RIOTUS

I forgot to recap Ep 5? Yikes! Well, I’m not making that mistake today, though I am a few days late. (My apologies.) Homelander (Antony Starr), along with his reluctant dad Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), is trying to find the last dose of a chemical that could make him immortal. Butcher (Karl Urban) and his team are trying to prevent that. And… go!

SPOILER WARNING! IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE BOYS S5 EP 6,
WATCH IT BEFORE YOU CONTINUE READING!

We open to what looks like a prison cell, where a man in a hospital gown is injected with a blue drug. As Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Homelander watch, the man gushes blood from his rectum and dies. Although she admits she’s been unable to replicate V1, Homelander insists Frederick Vought was not smarter than she is; she’ll get there. As he leaves, a grim expression falls over her face.

Next, we see an older gentleman (Paul Reiser), once known as The Legend, getting ready for work. Turns out he’s a junior employee at a Vought-owned movie theater, where he’s hiding out from basically everyone after losing his penthouse and fortune. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) catches up with him to ask where they can find Bombsight (Mason Dye), who supposedly has that last dose of fabled V1—the original chemical that created supers. More powerful than Compound V, it could give Homelander immortality, as well as immunity to Butcher’s supe-killing virus. The Legend has an idea of where to start.

So now there are two missions: some of the team will go with The Legend to find Bombsight while others go to Homelander’s new megachurch to plant a virus bomb.

Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) make their way to the Democratic Church of America to plant the bomb, intending to kill Homelander at a public event the next day. Passing through the basement of the church, they find the body of Firecracker (Valorie Curry), who was murdered by Homelander. They next run afoul of Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), who battles Starlight until Hughie threatens to drop the virus right that moment. They hurry out, mission frustrated, while Oh Father smiles at their retreat.

The Legend leads the rest of the team to Vought Villages, a retirement community for supes, where they find Bombsight’s ex-girlfriend Golden Geisha (Naoko Mori). A former actress in racially problematic ’70s TV shows, she refuses to help, though she seems to develop a soft spot for gushing fan Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) who says she learned English from watching “someone who looks like me” on television. (Honestly, it’s a pretty touching scene and some great acting.) Butcher, impatient, kidnaps Geisha and sets off a somewhat ridiculous fight against a handful of geriatric supes. The Legend gets exasperated at Butcher’s heavy-handed approach and walks off, saying they’ve gotten all the help he’s going to give.

Elsewhere, The Deep (Chace Crawford) is pushed to endorse a Vought oil pipeline in Alaska. He makes a video about the “all natural” benefits of oil and how his aquatic friends all love it (though he admits privately that they all “kind of hate it”), which inspires the angry Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) to take drastic action. The pipeline ruptures and oil covers the beaches of Alaska, killing billions of fish and seabirds. Deep tries to save a dying fish with CPR, only to have the fish wheeze “we all know, Kevin.” Devastated, he stumbles away from the beach.

Elsewhere, the Boys return to their hideout to find Sage waiting for them. She’s switched sides, having gotten Back Ashley (Colby Minifie) to read Soldier Boy’s mind. (It’s a pretty funny bit.) An attempt to pit Soldier Boy against Homelander—by showing him a video of his son and former lover having sex—might be working… but she’s not sure enough to risk it. So she’s going to help the Boys acquire the V1 before Homelander. She’s arranged to get word out that Geisha is in trouble, knowing it will draw out Bombsight.

Geisha tells them that Bombsight will give them the V1 if they ask. She refused it years ago, saying that the idea of immortality is horrifying to her. Seeing her loved ones age and die around her, knowing it will only be like that forever, is a nightmare. This leads Kimiko to reconsider, telling Frenchie (Tomer Capone) she feels the same way; she won’t take the V1 but will die instead, if it means bringing down Homelander.

The Deep and Noir are about to do their “bro-cast.” The Deep is heartbroken that his aquatic friends all hate him now—he’s basically unwelcome in the water—when Noir confesses. He admits he sabotaged the pipeline in revenge for The Deep killing his Broadway ambitions. Enraged, The Deep murders Noir, strangling him and then plunging a knife into his throat, before leaving the bloody studio for parts unknown.

Meanwhile, Homelander has tracked down The Legend. The older man takes him to The Boys’ old hideout, where Homelander searches for clues. The Legend tells Homelander that he understands; everyone gets cast out at some point, even him, and it’s always awful. The display of understanding and empathy—without fear or begging for his life—manages to reach Homelander and he lets The Legend go. But something the older man said stuck with him: Golden Geisha did ads for a Vought emergency alert system. He calls Vought and asks them to find a specific ID…

Bombsight arrives and begs Geisha to take the V1. She refuses again, gently, and says they can be together for the time she has left. Soldier Boy arrives then, reviving a rivalry/enmity that will surely be a major part of the series Vought Rising (coming soon!). The two fight, until Bombsight explains that he only wanted to be with Geisha—and Soldier Boy says he can burn the V1 out of his system, ending his immortality. He’ll do it in exchange for the V1 Bombsight has in his pocket. Bombsight agrees and hands it over.

Which is about when Homelander arrives. Bombsight runs for it and Soldier Boy squares up to his son. The Boys and Sage watch as the two talk. Soldier Boy says that Stormfront (Aya Cash) always said he was the goal of Vought’s program… but now he realizes she would have wanted Homelander to get the V1.

So he gives it to him.

Sage can’t believe it. After saying people are predictable, she was caught by surprise at Soldier Boy’s choice, and now all her plans are in danger. The Boys are likewise shocked and Butcher tells them to run.

Homelander, dumbstruck, uses his laser eyebeams to cut his arm so he can inject the V1. Convulsing, he falls to his knees, arches his back and shoots a blast into the skies. Cut to black.

Wow. After a multi-episode chase for this McGuffin, it ends up in the bloodstream of the one guy nobody really wants to have it. Sage’s epic miscalculation might have cost the world everything; even if it frustrates her plans for a supe-human war of annihilation, making Homelander potentially immortal was not how things were supposed to go. With Soldier Boy proving immune to their virus, their best lines of attack on Homelander are looking inadequate, so that the series’ final two episodes will have a lot going on.

Acting honors in this episode go first to Paul Reiser. As a guy with a story for every occasion—most of them horribly X-rated—he’s the ultimate been-there-done-that old timer who knows where the bodies are buried (probably because he’s the one who buried them). Hiding out as “Chet Vanderbilt” at a Vought theater, making popcorn and cleaning up soiled restrooms, he’s living out his last days in pathetic, sordid fashion, but he hasn’t changed a bit. And his ability to understand Homelander creates an affecting moment with a character who doesn’t have a lot of those.

Antony Starr continues to be amazing as Homelander, and gets to prove that Homelander isn’t an idiot as many believe. His idea to track Golden Geisha through her emergency alert necklace is inspired. And his brief crisis of faith, where he asks if he’s done something wrong, is pretty moving.

Dye and Mori have great chemistry as two long-parted lovers, divided by what they want from a future together, which mirrors the relationship between the V-powered Kimiko and Frenchie. It seems some relationships are doomed to tragedy.

So where do we go from here, with two episodes left?

Indulge me in a bit of speculation. V1 is said to be volatile and not many test subjects survived to develop powers. Homelander might not be empowered the way everyone expects; it seems possible that the interaction of V1 and his own Compound V won’t be stable after all. What if the V1 degrades or even erases his powers, while giving him immortality? There are a lot of untested assumptions around what that drug will do and I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as we’re supposed to believe.

Butcher has to be the one to beat Homelander, but if he’s amped up, that battle is impossible. Something serious will have to happen and we might have seen Homelander engineer his own downfall, which would be karmically appropriate.

Lots of characters will be lost along the way, though, and we’ve already heard that the upcoming Episode 7, “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk,” will be especially bloody. Who will fall? No speculation here, but we’ll find out soon.