Kinda bullshit that by accepting the v-tumor Butcher gets to live and the entire dying thing that was part of his arc all season gets a convenient postponement for the last season. I can only hope the cool Tentacle Butcher gets some kickass fights in the last season, especially a climactic bout with Homelander.
I'm glad Butcher killed Neuman, this season she was absolutely insufferable and felt like a scared teen rather than the powerful hidden supe poilitician she was portrayed as in previous seasons. It's like she suddenly became afraid to use her powers despite using them with reckless abandon like popping the heads of all the politicians in a room. They even confirm that she has the same blood powers as the main character of Gen V and then proceed to do nothing with it.
Also too many fucking set ups for characters that will show up as antagonists after some time skip (Which I be they are going to do like between Season 1 and 2) like Ashley, and Zoe. You know both those characters are going to have a revenge arc.
I also think it will be absolute shit if A-Train doesn't show back up and just gets to leave like that. Something tells me he's going to show up as a freedom fighter against the supe regime next season, this season was just the staging for his full flip.
The whole Starlight getting pissed at Hughie for being raped was a pretty contrived and short lived conflict that got resolved in one episode. Erin Moriarty had some good scenes in this episode though, there were some scenes where she acts serious, then sneaks in a smile when she's the shapeshifter and some other subtle things that show that she's talented, the writers just suck. Her character was about as bad as Neuman, except she literally couldn't use her powers until the very end of the season when it was convenient.
Kimiko is the GOAT female supe of the series. I think her character isn't too badly written, she's essentially stricken with acquired autism because she was raised to be a killer and experimented on. (The scene where real Starlight shows up and everyone is horrified and she just smiles and waves is adorable.) Frenchie is just a piece of shit that randomly stonewalls her because he wanted some BBC, and then got feels because he did a bad thing once. He used to be this club kid, French, chemistry genius, with a dark past, but they decided he should just be sad and gay this season. I'm glad Frenchie goes back to somewhat normal and his relationship with Kimiko progresses, but everything about the black lover arc felt forced to put Frenchie in a situation where he would have to face his demons. It could have gone without the gay sex implications. Kimiko's arc got screwed this season too, she gets in a fight a couple times and has a flashback, she killed some dudes, and talked to a girl then she's just okay with it I guess. The part where she screams "No" for the first time was a good moment though. I wonder how much character development was cut out so they could put in more scenes of Hughie being sexually humiliated.
I really half expected for Hughie to tell her to fuck off after all the shit he had been through and leave her, but instead he meekly accepts her scorn like a whipped puppy if she takes him back. Then he gives some bullshit speech about "Forgiveness" and cries about being desensitized, which just totally harpoons his character as just being a pushover that has just been carried along like Butcher's dingleberry. He gets no actual development from all the shit he had gone through and ends up just as weak going into the last season as he was at the end of the first season. Then he just allows Starlight to escape using the powers she could have just as easily used to help him.
I enjoyed that they actually gave Sage a good motivation for doing what she did. I think it would be pretty believable for a super genius to wonder if they could plan the fall of the most powerful government in the world, just to see if they could. I bet she's going to be the main villain of the last season essentially just masterminding shit from behind the scenes and using the country as a playground for random bullshit she thinks up. Deep and Noir are already pretty much mindless killing machines that have had zero conflict that she played them both, so they will probably be her personal guard/sex slaves. She pretty much forced Homelander to trust her unquestioningly from this point forward. I don't know if she had actually planned any of that, or if she just bullshits to make it look like that was her plan.
I do wish they would have kept in the scene of Ryan killing people if that is true because his last season appearance is the scene in the safe house and that leaves where he stood much more ambiguous than what that scene would have shown.
As for why they were captured and not killed on the spot, there was a lot of talk about internment camps so I'm assuming that's why they didn't kill any of the main characters. Buckle up, because I smell a lot of Holocaust allegory next season. Starlighters are going to be the guerilla force to liberate the human death camps.
