The Boys S2E4 Review: Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death
Warning! Super Spoilers Ahead!
Read Steve’s review of the previous episode here.
I found myself asking, “Are we there yet?” throughout this episode. Maybe the question had something to do with the rambling road trip half the characters take down the Eastern seaboard, or perhaps it stemmed from the week-long wait between the previous episode and this chapter of The Boys that made it feel somewhat flat by comparison. “Nothing Like It in the World” loses much of the momentum from last week as the unified plotline that brought the Boys and The Seven face-to-face diverges into separate arcs. I understand the show needs to pump the brakes to refocus on its characters after the intensity of episode three, but the narrative slack here hits like a truck.
The episode opens with a woman speaking direct-to-camera about how her engagement imploded the night before her wedding, and we periodically cut away to other women weighing in on relationships in the same confessional style. One of them comments on her hunger for love so pure it can outlast even death, but if that’s what wants, then she’s come to the wrong place. It turns out these women are members of the Church of the Collective auditioning to be The Deep’s wife, and Carol is supervising the proceedings to determine which lucky lady will do the most to rehabilitate his public image. There’s a great line from Mad Men: “What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.” The Church is fabricating true love, and to sell what? The Deep? Why?
This tale of love at first interview returns The Boys to its familiar theme of how lies can look and feel more real than the truth. The woman chosen to be The Deep’s bride is so desperate for love that she sees a product to be promoted as her prince charming. This isn’t a romance; it’s a marketing job. If the branching plotlines of “Nothing Like It in the World” have anything in common, it’s that they all feature characters trying to act out the truth who wind up walking further and further toward comfortable lies.
Frenchie, for example, snorts Compound C (a.k.a. cocaine) to keep himself feeling numb. He kisses Kimiko as she grieves over her brother’s death, and when he tells his partner in crime Cherie that it was just an attempt at consolation, she’s incredulous. “You thought a kiss would make her feel better or you feel better?” Cherie asks. The answer lies behind door number two. Frenchie wants to lessen the pain of his own sins, but he tricks himself into focusing on Kimiko’s trauma instead of looking inward. The Boys’ resident supe becomes a satellite for Frenchie, another drug in his arsenal of self-medication. He does stop her from charging at Stormfront during a rally, which certainly saves her life, although it does reveal Frenchie hasn’t internalized that Kimiko is an individual who can make her own self-destructive choices.
Control is Homelander’s drug of choice, and he feels it slipping between his fingers. Stormfront’s rising popularity threatens his primacy in The Seven, and he reacts by desperately seeking a hit of power. He fires A-Train from the team, he meets Madelyn Stillwell for a date night, and he outs Maeve as gay on live TV. Wait, he meets with Stillwell? I thought this could be a dream sequence, but he’s actually using Doppelganger to assume her form. Homelander can’t confront that he’s no longer the center of the universe, so he recruits someone to lie to him—and lies to himself in the process—in order to feel like a big boy. Inconvenient truths won’t stand between the strongest man in the world and the self-aggrandizing myths he chooses to believe.
Butcher meets with Mallory, who gives him two addresses: one where he might find Liberty, an old supe Raynor thought could be the next lead in the Vought investigation, and another with the location of the compound where Becca lives. He reunites with his wife, but she refuses to run away with him, correctly sensing that Butcher doesn’t want Ryan to join them on their great escape. Butcher’s raison d’être tells him to get lost. It’s a shocking twist that will certainly have repercussions for Butcher moving forward.
With Butcher striking out on his own, Mother’s Milk assumes leadership of the Boys. Against his better judgment, MM allows Hughie to bring Annie along as they head to North Carolina to track down Liberty. They discover the mysterious supe killed an innocent black man during a traffic stop in the 1970s before she disappeared. If that isn’t shocking enough, the woman who shares this information alleges Liberty has returned—as Stormfront? It seems hard to believe given that Stormfront doesn’t look like an octogenarian, but after the last episode, we do know racially-motivated murder is one of her hobbies.
The real climax of this arc comes when the gang returns to New York and Annie breaks up with Hughie. Annie’s decision to leave a comfortable yet unsustainable relationship speaks to a larger trend on the show where its women are the ones who behave like adults. The boys of The Boys—Butcher, Frenchie, and even Hughie—might act tough, but they aren’t quite adults because they lack emotional maturity. As a result, they turn to the women in their lives for emotional labor, creating an unfair dynamic where the ladies need to be parents as well as partners and where the men aren’t responsible for their own personal growth.
“You put me on this pedestal and the truth is I never knew how to save you,” Becca tells Butcher when explaining why she can’t leave with him. Butcher wants his wife back, but he also wants a mother figure who can help carry his trauma. Of course, Becca can’t be that person; she needs to raise her son. At the same time, Kimiko can’t be the sandbox where Frenchie sorts out his guilt because she has her own guilt to process. Annie can’t be Hughie’s second wind because she has her own crosses to carry. The women of the show deserve to be individuals and not just extensions or outlets for the boys. It’s childish of the male characters to let their female counterparts face the music as they live in blissful ignorance of their emotional pitfalls, and the boys would be stronger if they took that step toward maturity.
Ironically, Homelander brushes against this lesson in the final moments of the episode. Stormfront tells him that his need to be constantly loved is pathetic, and she goes on to offer some advice that doubles as searing political commentary: “You can’t win the whole country anymore. No one can. You don’t need 50 million people to love you. You need five million people fucking pissed.” Homelander flies back to Doppelganger to have his ego stroked, but after Stormfront’s lecture, their mommy-and-me routine isn’t satisfying. Doppelganger tries to adapt by transforming into Homelander, but this only prompts the real Homelander to kill the clone and exclaim that he doesn’t need to be loved or need anyone but himself.
Homelander used Stilwell, and later Doppelganger, to supply him with the validation he craved, and that affection gave them leverage to check his worst impulses. If Homelander doesn’t need love or people to give it to him, then there’s nothing to stop him from acting on his megalomania or sadistic whims. Let’s hope someone can protect the world from this hero now that he’s a free agent.
Notes from the Peanut Gallery:
- I have a few confessions to make. First, I’m a dry-wiper (but I’m in recovery). Second, I like Almond Joys! I guess that makes me a serial killer?
- There’s a moment during the road trip sequence where the gang passes a portrait of Homelander where the stars-and-strips on his cape are replaced with the Confederate flag. I loved this imagery; it feels very reminiscent of our current cultural moment where factions try to deploy symbols, like heroes, to reflect or legitimize certain beliefs. Even the name “Homelander” feels open to interpretation, as if it speaks to an idealized Southern homeland represented by a white superman.
- So Stormfront is holding rallies? Where she’s convincing people that dangerous individuals have snuck across our borders and threaten the country? And she drives home the point with a meme-based propaganda campaign? I wonder where the writers got the idea for that. It seems a little far-fetched to me.
Read Steve’s review of the next episode here.