After dropping the first three episodes of season two at once a couple of weeks ago, The Boys is on a weekly schedule at Amazon Prime, a format that has some folks of the fandom up in arms. For me, the weekly format is ideal, as The Boys proves itself to be a show worthy of time to take each episode in. Not to mention that weekly formats were the standard before streaming came in and ruined the way people take in content.
“We Gotta Go Now” is another nicely paced episode, continuing the rivalry between Stormfront and Homelander, while Hughie and MM track down Butcher to stop him from throwing in the towl after the break from Becca. They find him at his aunt’s house, which gives us some down time to learn more about Butcher’s past — a younger brother he let down, and a possibly even softer side than he’s let us see before now.
After too many examples of his disregard for human life, Homelander’s popularity with the public is finally starting to tank. It’s The Boys’ continued exploration of how celebrity, media, and the entertainment industry allow for corrupt individuals to keep thriving where the show really hits its mark. Fiction and reality start to blend together, as Homelander’s public outing of Maeve has now been written into Vought’s superhero films. There’s a lot of interesting levels at play here — how things actually go down, the way the media retells it, and the way Vought decides to write it in their films. In Maeve’s case, after saving the world in one of the films, she decides to come out herself. To add another odd layer to it, the Supes play themselves in these propaganda films, even when details are fixed to meet Vought’s standards. And then there’s Stormfront’s hand in her own public image, creating memes and spreading rumors to gain the public’s favor; when she offers her internet savvy to help Homelander, their rivalry comes to an interesting impasse, for now.
Annie’s confrontation with Stormfront on the set of one of the films is another great example of the lies they tell on the screen. Earlier in the episode, a film scene ends with the three women of The Seven standing together against evil, friends in combat. Later, Annie and Stormfront stand off in mutually assured destruction. The dichotomy feels like a valid criticism of the performative scene in Avengers: Endgame, when there’s a brief shot of all of the female superheros lining up together in battle against Thanos.
This nuance makes season two more vital than season one ever could be, with the amount of information and news that people take in daily creating an exhausting fight to save democracy.
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