Hold On to Your Heads

Can the penultimate episode of The Boys season 2 top last week’s crazy, over the top, exposition and fight heavy spectacle?

The Supes

We see through the eyes of college student Tommy Patterson how the public is receiving the constant barrage of news about Vought, Supes, and potential Supe terrorists, with Stormfront at the forefront. Tommy is reading articles, listening to newscasts, and taking in every word; he gets paranoid that a local shop owner who he regularly interacts with, named Kuldeep Singh, is a Supe terrorist and shoots him dead.

Homelander and Stormfront address a rally and say they don’t condone what happened to Kuldeep; they say they need more Supes to deal with the threat of Supe terrorists. Homelander calls out Starlight for being a mole within The Seven; he says she’s been apprehended and can’t hurt anyone else.

After the rally, Homelander tells Stormfront it’s a mistake keeping Starlight alive; he says he underestimated her once and won’t again. Stormfront says she’s a common enemy that can unite their cause; she watches a baby in the crowd and says it reminds her of her daughter, 80 years ago.

The two Supes visit Becca and Ryan, and Homelander introduces Stormfront to his son. Stormfront says Ryan is special, as he is the first natural born super hero. Homelander tells them he wants them all to be family, and will be visiting more, since he wants Ryan to get to know Stormfront.

Later, Ryan shows Stormfront a video of his Lego reenactment of “The Blind Side,” and says he’s also done “Dances With Wolves” and “Terms of Endearment.” Stormfront asks Ryan if he’s into anything that other kids are into, like Pewdiepie. She tells him he’s old enough to have sleepovers and go to baseball games and go to Voughtland, where Homelander has his own roller coaster. Becca gets annoyed and talks to Homelander outside; he tells her he was raised the same way and that Ryan needs to see the outside world in order not to panic and mess him up. Becca says Ryan is different because he has a mother; she says what’s best for him is to be with her – she begs him to let her raise Ryan and he reluctantly agrees.

Becca is making dinner and goes to look for Ryan; he’s outside with Homelander and Stormfront and when he sees her, Ryan calls her a liar. He says they flew him up to see the neighborhood and it’s all fake; Homelander says he deserved to know the truth. Ryan gets angry and says he hates Becca; he runs to Homelander and with Stormfront they fly off, leaving Becca.

The Boys

Lamplighter meets with Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (in Grace’s house?) about his role in Sage Grove while The Boys hang out, with Mallory. Victoria tells Mallory that Lamplighter will be a good witness for the Vought hearings, but he’s not enough. She says she’s going to need more info about what was going on at the facility, and Mallory says they might know someone who can provide that – and that they’ll have to trust each other.

The Boys watch Victoria leave, and Mallory tells Frenchie to keep Victoria alive – and not to abandon his post this time. He responds with a “Oui, madame.”

Hughie tells Butcher he’s going with them, but Butcher tells him to stay and watch Lamplighter; as they’re getting ready to leave, Butcher gets a phone call – from his mother, Connie (Lesley Nicol). After declining the first call, he answers the phone and she says she’s in New York. He said she shouldn’t have spent the money, and as he’s talking Connie tells him his father is dead. She says she needs to see him “right now.”

Hughie joins Lamplighter, who is watching some Supe XXX DVDs, and Lamplighter says he’s dead if he goes and testifies; he says he was a prodigy and now he feels useless. Hughie tells him he thought he found what he was meant to do with Butcher and The Boys, but he’s terrible at his new job.

MM and Mallory drive to a gated estate; when they pull up Mallory asks for “Jonah”, and someone on an intercom says he’s not taking visitors. When she says who she is, the gates open and they drive through to the house. They are led inside and meet Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). MM asks him what he knows about Sage Grove, but he says he doesn’t know anything. Grace says Vought f***ed him, and now he can do the same to them… if he testifies. Ultimately, he says some things are “more important than the right thing” and MM and Grace leave. She tells him to go back to his wife and daughter – she can get them all to Nicaragua; she tells him to go and never look back, and that she wishes she had.

Frenchie and Kimiko are keeping watch over Victoria, and he recounts cooking with his mama; he again asks her to teach him her sign language so they can talk, and she teaches him how to sign “gun.”

Starlight

Donna meets Starlight at a coffee shop, and tells her she never left town. Starlight tells her mom that she feels stupid; the good guys don’t win, and it’s all for money. She gets upset that she’s in the middle of it all, alone. Donna tells her she’s not alone and they could take a vacation; she says she already cleared it with Ashley, not knowing Starlight was hiding from Vought. As they talk, a smoke grenade comes flying through the shop’s window, and Black Noir comes through and attacks and knocks Starlight out.

Starlight wakes up in a dark, secure room, where she’s obviously being held.

Hughie and Lamplighter

Hughie sees Homelander’s rally and learns that Starlight has been captured; he tries to call Butcher but can’t get through. Lamplighter says she’s probably in “42-D”, a Supe proof cell in Vought Tower. Hughie asks Lamplighter to show him how to get in and help Starlight and Lamplighter agrees.

Lamplighter shows Hughie a secret entrance in which he used to sneak college girls into Vought Tower; at an elevator, he uses a hand-scanning panel, and he still has security access to the building.

They arrive at 42-D, and go through the halls; they’re actually at the conference room in front of which are the statues of The Seven. Lamplighter sees his statue has been replaced (with Starlight), and in the conference room, he sets himself ablaze, killing him. Hughie (grossly) severs Lamplighter’s hand for the security panels.

Lamplighter’s fire sets off the fire alarm and the sprinklers come on; an emergency light in Starlight’s cell gives her the juice she needs to regain some of her powers, so she blasts open the door to her cell. As she’s walking down the hallway, Black Noir grabs her and throws her through the conference room wall, where she sees Lamplighter’s body. The two fight; he beats her up and is strangling her when Maeve grabs him off of her and stuffs an Almond Joy in his mouth. She tells Starlight he has a tree nut allergy, and kicks away his Epi-pen, leaving him gasping on the floor.

Starlight tells Maeve to come with her, but Maeve shakes her head and leaves.

Hughie runs back the way he came and hears someone asking for help so he unlocks a door with Lamplighter’s hand and Donna comes out and joins him. They meet up with Starlight; she asks him what he’s doing there and he smiles. Awwww. Severed hand in, well, hand, he says he knows the way out…

Butcher

Butcher meets Connie at her hotel, and she leads him out to a terrace where his father, Sam (oh, hi, John Noble!) is waiting. He turns to leave but Connie convinces him to stay. Sam says he just wants to talk, and Butcher says he’ll give him 2 minutes. Sam says he knows he hasn’t been the perfect father; he says he never got a chance to say goodbye to Lenny, but Butcher says he’s the reason Lenny is dead.

Sam says you have to choose to sink or swim, and Lenny chose to sink. He said he was hard on his sons but it just made Butcher fearless and tough. We learn Lenny committed suicide, and Butcher ran off to join the special forces. When Sam says Butcher abandoned Lenny, he attacks his father; Connie breaks them up and Butcher leaves.

Butcher is in a bar drinking when MM calls him and tells him about Vogelbaum; he says he’ll “take care of it.”

Butcher shows up at Jonah’s house and the two men chat about Homelander when he was a boy; Jonah says when he was around 5 or 6 he was very sweet. Butcher says Jonah kept Becca away from him for all those years, and for that he’s going to kill Jonah’s daughter, his sons and their families, unless he helps him.

The Boys (and Starlight) go back to Grace’s house; she is on the phone with Butcher and says Hughie let their star witness burn himself, and Starlight thanks him. Butcher says he has it sorted, and goes to meet him mom at a coffee shop. She says Sam is at the airport, and she didn’t mean for it to go so badly. She says he only has a few months to live, so Butcher won’t have to see him again. She thought when Butcher saw how helpless his father was, he would let his anger go. Butcher hugs his mother and she leaves.

Back in the underground lair, The Boys, Starlight (and Donna) watch the hearings. Jonah is introduced, and comes into the courtroom, as Maeve, Stormfront and Homelander look on.

As soon as he is sworn in, the speaker conducting the hearing head explodes; as everyone is in shock, Jonah’s head explodes, followed by several others. The court is in pandemonium and Hughie asks “What do we do now?”

Elsewhere

Elena tells Maeve she’s going to stay with her sister; she gets upset about the plane footage, and says she wonders what else Maeve has done. She says she’s not blaming Maeve, but she needs time; Maeve flips the dining room table and sends it flying. She tells Elena “this is the real [her]”, and Elena says she knows, and she’s sorry.

Later, Ashley goes to Maeve’s apartment looking for her and finds her in bed with two men. Ashley says they need Elena to proudly sit behind Maeve at the hearings, but Maeve tells her Elena is gone.

At a party, The Deep is having fun with wife Cassandra. A-Train shows up and gives him a goldfish as a gift, and apology for being mean to him. We learn it’s a birthday party for Alastair Adana, who comes over and talks to them. He says he has a meeting with Stan Edgar, and Vought “needs” A-Train and The Deep. He asks what they think of Eagle the Archer, who The Deep likes, but turns on him when Alastair says he’s persona non grata.

The Deep and A-Train watch a news report on Eagle, who says he wouldn’t cut his mom out of his life; when he refused the church leaked a video of his partner dressed as a deer, that Eagle hunted and mounted…

The Wrap Up

So one episode to go in the season (how time flies!) and this literal head-popping episode surely sets up a battle between The Boys and The Supes. Who’s popping all these heads, and how? And why?! What’s Homelander going to do with Ryan now that he’s Super Dad? What’s Stormfront’s real interest in Ryan? Is Black Noir dead? Hopefully we’ll get some answers and an epic showdown to cap off a crazy, super, second season. M