In retrospect, maybe anticlimax was inevitable. It was always a shaky idea to center a season of The Boys on a plot to take out Homelander because the show clearly wasn’t getting rid of him. Nor should it! Antony Starr’s performance is the most consistently complicated and entertaining on the show; more importantly, he’s the main villain. I did not expect that he would die this early anyway.
But at this point in the series, the cast is so large and the plot so tangled that a big status quo shift feels necessary — and “The Instant White-Hot Wild” really doesn’t have one. The stakes here feel curiously low compared to season two’s finale when it felt like anything could happen when one big plot win (defeating Stormfront) and one big character win (Butcher promising to take care of a child he never wanted) came with one devastating loss (Becca). This time, there are explosions, lasers, and deadly nerve agents, but when the smoke clears, you remember that not much has changed.You can watch the boys season 3 free from 4khotvideos and that is the best websites to watch free movies online.
Don’t get me wrong; the finale has plenty of thrills. The Boys are still dealing with a schism, and as a result, there are different, contradictory missions at play. Butcher and Hughie are still a go on transporting Soldier Boy to Vought Tower to find and kill Homelander and Black Noir. But Mother’s Milk, Frenchie, Kimiko, a newly retired Annie, and a newly escaped Maeve are more focused on Soldier Boy, knowing that his standard explosion trick could wipe out thousands this time. The divide becomes further complicated when Butcher knocks Hughie out before he can take more V24, leaving him to hitch a ride with Annie.
In the car, Annie tells Hughie the news about the deadliness of V24, making him realize that Butcher actually saved his life. When they return to home base, he makes the case that they should save Butcher’s, too. But when the team arrives at Butcher’s hideout, their plan falls apart. Maeve switches back to Butcher’s side and throws out Frenchie’s one dose of Novichok, and the gang is briefly locked in a safe.
The final blowout of the season happens, as expected, at Vought. Soldier Boy ends up sticking to the plan, attacking Homelander despite his impassioned pitch for a two-strongest-people-in-the-world alliance. To Soldier Boy, Homelander is just a “weak, sniveling pussy starved for attention,” “a fucking disappointment.” It’s the same language Soldier Boy’s own father used, going directly against Soldier Boy’s earlier musing about breaking the cycle. And it connects back to Butcher, whose flashbacks in the last episode showed exactly how violence can become normalized to the point that hurting someone becomes automatic.But Ryan blasts Soldier Boy before he can finish the job, and then Soldier Boy hits Ryan back. It’s the final, personal element needed to wake Butcher up to the reality of what he’s compromising by partnering with Soldier Boy. So we get a brief rematch of the Homelander-Soldier Boy-Butcher fight from “Herogasm,” except this time, Butcher and Homelanderare, oddly enough, on the same side. Maeve gets in on it, too, though she’s still focused on the initial mission — and in a gnarly shot late in their brawl, Homelander takes out her eye.
In the end, MM administers the Novichok to Soldier Boy, and Maeve makes the ultimate sacrifice by flying him out the window during his final blackout explosion. Except, of course, Maeve doesn’t die. Like Kimiko, the blast wasn’t enough to kill her, but it was enough to take away her powers. That frees her to hit the road with Elena, the happy ending the two of them deserve after years of heartbreak. If this is the end of Dominique McElligott’s time on the show, it’ll be sad to lose one of the ensemble’s more complicated, morally conflicted characters — especially since she had so little screen time in recent episodes. But at least she’s going out with some mercy after a dark season.
Black Noir is actually the only character who doesn’t make it out of “The Instant White-Hot Wild” alive. The man’s earnest desire to confront his demons leads to his entrails spilling on the floor of Vought when Homelander learns Noir knew the truth about his parentage. RIP, I guess!
There were beautiful and touching moments here, to be sure. But too often, this season’s focus flitted around too much, and interesting storylines got left by the wayside. We never saw Hughie confront his close friend Neuman about the betrayal he felt when he learned the truth about her. (We did see Annie talk to her about it for some reason.) Little Nina disappeared, Maeve was too often a plot device, and the Deep’s storyline was more of a series of comic-relief scenes. For all the discussion of death tolls, only one named character died in the finale, and he was in a vegetative state at this time last season.
The Boys is a big show with a big ensemble and big ideas. Like all of season three, “The Instant White-Hot Wild” is fun, grisly, and neat. It tees up plenty of storylines for season four. But the longer the series goes on, the more difficult it becomes to slow down — and the more I want it to try just the same.