The Boys Season Two Review

This review discusses the second season of the Amazon series The Boys. While I have avoided including any spoilers (or, rather, what I consider to be spoilers), if you would like to watch the season knowing absolutely nothing about what will happen and without any idea of where things might go, I would recommend avoiding all reviews and just watching it blind. If you’re wondering if season two is worth your time, don’t worry. It is.

I love a great uplifting tale about a superhero saving the world. Hell, I’ve seen nearly all of the MCU films (sorry, Thor: Dark World). But I would pick the darker, nihilistic characters of The Boys over the far less angsty MCU heroes every day. I like watching a story and not really knowing if the “hero” is even a hero. I like it when the cast of characters are all varying shades of gray and you don’t really know if they are going to break bad or surprise us all and decide to do the right thing. Sure, The Boys has some flaws (and I’ll get to those in a minute), but its second season (of which I have seen all eight episodes) is one of the best seasons of television, start to finish, that I’ve seen this year. And I have seen a lot of television.

Season two of The Boys picks up literally moments after the season one finale, which saw The Deep exiled to Sandusky, Ohio, A-Train have a heart attack after realizing that Starlight and Hughie were responsible for the Compound V leak to the press, while Homelander took Butcher to see that Becca is actually alive and living with her and Homelander’s son in an undisclosed location (and Becca appeared shocked – and in the case of Homelander, her rapist, terrified – to see both of them). Hell of a cliffhanger, and those are the arcs that form the spine of the show’s second season. Well, those arcs and the introduction of Stormfront, the best part of season two by a long-shot (and that’s saying something, as season two is pretty great).

I haven’t read The Boys comics, so I didn’t even realize Stormfront had been gender-flipped for the series, but I have to say it was one of the smartest moves the series has made. First of all, Aya Cash is sensational as the character, lulling the audience (and several characters) into a false sense of trust with her sardonic attitude and social media savvy. She’s positioned as a typical millennial supe – great with getting tons of hits on her Instagram Live, but unafraid to speak her truth to power. Stormfront is a dead ringer for that slightly annoying girl you knew back in high school, who always had something to say about every major social issue, but still could crack a joke to ease the tension. But under that sarcastic exterior is one of the darkest, slippery, and odious characters to ever grace a superhero tale. If you thought Homelander was a morally questionable character, wait until you get to see Stormfront in all her glory. And the two of them working together? Yeah, it’s something else.

It’s clear that Cash is having a blast with what she’s given to play, while managing to completely ground her in reality – something that isn’t easy to do when you are dealing with a superhero character. There’s a depth to the performance that you rarely see in the superhero world, and that makes the character feel real, even when she’s using her superpowers to fly or shoot lightning. It’s easy to accept those elements as simply a part of who Stormfront is because the character has been so perfectly written and performed up to that moment. It’s the perfect combination of performer and character, and it gives the main arc of the season a believability that easily could have been lost or jeopardized with different casting. Stormfront also becomes our window into Homelander, letting us better understand that narcissistic prick (and allow Antony Starr a chance to show us a bit more range).

One of the biggest issues with season one of The Boys was that we weren’t given the chance to really understand why The Seven were the assholes/morally compromised jerks/broken people they are. Instead, we were just shown their actions and asked to judge. I suppose that’s what happens when your two audience surrogates (Hughie and Starlight) are looking into this vaunted brotherhood from the outside and not really understanding its inner-workings until late in the season. Which is why it’s so refreshing that season two allows us a look behind the curtain of nearly all of them (sorry, Black Noir, maybe next season), with varying degrees of success. Learning more about what makes Homelander tick is one of the highlights of the season. Managing to provide depth to a character while not asking the audience to empathize with him is a tight rope to walk, yet Eric Kripke and his writing staff pull it off flawlessly. By the end of season two, we better understand who this character is and why he does what he does, but at no point does the series ask us to excuse his behavior or actions. The writing manages to move beyond the toxic masculinity notes from season one (which are certainly still present in Homelander, but aren’t his defining trait) and shade the character in a bit more. It’s a stunningly effective arc and some brilliant writing (and acting from Starr – his scenes with Cash are some of the highlights of season two).

We’re also given a chance to get to know more about Maeve, although her arc isn’t particularly original or flashy. Still, considering how little the character was used in season one (despite hints of a pretty interesting backstory), it’s still a win to get more time with her and to watch her grow beyond the cowed and closeted woman we saw in season one (and yes, the show answers the question of Maeve’s sexual orientation). Also given a chance to grow a bit from the more naive and sheltered young woman we met in season one is Starlight. Without the need to serve as the audience’s eyes and ears within The Seven, we get to see more of what makes Starlight into the hero she is. There’s an inner strength that keeps her grounded and focused, and we get to see just how badass she can be. It’s a really great transformation.

While the writers have crafted smart and complex arcs for several of the show’s central supes, the same cannot be said for A-Train and The Deep. Yes, they have a season arc. Yes, it proves to be crucial to the overall story. But boy, does it feel like a waste of time and space every time these two grace the screen. Part of that is likely due to the series continued joke that The Deep is seen as less than the other supes on the team, but a lot of boils down to the writers just not knowing how to handle either character. We were given a lot of A-Train in season one, so the series attempts to coast on what we already know about the character and doesn’t bother doing much development on who he is now that his powers are a potential liability rather than a strength. And with Compound V continuing to be a big part of the story, the writers miss a major opportunity to explore the effects of withdrawal from the drug, and how A-Train’s reliance on it over such a long period of time impacts his abilities (outside of the heart attack situation, which gets dropped pretty quickly). As for The Deep, well, when you’ve set a character up as a serial sexual predator, there isn’t much rehab possible to turn him into anything other than a pariah. I will give the writers credit for never attempting to walk back the heinous things The Deep previously did, but I will say I found his story the most disappointing part of season two and often found myself wishing I could just fast-forward to the next Stormfront appearance.

You might notice I haven’t spent much time talking about the titular gang in this review, and yes, there’s a reason for that. So often, the human characters in a superhero story end up as filler, not the focus of the story and only there to add a bit of color. With The Boys, they are a bit of a mixed bag this season. Hughie is given more to do, and Jack Quaid steps into the expanded character with relish. Like with Starlight, freed from his role as audience surrogate, Hughie comes into his own in a really lovely way. Sure, he’s still a bit of a mess, but there’s a leader within the character and it’s wonderful to see him begin to grow into something more than a bitter young man bent on revenge. Similarly, Frenchie and Kimiko have expanded roles to play in season two and the duo are bright spots in the dark world of The Boys (of course, they are both violent and badass, but still offer a bit of light in the dark storytelling). Mother’s Milk is underused, but still gets some great moments. However, I can’t say the same about Butcher.

I’ve had reservations about the character of Butcher since season one. When a character is so defined by a single motivation (here, the destruction of Homelander and all supes as revenge for what he assumed happened to Becca), it can be exceedingly tricky to allow that character to grow beyond that drive. And that’s the problem with Butcher in season two as well. Yes, there’s more inner-turmoil (Becca is alive and well, albeit with a child and a complicated link to Homelander), but Butcher doesn’t really grow beyond the man we saw at the start of season one. Karl Urban does his absolute best to dig into the emotional depths of the character, such as they are, but he’s hampered by writing that doesn’t want to see this character move beyond the angry, driven man we saw at the start of the series. And that’s a major problem in an otherwise strong season of the series. The Butcher conundrum isn’t going anywhere so long as both Homelander and Butcher exist on the series (and whether they both make it out alive by the end of the season is a mystery I won’t answer), but having Butcher continue to go through the motions in his quest for revenge once again this season just gets exhausting to watch. I was hoping the series would allow Urban a chance to show us more to this clearly complex but stunted man, and yet we were denied that chance (save for a couple of moments that resonate deeply because Urban is finally allowed to let loose).

So, is The Boys season two worth it? Absolutely. It’s dark and broody (but with a hint of irreverence to help pick you up in the midst of the violence and gore) and, frankly, is the perfect series for our current moment in time. This isn’t a series that will fill you with hope for the future or make you proud to be an American. Rather, it will let you explore how power of all kinds corrupts, greed can overwhelm even the most principled, and how revenge is a dish that often turns out wholly unsatisfying. There’s no Captain America coming to save the day and make everything better. But, if you’ve seen season one, you knew that.

The Boys premieres Friday, September 4 on Amazon Prime. The first three episodes will be available to stream, and subsequent episodes will be released weekly over the next five weeks.