The Boys - An Amazon Prime adaptation of the Ennis comic series

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Yeah, it makes zero fucking sense. Together they would have made a truly great adversary, and all the motivation was there for it to happen.

Exactly. And if you want to demonize old America, toxic masculinity, and Trump, would it not make sense to have Soldier Boy team up with Homelander? The alpha male toxic man joins forces with Super Trump and his brat. Now that would have made Season 4 something to look forward to. That's what I originally thought the ending would be prior to the release of the finale. Soldier Boy and Homelander in charge of Vought and its corporate empire, with Homelander doing public speaking events while Soldier Boy trains Ryan to be even more vicious and efficient than his father. Now that would've been interesting.

At least Homelander didn't die. Like everyone else says, he carries the series. Soldier Boy is a close second though. Hope they bring him back before too long.

As I said before, he's their Tywin Lannister. If he dies, the show dies with him.

 

[likeacrackado]

Genuinely impressed with how bad the writing of this show is. The total loss from the finale was Black Noir(fuck you showrunners for manufacturing feels with the cartoon characters) and Mave's powers(something she wanted to get rid of). Didn't even have the balls to kill off the big bad, or at least pretend they did like last season.

I started laughing when they shoehorned how Maeve was helped and crediting the protest outside as being instrumental, all to pander to the degenerates.

I don't know if I misheard it, but I thought Maeve labeled the protest as "LGB", was the T deliberately omitted?

Was hoping someone else noticed this. She credited "LGB kids" for giving her an opportunity. Maybe trannies are a bridge too far for the show, now that I think of it there haven't been any trans characters yet.

Got a lot of laughs out of it and I look forward to the dumb shit in season 4.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Genuinely impressed with how bad the writing of this show is. The total loss from the finale was Black Noir(fuck you showrunners for manufacturing feels with the cartoon characters) and Mave's powers(something she wanted to get rid of). Didn't even have the balls to kill off the big bad, or at least pretend they did like last season. Got a lot of laughs out of it and I look forward to the dumb shit in season 4.

I'm impressed at how moronic the good guys were. Like, Soldier Boy and Homelander were going to fight, why did Maeve butt in? She should have just taken Ryan, gotten the others to evacuate save for Starlight, then the two of them can wait until Homelander or Soldier Boy wins the fight, then they can kill the winner. Problem solved. It's like, every advantage was being hand-wrapped and given to the heroes on a silver platter. They still managed to waste each one. From Starlight becoming America's darling and co-captain of the Seven, to Soldier Boy vs. Homelander, there's only a story for Season 4 because the good guys were so utterly and completely incompetent.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

I'm genuinely frustrated by this finale. An entire season of build up to The Boys getting powers, Soldier Boy going to Homelander, Homelander cracking, and for what? Pussy out on giving The Boys powers, Soldier Boy had a mediocre fight against the team and ended on a dud, Homelander is back to status quo.

You had something going here, especially with the repeated hits to the "Butcher is right, supes need to be handled with malice" and they go soft.

 

[Commander X]

While I had read bits and pieces of Ennis' comic and you know, in the end did not care too much for it the TV show still comes up way short in comparison.

TV Hughie: "Oh no, that hot muscly asshole raped you, Starlight!"

Comic Hughie: "You blew them, Starlight? Fuck you, whore! I'm gonna need time to process this, fuck you."

Even with Ennis being a lib the differences between comic and show are brutal. Someone on some forum, somewhere said it pretty well: the comic is about masculinity from a relatively honest lib's POV, the show is about "toxic masculinity" from the POV of women and beta male writers where masculinity is a fiction unless women are doing it (see Starlight being mad at Hughie for wanting powers like a sexist pig while giving the Asian her powers). Even when they introduced Stormfront all of her racist dialogue was just "You damn black people!" If it had been closer to the book they would have had a whole dictionary of racist terms out.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I could just imagine what they could have done had Soldier Boy joined Homelander, and had they not wasted Black Noir. I originally thought that was happening when I saw Homelander fight Maeve and the Boys fight Soldier Boy, only to be disappointed when I saw the rest of the episode. Imagine them doing more promotions with Soldier Boy and his family. More sappy love songs being sung by Soldier Boy while Homelander does more rallies with his son. Vought Propaganda selling the masculine idea of family to the masses, of real men having sons and breeding real heroes, of how masculine family values should dominate once again. As John Henry Eden put it in Fallout 3: "The values of our past shall be the foundation of our future."

Imagine Vought having a near-complete dominance over American culture, and with Soldier Boy and Victoria Neuman, they finally have their military contracts, with supersoldiers joining in on the hunt against Vought's enemies, who are once again declared enemies of the state. Vought's power becomes near-absolute, and Homelander uses that power to ostracize and destroy anyone that goes up against his family's control over Vought AND America. Basically, imagine the Fallout 3 Enclave with all its propaganda, except their propaganda is converting regular Americans into their soldiers, and Soldier Boy/Homelander are at the top, with Neuman as their patsy in the White House.

Then imagine the Boys, working behind the scenes, with Butcher, Maeve, and Black Noir, planning to take Soldier Boy and Homelander down, while Frenchie, Kimiko, MM, and Starlight encourage civil resistance from the shadows to sabotage Vought's plan. They may even recruit Stan Edgar and engage in some corporate sabotage; maybe the Boys go off to steal the formula for Compound V, or make a perfected version of Temp V, so they can raise their own super-soldiers against Homelander and Soldier Boy's army of super-soldiers. Kind of like Captain America: Civil War, except this time, it's a whole nation split in half by civil war. Now wouldn't that make for a great Season 4?

I'm genuinely frustrated by this finale. An entire season of build up to The Boys getting powers, Soldier Boy going to Homelander, Homelander cracking, and for what? Pussy out on giving The Boys powers, Soldier Boy had a mediocre fight against the team and ended on a dud, Homelander is back to status quo.

You had something going here, especially with the repeated hits to the "Butcher is right, supes need to be handled with malice" and they go soft.

They just accomplished a whole lot of nothing while having more people die from all their bullshit.

While I had read bits and pieces of Ennis' comic and you know, in the end did not care too much for it the TV show still comes up way short in comparison.

TV Hughie: "Oh no, that hot muscly asshole raped you, Starlight!"

Comic Hughie: "You blew them, Starlight? Fuck you, whore! I'm gonna need time to process this, fuck you."

Even with Ennis being a lib the differences between comic and show are brutal. Someone on some forum, somewhere said it pretty well: the comic is about masculinity from a relatively honest lib's POV, the show is about "toxic masculinity" from the POV of women and beta male writers where masculinity is a fiction unless women are doing it (see Starlight being mad at Hughie for wanting powers like a sexist pig while giving the Asian her powers). Even when they introduced Stormfront all of her racist dialogue was just "You damn black people!" If it had been closer to the book they would have had a whole dictionary of racist terms out.

The man does approve and preview the scripts for the show. So Ennis is on board with his creation turning from masculinity to "toxic" masculinity.

 

[Gimmick Account]

Was hoping someone else noticed this. She credited "LGB kids" for giving her an opportunity.

Someone else also noticed and already posted the corrected quote: she called them "LGBTeens."

I thought it was an alright episode. Not an amazing finale but nothing to be assmad about, it obviously wasn't going to be the big ultimate Homelander fight.
Maeve getting depowered and sent to a farm is... fine, death would have been preferable but she must have some use for them not to write her out entirely if they're doing that much. At least we got a fake-out where you could believe it for a minute.

The man does approve and preview the scripts for the show.

Even more reason to think all the stuff bamboozling you guys is deliberately backhanded. I wasn't sure if they were simply replicating an Ennis feel and was hoping it'd turn out that way, but this makes more sense.

 

[Secret Asshole]

So Soldier Boy sees Homelander as an attention starved lunatic, calls Butcher a cuck, and believes a man should raise his family, but I'm supposed to see him as a bad guy?

The entire point of Soldier Boy's character (that they sadly don't delve too much into) is that he's a fraud. He never did any of those things, he's just playing at being hard. Sadly the PTSD gets just left off at the end, though I have a feeling they're not done with him quite yet.

The problem is that the writing is all over the place. It makes very little sense for the theme of 'family' and abandonment to have Soldier Boy just fight Homelander. The problem is that the writers are having a very difficult time sticking to a central theme. Do you want it political or about family? You've only got 8 hours to do it, so you've got to be really good with it. So they kind of waffle back and forth with the themes of family and fake corporate activism and politics and it comes off as weak on both fronts.

What they really needed to do was focus heavily on the family dynamic. The political angles just got in the way of things as obviously the core theme of the season was about family, both with the Boys and pretty much all of the characters. The problem is you've got a LOT of characters to do and not all that much time to do it, so you can't really spend much time on anything else. The politics just gets in the way and doesn't really have a place in this season.

It feels like they know their days are numbered or they have a limited amount of time and can't just dedicate a theme to a season so they have to squeeze as much as they can into every season or someone demanded it. Though I have a feeling everything at Amazon is going to start to get the squeeze because of Bezo's progtard fanfiction from Lord of the Rings.

But yeah, they really just didn't focus on the themes as well as they needed to so everything comes off as muddled.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The entire point of Soldier Boy's character (that they sadly don't delve too much into) is that he's a fraud. He never did any of those things, he's just playing at being hard. Sadly the PTSD gets just left off at the end, though I have a feeling they're not done with him quite yet.

The problem is that the writing is all over the place. It makes very little sense for the theme of 'family' and abandonment to have Soldier Boy just fight Homelander. The problem is that the writers are having a very difficult time sticking to a central theme. Do you want it political or about family? You've only got 8 hours to do it, so you've got to be really good with it. So they kind of waffle back and forth with the themes of family and fake corporate activism and politics and it comes off as weak on both fronts.

What they really needed to do was focus heavily on the family dynamic. The political angles just got in the way of things as obviously the core theme of the season was about family, both with the Boys and pretty much all of the characters. The problem is you've got a LOT of characters to do and not all that much time to do it, so you can't really spend much time on anything else. The politics just gets in the way and doesn't really have a place in this season.

It feels like they know their days are numbered or they have a limited amount of time and can't just dedicate a theme to a season so they have to squeeze as much as they can into every season or someone demanded it. Though I have a feeling everything at Amazon is going to start to get the squeeze because of Bezo's progtard fanfiction from Lord of the Rings.

But yeah, they really just didn't focus on the themes as well as they needed to so everything comes off as muddled.

I think 8 hours is plenty of time to tell either story and possibly both at the same time. The problem is that the writing is all over the place.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

I learned a lot of valuable lessons from the Boys finale. White men are evil and will always kill an innocent retarded black ninja man with a gut punch, like how jew writers will kill viewers with a gut punch in the end. If you are in a relationship with a woman the best thing to do is always give her more power (literally), she will use it to move evil white men 3 feet away from her saving her abortion rights. The only person who can truly stand up to Trump Homelander is a strong lesbian.

The best organic farm food comes from lesbian owned california farms. Trump Homelander really can kill a man in Times Square with a gun eye blast and his supporters will still love him. None of them will in fact be shocked or surprised but all Trump Homelander supporters will cheer.

Thanks, Eric Kripke!

DUDE IT MAKES FUN OF BOTH SIDES STOP WHINING!!!!!!!!! /sneed

They really subverted my expectations (my expectations were that this episode would be good)



So much shit went wrong this episode its not even funny. They literally botched everything they were setting up throughout the season.

-Black noir killed suddenly with no setup immediately after developing his character for the first time (they could change this by resurrecting him for next season but I find this unlikely)

-total asspull regarding Ryan, he is magically a huge homelander fan and doesn't mind seeing him kill people in public, just because homelander was nice to him once and butcher was mean to him once

-weird ass marvel tier fight at the end that accomplished nothing, all characters are suddenly bust buds like the avengers

-souljaboy shelved after changing nothing and being betrayed by butcher for doing what butcher told him to do. Somehow he's also racist?

-butcher 100% cucks out and loses all of his badass vibe, literally gets cancer (le epic breaking bad inspired season coming up?)

-lazy and hamfisted portrayal of homelander as trump 2.0 continues in a very direct and gross way, expect season 4 to be a retelling of trump's "greatest hits" with a superhero twist.



I feel like there was some sort of corporate/Hollywood interference with this episode kind of like how ABC forced David lynch to reveal Laura's killer at the start of season 2 of twin peaks.

the difference is that ABC 30 years ago was a fuck load different and had different priorities than streaming, plus we know how the showrunners and writers are politically. so its more likely internal decisions than some network executive meddling in, especially when most of the other "hit" shows are either apolitical or boomer moderate-conservative.

like i said homelander/soldierboy both seem more like parodies of the typical Amazon prime protagonist so if there was a fuck load of executive meddling it would be towards making them less shit. also the days of "executive meddling" was 20+ years ago and most of the time they're right. even firefly fans will admit that they picked the best episode of the series to premiere with.

Sure, he probably was racist but we never saw it. We heard it from MM.

There's a rule in stories, "Show, don't tell".

We was told he did this, and it was constantly reinforced every time we saw him interact with MM but we never actually saw it and he was never actually racist.

It's bad storytelling.

6 MILLION JEWS DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST, NO IM NOT GOING TO SHOW YOU, JUST LISTEN AND BELIEVE YOU STUPID FUCKING GOYIM.

the writers have a long history of skipping the good writing part and it seemingly always worked out for them.

The most irksome thing is, they could have just had the guy pull a gun; and try and shoot Ryan. That way when Homelander lasers his head off, the soyjack dad won't look insane for going 'fuck yeah!' and Ryans first view of the 'real' world outside is a normie trying to hurt him, and Homelander defending him again.

Like, two seconds of fucking thought would have the scene make sense and reinforce characterisation we've already seen.

LOOK YOU STUPID LIMEY FUCK WE AREN'T EVIL, ONLY ONE SIDE IS EVIL AND DON'T YOU DARE HUMANIZE THEM OR ASK US TO YOU STUPID BNP LOVING SHIT.

The show is getting dumber each season and it looks like they are more concerned with trowing jabs to the right, but damn if they aren't succesful with it.
Seriously, the amount of asses in flames for that reference to that Trump quote is astounding.
A politician made a really dumb statement and a show made fun of it, it's not that deep

ITS APOLITICAL YOU FUCKING GOYIM. TREAT US WITH THE SAME INFALLIBILITY YOU GAVE MY HOLOCAUST SURVIVING GRANDPARENTS!!!!!

THATS. MY. WIFE'S. SON!

They're doing this on purpose right? There's no way they looked at this script and thought it was good. It's so blatantly awful I have to assume the writers are just openly mocking the fans, and frankly they deserve it.

I'll give the finale this, I couldn't stop laughing for more than a minute or two at a time. That was honestly the worst fucking thing I've seen in quite some time.

its almost like you'd have to be a fucking idiot to expect the guys behind supernatural and preacher to adapt a quality product.

So Soldier Boy sees Homelander as an attention starved lunatic, calls Butcher a cuck, and believes a man should raise his family, but I'm supposed to see him as a bad guy?

if you were jewish you'd understand. its like that bioshock 2 level where you play as a little sister. to the kikes all that stuff you think is good is actually bad.

While I had read bits and pieces of Ennis' comic and you know, in the end did not care too much for it the TV show still comes up way short in comparison.

TV Hughie: "Oh no, that hot muscly asshole raped you, Starlight!"

Comic Hughie: "You blew them, Starlight? Fuck you, whore! I'm gonna need time to process this, fuck you."

Even with Ennis being a lib the differences between comic and show are brutal. Someone on some forum, somewhere said it pretty well: the comic is about masculinity from a relatively honest lib's POV, the show is about "toxic masculinity" from the POV of women and beta male writers where masculinity is a fiction unless women are doing it (see Starlight being mad at Hughie for wanting powers like a sexist pig while giving the Asian her powers). Even when they introduced Stormfront all of her racist dialogue was just "You damn black people!" If it had been closer to the book they would have had a whole dictionary of racist terms out.

to be fair when the comic came out it was literally a different time, even the libs were fine being racist for a joke.

 

[Commander X]

I think 8 hours is plenty of time to tell either story and possibly both at the same time. The problem is that the writing is all over the place.

It's really a problem with a lot of TV series these days, especially "premium" ones on streaming services - where episodes feel like the script was written by a dozen people with a dozen different ideas for the episode and they all wrote different parts in complete isolation from each other, and the mess is hastily pieced together at the last minute by an editor. It's why you have shows where characters, plot points and so on are introduced in one episode, serious amounts of time spent on them and then they're completely forgotten, why episodes of shows have tones that wildly swing from serious to parody to sloppy sentimentality enough to give a viewer whiplash.

 

[BrunoMattei]

It's really a problem with a lot of TV series these days, especially "premium" ones on streaming services - where episodes feel like the script was written by a dozen people with a dozen different ideas for the episode and they all wrote different parts in complete isolation from each other, and the mess is hastily pieced together at the last minute by an editor. It's why you have shows where characters, plot points and so on are introduced in one episode, serious amounts of time spent on them and then they're completely forgotten, why episodes of shows have tones that wildly swing from serious to parody to sloppy sentimentality enough to give a viewer whiplash.

Honestly, I believe it's also just a general problem with writers and studio politics. When something becomes successful it invites a too many cooks in the kitchen kind of situation. How many shows can you think of -within the last 10-20 years- that started really well and ended well? There was no "that" season that was dog shit? Sopranos? Hannibal (I liked season 3)? DareDevil (for now, until Disney brings it back and fucks it up)? What else?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

DUDE IT MAKES FUN OF BOTH SIDES STOP WHINING!!!!!!!!! /sneed

I used to think that, then what I saw with Hughie afterwards, and how they handled Soldier Boy near the end, convinced me otherwise.

 

[Right To Bear Blarms]

It's awful convenient that Frenchie happens to know the recipe for the world's deadliest nerve agent right off the top of his head and he can cook it up in a matter of minutes while in an intense gunfight.

The finale was bad but I got really taken aback when MM puts the gas on SB's face and says "you're just another racist piece of shit we should have gotten rid of a long time ago." What? It just felt so out of place since he hasn't at any point said or done anything racist. He accidentally threw a car through your apartment and killed your grandpa 40 years ago so he's racist? Makes sense.

MM declared a blood grudge against him 40 years ago but still hasn't let it go while Hughie went on the same quest to take down A-train but was over it in less than 2 years?

Supes kill normal people by accident all the time in this show and this creates people that will chase them down for decades. But when Maeve threw the perfume bottle with Novichok out of the window this just gets handwaved because she's a good supe?

 

[tempuser135]

It's awful convenient that Frenchie happens to know the recipe for the world's deadliest nerve agent right off the top of his head and he can cook it up in a matter of minutes while in an intense gunfight.

The finale was bad but I got really taken aback when MM puts the gas on SB's face and says "you're just another racist piece of shit we should have gotten rid of a long time ago." What? It just felt so out of place since he hasn't at any point said or done anything racist. He accidentally threw a car through your apartment and killed your grandpa 40 years ago so he's racist? Makes sense.

MM declared a blood grudge against him 40 years ago but still hasn't let it go while Hughie went on the same quest to take down A-train but was over it in less than 2 years?

Supes kill normal people by accident all the time in this show and this creates people that will chase them down for decades. But when Maeve threw the perfume bottle with Novichok out of the window this just gets handwaved because she's a good supe?

i watched the show and did not see anything SB did or say that was racist. it was almost as if it was a plot point or a missing scene that showed this but was dropped. and that is why MM's racist line seems out of place.

 

[Kermit Jizz]

@Kramer on the phone

its almost like you'd have to be a fucking idiot to expect the guys behind supernatural and preacher to adapt a quality product.

Funny thing is, I don't know who those people are or what those shows are. I don't watch movies or tv shows very often because 99% of the time I give one a chance it's fucking garbage like this. Now that the tv industry has disappointed me once more I shall crawl back into my hobbit hole and play niche video games for a while.

It's awful convenient that Frenchie happens to know the recipe for the world's deadliest nerve agent right off the top of his head and he can cook it up in a matter of minutes while in an intense gunfight.

Another thing about that scene that miffed me.
>be under paid security guard
>evacuating because bomb threat
>see some suspicious people
>OH SHIT THE CHICK IS A SUPE AND LITERALLY RIPPED APART MY TEAM
>whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido
>I can run, try and shoot the chick who is immune to bullets, or try to shoot the other guy who has not demonstrated he is a threat
>Obviously C since I need to create tension for the viewer :^)

I fucking hate shit like that. It's a minor detail, but when hey consistently do things like this you can tell the writers goal is to play with the viewers emotions at the expense of every other form of quality.

 

[skippy]

needed a Forrest Gump scene where we see Soldier Boy be racist in key American moments:

"Oh no Soldier Boy was actually Hitler's golf buddy!"
"Here's Soldier Boy killing a bunch of jannies at Stonewall"
"Oh no Soldier Boy was on a second roof in Dallas, TX with a sniper rifle!"
"Soldier Boy was drinking with James Earl Ray the night before MLK was assassinated!"
"Oh snap Soldier Boy volunteered as a guard at the japanese internment camps on his off days!"
"here's Soldier Boy destroying Wakanda!"
"Soldier Boy was hovering over Malcolm X with a giant rock! Thats where that saying came from!"
"Here's soldier Boy punching a pregnant woman at planned parenthood!"

 

[Stabmaster Arson]

@Kramer on the phone

Funny thing is, I don't know who those people are or what those shows are. I don't watch movies or tv shows very often because 99% of the time I give one a chance it's fucking garbage like this. Now that the tv industry has disappointed me once more I shall crawl back into my hobbit hole and play niche video games for a while.


Another thing about that scene that miffed me.
>be under paid security guard
>evacuating because bomb threat
>see some suspicious people
>OH SHIT THE CHICK IS A SUPE AND LITERALLY RIPPED APART MY TEAM
>whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido
>I can run, try and shoot the chick who is immune to bullets, or try to shoot the other guy who has not demonstrated he is a threat
>Obviously C since I need to create tension for the viewer :^)

I fucking hate shit like that. It's a minor detail, but when hey consistently do things like this you can tell the writers goal is to play with the viewers emotions at the expense of every other form of quality.

Every supe (like every cracker) has a constantly unsated bloodlust. A lot try and deny it, and dance around morals, but every one likes snuffing out the candle of life. They just want a half justified reason for doing so.

needed a Forrest Gump scene where we see Soldier Boy be racist in key American moments:

"Oh no Soldier Boy was actually Hitler's golf buddy!"
"Here's Soldier Boy killing a bunch of jannies at Stonewall"
"Oh no Soldier Boy was on a second roof in Dallas, TX with a sniper rifle!"
"Soldier Boy was drinking with James Earl Ray the night before MLK was assassinated!"
"Oh snap Soldier Boy volunteered as a guard at the japanese internment camps on his off days!"
"here's Soldier Boy destroying Wakanda!"
"Soldier Boy was hovering over Malcolm X with a giant rock! Thats where that saying came from!"
"Here's soldier Boy punching a pregnant woman at planned parenthood!"

I wanted the SB hangs with George Lincoln Rockwell flashback. They should have done it when he went and spoke at that Malcolm X gathering.

 

[Chode]

The entire point of Soldier Boy's character (that they sadly don't delve too much into) is that he's a fraud. He never did any of those things, he's just playing at being hard. Sadly the PTSD gets just left off at the end, though I have a feeling they're not done with him quite yet.
...

I didn't really see him as a fraud outside of the usual Vought/Seven propaganda. He didn't storm Normandy but the entire season it looks like he easily could of. Unless I missed a line about Soldier Boy asking to be left out of the landing that more seemed like Vought protecting their first round of experiments. On his personal beliefs being a fraud, he could of wanted a family but lost out on the 40 years it would more naturally happen for him. His hedonism does conflict with this goal, but he still missed out on the time to snap out of that (or more likely just temper it) and is now using it as crutch for his PTSD.

Expanding on him being the bad guy, they added a few lines about him holding the hoses at Birmingham and how he killed MMs family (which sounded like standard supe collateral) but they don't show him act out any racial hatred, even though there were several chances to show it (even a throw away line about Vought having a black CEO would of worked). The most shown was him beating Black Noir for trying to take a film role, which may of more been motivated by him trying to keep the limelight. That still doesn't look all that bad compared to Homelander and his seething hatred for anyone that disapproves of him (as they show, especially at the end). So I'm still left wondering why the writers expects us to root against Soldier Boy when the characters surrounding him or just as neglectful towards others, if not way worse.

 

[Stabmaster Arson]

I didn't really see him as a fraud outside of the usual Vought/Seven propaganda. He didn't storm Normandy but the entire season it looks like he easily could of. Unless I missed a line about Soldier Boy asking to be left out of the landing that more seemed like Vought protecting their first round of experiments. On his personal beliefs being a fraud, he could of wanted a family but lost out on the 40 years it would more naturally happen for him. His hedonism does conflict with this goal, but he still missed out on the time to snap out of that (or more likely just temper it) and is now using it as crutch for his PTSD.

Expanding on him being the bad guy, they added a few lines about him holding the hoses at Birmingham and how he killed MMs family (which sounded like standard supe collateral) but they don't show him act out any racial hatred, even though there were several chances to show it (even a throw away line about Vought having a black CEO would of worked). The most shown was him beating Black Noir for trying to take a film role, which may of more been motivated by him trying to keep the limelight. That still doesn't look all that bad compared to Homelander and his seething hatred for anyone that disapproves of him (as they show, especially at the end). So I'm still left wondering why the writers expects us to root against Soldier Boy when the characters surrounding him or just as neglectful towards others, if not way worse.

Seeing HL be genuinely protective and concerned over his son in the last episode really made the biggest shift in me thinking he was a freak to having more sympathy for him. If the writers were smart and wanted to drag it out for another 4 series, they'd do a redemption arc with him. As has been repeated ad infinitum, he does carry the show. There's plenty of other fine actors in the show, but his character is the glue. They will of course, never do that as they've outright said he's a Trump based character.