Dawn Sturgess who then gave it to her as a gift. She ended up using it and unfortunately, she died from poison whilst the two Russians survived.
This idea of poisoning is reflected in Hughie whose ear is bleeding green, V24-like fluid, hinting at the danger of it.
We see Mother’s Milk wearing a Snoop Dogg t-shirt again mirroring all the hip-hop ones he’s worn throughout the show.
After hitting Todd last week he feels like he let Janine down who’ll now have the image of him hitting Todd burned into his mind. Todd ends up getting further integrated into becoming a Homelander supporter and come the end of the season he cheers him on her murdering a Starlight follower. Both Janine and Ryan witnessed their dads committing acts of violence whilst Todd was there which I’m sure was done on purpose.
Rather than VNN reporting the stream, we see this is NNC, a CNN parody who gives a different take and spin than the propaganda Cameron Coleman would.
Black Noir
Though things are looking bad for Homelander due to her filming him last week, Black Noir returns to give him somewhat of a morale boost.
He’s got the cartoon animals with him once more which Eric Kripke talked about with TV Line earlier in the week. The showrunner said he wanted this to mimic Snow White in the scene in which the forest comes alive around her with all the animals following her through it. Black Noir of course also means Black Black and Snow White is the opposite of this with both things being White. Due to Noir being unable to talk they said they had to create a way to explain the character’s backstory and doing this all in his head was the best way to go about it.
He arrives just as Ashley and Deep drop the bad news about Maeve and he genuinely wants to work with Homelander to kill Soldier Boy. The bad news is that Homie now knows he’s his father and he’s furious that Noir kept it from him.
Sadly, the man who does nothing but hilarious physical comedy gets his guts ripped out by Homelander and he dies never getting to be the next Eddie Murphy. The build-up to it is a hilarious scene with Noir writing notes out and this is the biggest deviation from the comics in the show.
The comics had him being revealed as a clone of Homelander who drove him insane because he wanted to kill him. Noir’s entire reason for being was to take Homelander down in case he went rogue and thus he drove him insane by dressing up as him and killing countless people. However, in the series Homelander has X-ray vision so he’d instantly know if he was a clone so they changed this up to the arc with Irving. Big death to have him go out this early. With him being killed it makes you wonder who they’re going to use to finally take out Homelander as he’s becoming nigh on unstoppable.
I’ll talk more in just a bit about who I think is gonna take him out but Noir being firmly off of the board definitely whittles down the choices.
A-Train
Cut to a gas station and we see A-Train cigarettes outside as well as Brave Maeve lollies when we cut inside.
Billy ends up knocking Hughie out after he says he’s the spitting image of his brother. This is of course due to the guilt he carries and how he is responsible for Lenny’s death.
We then join A-train and his brother in what I actually think is one of the best scenes in the episode. It’s a testament to The Boys writing that even minor stories like this get a major payoff with Nathan being angered that Blue Hawk didn’t get true justice, instead being murdered by A-train. He brings up the menthol vapes further playing on the evolution of the cigarette ad from before, showing how A-Train and Vought are always looking for opportunities to make money.
His brother feels like he’s once more just doing things with complete disregard for his family and home even though it’s pretty clear the character has changed. A-Train can obviously now run again and though he’s on a walking stick he will recover whereas Nate will be stuck in a wheelchair.
Annie & Hughie
Now the fall of this relationship is juxtaposed, there’s that word again by Annie and Hughie repairing theirs.
The pair have a car ride together which is of course something that they have done throughout the series to have their heart-to-hearts.
Hughie talks about his father who is played by Simon Pegg, Pegg was who Hughie was based on in the comics and though he was originally supposed to play the lead, time got the better of him and he aged up out of it. Used that easter egg before but just for the people who don’t watch me every week which…go f**k yourself.
Hughie talks about how he thought that his father not fighting for his mother was a weakness but that it was actually a strength because he stayed with his son to make sure he was safe. This is reflected in Annie who just wanted what was best for Hughie and she’s always been there for him even when he’s been proven wrong time and time again.
Family Relationships
This idea of support is mirrored in Kimiko and Frenchy, the latter of which is angered that he’s basically just an attack dog for cruel people. He talks about his father’s abuse but in issue 39 when we met him he was a nice bloke. We don’t actually find out what happened to Nina and she may return next season as one of the minor villains. In the comics, she operated in Russia and gathered together several Supes in order toto throw a coup with Vought supplying the army. Nina had been given a special form of V that she could trigger and make people’s heads explode and she was going to send the army in, let them overthrow the Russian Government, kill them all and make it seem like she’d saved the day. However, this was a double-cross by Vought who just wanted her to take the fall and this could possibly be adapted into a Season 4 story with her still being alive.
Jump over to the FlatIron building which also doubles as the Boy’s headquarters in the comics. Soldier Boy and Butcher talk about fatherly relationships, an ongoing theme throughout the series. In pretty much every instance of this the father and child relationship is destroyed and this is actually really important to bear in mind for how the ending flips it on its head. Victoria ends up screwing over her father figure in Stan Edgar, Billy of course hated his father, Homelander and Soldier Boy have duked it out at several points and Janine and MM aren’t exactly on the best of terms after he hit Todd.
Come to the end of the entry though Homelander and Ryan are closer than they’ve ever been but this is because Ryan follows his father down the dark path he’s on whereas the rest of the characters didn’t. Homelander even turned against his oldest friend Black Noir to keep his dad safe.
Soldier Boy / Captain America
Soldier Boy brings up the Soldier Boy story and how it lost Best Picture to an American in Paris, dating the movie as being from 1951. He then spouts off how it’s all BS and he mentions a Captain America-esque origin story about how a kid with a heart of gold discovers he’s got incredible abilities.
In Steve’s story, he was injected with Super Soldier Serum but Vought made it seem like Soldier Boy got his powers naturally because they didn’t want the public learning the truth about Compound V. This was also seen in Homelander who had an entire fake origin story designed for him that was supposed to be similar to the farm like Clark had.
The truth is that his dad owned several steel mills and he sent him to boarding school. Rather than being physically abusive he belittled him and said he wasn’t good enough to carry his name. He went to his friends in the war department and ended up becoming the strongest man alive. However, his father said he took a shortcut, showing why Soldier Boy is the way he is. Love the theme of Father’s throughout the series and it’s gonna be interesting to see how it’s brought into Ryan and Homelander’s arc next time.
Theory Time
Now that takes us into theory time.
So Soldier Boy is put on ice at the end of the episode and though he seems like he could be brought back, I actually think it might be Ryan who takes down Homelander. Again this series is all about dads and their kids with pretty much all the children turning against their father figures at some point. Even Hughie did by the sounds of his childhood and therefore we have this constantly repeating theme.
I think this is all setting up that we will have a big focus on Ryan turning against his father and he, of course, has both Billy and Grace who’ve taken care of him now pushed out. I think the series will culminate with him choosing between turning into his father and cementing the Supes ruling the world or standing against them. Due to how everything is left at the end with the Seven being all but destroyed, I can imagine that if Homelander is taken out that Vought will go with him too. They of course removed Stan Edgar, Homelander is now in charge and Ashley isn’t exactly stable. So I think that it’s all gonna come down to Ryan Vs Homelander and that will be how the show closes out.
Probably wrong like I’ve been wrong about most of the other theories and that’s the end of theory time!
Parallels Between the Boys and Vought
After ambushing Butcher, Frenchy says no for once and Hughie says that he thinks Billy wants him to be his canary once more and pulls him back like Lenny. Maeve makes a grave mistake though and she throws out the poison and sides with Billy.
Though they’re initially locked up they escape and work together to win and this idea of separation causing someone’s downfall is shown on the opposite side when we travel to Vought. Homelander reveals that Noir is dead because he kept secrets from him and he also touches upon his first press conference. This was shown to us in The Boys Diabolical and it’s also the first time that Noir and Homelander worked together, with that being the first and this being the last time they would.
He asks the deep to kill the Vice President runner who we see in the next scene swimming in his home. Deep initially says that’s treason but we learn at the end of the episode that he drowned in his home and this was to allow Victoria to become the VP. After he appeared in the news report last week I kinda had the feeling they’d do this and that’s one theory at least right for the whole season. We got one right, we’re officially the best.
Vic The Veep In Comics
Now in the comics Vic The Veep ended up killing The President and he took the number one spot which led to Vought controlling all of America. Every law was changed to allow them to do whatever they wanted and the Supes were given more legal powers. I can see this being what happens in the next season and Victoria might even be the reason why Homelander doesn’t end up getting turned into a criminal for killing that protester at the end. I definitely think she’s gonna be the president and in the comics, Homelander ended up ripping off Vic’s head which would be ironic if he did it in the series cos she blows heads like Ryan Arey’s mom.
He also tells Ashley to take off her wig revealing that she’s almost pulled her hair out to the point of complete baldness. I think this is fully lining her up now as being the show counterpart of Jessica from the comics who ripped her hair out towards the end of the run.
Homelander watches some of the World War 2 propaganda featuring Soldier Boy and not only did he come from him he also got his catchphrase from him too.
“Who are the real heroes? You guys!”
As Butcher enters we see a poster for Vought and friends which is a play on Fox and Friends. This room is filled with news anchor parodies and the final fight itself takes place in the Vought News Network room.
Homelander reveals that he killed Noir, which was Soldier Boys’ main goal. Soldier Boy has of course talked about how he always wanted kids throughout the season but here he finally shuts down that idea by turning on his son. He also utters the same thing his father said to him which is that he is a disappointment.
Ryan’s Future
Ryan ends up saving his father as they restrain him and once Soldier Boy strikes back it sets Billy off to stop him from Soldier wiping them both out before he can superman that Ho…melander.
The idea of fathers comes up again and next season, I think we’ll see Billy and Homelander duking for Ryan’s future. He of course made a promise to Becca and knowing that he’s living on borrowed time means that he might end up trying to kill Homelander so that Ryan isn’t left in his care. Can see Ryan going back to Grace after the death of Billy and Homelander and this would also make up for her losing her grandchildren to Lamplighter.
Big Battle
We get this big fight between Billy and Soldier Boy whilst Maeve and Homelander go head-to-head. The latter is a big one in the comics and due to the ending of this episode, I think that it’s as close as we’ll get to that. In the source material, the pair battled it out with Maeve busting out her sword. It was revealed that she’d planted bugs throughout Boys tower so that the Boys could spy on the seven and this was a testament to treason. As Starlight attempted to escape Maeve and Homie duked it out with the latter ripping her head off and throwing it out the building. I genuinely thought that they were doing something along those lines when she dived out the Tower so good on The Boys for tricking me, but I spoiled your show so back atcha punk.
Anyway, she ends up getting stabbed in the eye and this, of course, is meant to mirror Stormfront getting the same thing done to her last season. Homelander also does some of the things he did to Stormfront too including lasering her f**king tits.
He went out with both Stormfront and Maeve and is clearly just obsessed with making her go through the same things she did.
Hughie gets everyone to evacuate the building and Ashley rejects other Ashley from joining her as they travel to the roof. This reminded me a lot of Red Skull in The First Captain America movie and it also shows how little Ashley cares about the staff.
Kimiko ends up playing Maniac by Michael Sembello and she dances similar to Alex in Flashdance. You might remember that she got the idea for this last week when she was sitting with Starlight at Mothers Milk’s house.
It all leads to a big fight in the main room with Starlight absorbing all the energy from the lightbulbs and monitors after Hughie adds to the energy crisis. In the Flatiron when she was locked up they ended up turning out all the lights as her power comes purely from this. Nice little focus on her shoes which we can also see is white with a star on them, Vought doesn’t miss a trick baby.
Homelander also gets stabbed in the ear, perhaps meaning that he ends up deaf in it for the next entry. His super-hearing has been a big talking point in this season so they could be setting up ways for the Boys to work around him, though he would have…have the other ear…moving on.
Maeve ends up diving out with Soldier Boy to save him and Butcher actually protects Ryan though it leads to him going off with his dad. However, this feeling of the two being separated and Butcher fighting for him whilst Homelander left has to stand for something.
Billy ends up collapsing and he’s given 12-18 months left to live because of Compound V24. I wanna talk about what I think will happen at the end of the video as it’s a big comic spoiler, bigger than the others. It’s a devastating scene.
Mother’s Milk’s Past
Mothers Milk also explains to his daughter his family’s past and the truth about Superheroes. However, he spins it to talk about her Grandfather being a force for good who fought to get justice. You might also notice that MM’s finger is tapping on the picture here. As he explained to Starlight earlier in the season this was OCD he developed after the murders carried out by Soldier Boy. This called all the way back to the second season in which he did it in the car during the road trip but Janine reaches out and stops his finger finally showing that it’s ok. Soldier Boy has been quote-unquote put to rest
Maeve’s Memorial
Vought is running memorial reports for Queen Maeve. Crazy to think Supersonic, Black Noir and Maeve are now all out the Seven but she at least gets a happy ending as she’s reunited with Elena. When we last saw her she had said she needed some time for herself after seeing the plane footage but it’s nice that Maeve actually got to be back with her. When she went to Billy it made it clear that she wanted to be normal and she also brings up their first meeting in the bathroom.
This was also something that happened in the comics and it put the pieces in place for Maeve to eventually sacrifice herself to buy Starlight time to escape the tower. Ashley and Anika end up deleting the footage of her being rescued by the boys showing that the She-O is intent on protecting her whereas once she was happy to lock her up. They are happy to run the idea that Maeve is dead and we later see a billboard outside the flat iron with Remembering Maeve written on it.
Over the top of this, we hear the song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. This song is about going back to one’s roots but here it’s very much about going back to basics.
Soldier Boy is put back in status, and Deep is back on his own, with his reputation as being sexually abusive restored. Cassandra has released a book called In 2 Deep my Journey 2 Freedom which is about her escaping the relationship. This PR move is of course similar to the one Deep did with him saying he left the church.
The quote along the top is by Stefany koutroumpis an art director who also worked on Pacific Rim.
Deep is back under the control of Homelander and this is seen by a picture of him and the character overlooking his be.
Annie Joins The Boys
At the Boys HQ, Annie dumps her costume and she ends up joining the Boys. Big change up from the comics and above the shute we can see some black and white photos of the supes, mirroring how they were presented in the comics when the Boys hunted them.
Mother’s Milk wears a 2pac T-shirt and it’s all eyes on V…like Victoria with the news report about her getting the VP.
This is on VNN and if you look at the banner along the bottom you can see how this is reporting mainly for the left with both Ted Cruz and Ron Desantis making headlines. The latter says that he’s banning woke Starlight teachers from Florida playing on the recent controversy involving the state and schools.
With little time left, Butcher announces that Victoria has to go and we end outside Vought tower.
The Real Homelander
We can see some Stormchasers carrying the S symbol she had which was based on the SS from the second world war.
There’s also a character wearing horns and the Stars and Stripes face paint which is of course playing on Jacob Chansley who was splashed all over the news after the capital building incident in 2021.
The redhead from the first rally spots Homelander and at this point, Ryan flies in. Gonna be honest with you mate, my brains got about 200 tv shows, comics and movies stored in it so I might have misremembered this, but I think this might be the first time that we see Ryan fly.
He was of course pushed off the roof early in the series by his dad and this shows how he’s growing in power.
Homelander kills a protestor and rather than being condemned he’s cheered on, now no longer having to hide who he is.
We end with Ryan smiling, reminding me a lot of The ending of The Omen, perhaps ushering in the spawn of Satan…well Superman himself.
What’s Next?
Now that ends the Boys and what a season it was. It’s crazy that this is now three seasons deep and it’s still knocking it out of the park. The finale was incredible and I think that the season has been consistently brilliant. Can’t wait to see where they go from here and that’s the perfect way to end a season, wondering what’s coming next.
As for that well they’ve now given Billy a reason to up the ante due to the ticking time bomb on his head. The guy is living on borrowed time. Major comic spoilers ahead for his eventual arc.
Butcher ends up deciding that no one on earth should have Compound V. This is something that he brought up in the meeting with Maeve and I think it was put in place to clearly hint to them following this arc. Butcher ended up murdering all of the Boys, Love Sausage and Grace before he set his sights on using the exploding V to kill Supes across the world. However, he subconsciously set things in place so that Hughie could pull him back from the brink and stop him.
This led to the two facing off against each other with Hughie coming out on top. As they fell off a higher level of the Empire States Building, Butcher was badly injured and he died, happy that he’d failed.
Could definitely see this being something they end up doing and with Season 4 due to start filming in August I can’t wait until we get more information on it. I think that from Soldier Boy, Billy will find a way to destroy Compound V completely and that will be his final mission.
Now there is a way he can survive this and Starlight of course stole several vials of Compound V last week to give to Kimiko. There’s still a lot left but I kinda think Billy taking it would go against his principles.
I’d of course love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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