After a long delay The Boys‘ third season will debut at Prime Video on June 3. What awaits our favorite group of supe-fighters when it does? What’s going on with their counterparts, the (less than) Seven? And who will play mommy to the world’s most powerful sociopath? Here are the six most important things you need to remember from The Boys season two to get ready for this new season.
The United States No Longer Wants to Make More Supes
After Starlight and Hughie leaked the truth about Compound V, Vought weathered the resulting uproar thanks to Stormfront and Homelander. The two used fear of super terrorists villains to whip the public into an anti-immigrant frenzy. Their “Saving America” propaganda worked, as the US government was about to turn thousands of cops and I.C.E agents into supes. That was until A-Train helps to out Stormfront as a literal Nazi and Compound V as a creation of the Third Reich. Those revelations stopped the push for more government-sanctioned superheroes entirely.
The American public knows superheroes are not born, and no longer wants to make more of them. But the rest of the world would still like their own superheroes. The international quest for access to Compound V is likely far from over.
The Boys Are Free and Clear of the Law
The reporting on Stormfront’s real identity, along with the truth about her husband Frederick Vought and the origins of Compound V, gave both the company and the US government a perfect scapegoat. Both institutions simply blamed the secret Nazis for everything. Not only did that put an end to the President’s plan to make more supes, it allowed the government to clear The Boys of all wrongdoing. They are no longer the most wanted people on the planet.
Mother’s Milk went home to his daughter. Frenchie and Kimiko are free to find happiness. Mallory is back on the job. Hughie and Starlight are together. And Billy Butcher is free to do whatever he wants. With Becca gone, though, and him turning down Mallory’s job offer, what he’ll do remains a mystery. His surly hatred for Homelander endures.
The Seven Remain Shorthanded and Splintered
The Seven ended season two short a few members. The disgraced Stormfront lost her limbs and her superhero spot. Black Noir and his tree-nut allergy remain in a coma thanks to Queen Maeve and an Almond Joy. And The Deep, no longer a Church of the Collective member, is still stuck in Sandusky purgatory. The only active members of the Seven are Homelander, Maeve, Starlight, and the recently restored A-Train.
Those four aren’t much of a team, either. Maeve blackmailed Homelander with footage from the plane they let crash. Starlight worked with The Boys and leaked Compound V to the press. And A-Train let her do it before he exposed Stormfront as the evil Nazi she is. The Seven are in pieces, working against one another, and in need of new members. The super group has super problems. And that’s before they realize one of Stormfront’s most dangerous test subjects, Cindy, is on the loose and looking for vengeance.
Homelander Is a Ticking Needy Time-Bomb
Billy Butcher promised his dying wife Becca he’d protect her superhero son Ryan from the youngster’s father, Homelander. The world’s most powerful supe let Ryan go when Maeve threatened to release the plane crash footage when Homelander let every passenger die. The Seven’s amoral leader only cares about his public perception, and the thought of people not loving him was enough to give up his own kid.
Mallory and the US government are now raising Ryan. But it’s not clear anyone is left to look after Homelander, last seen pleasuring himself atop a skyscraper while screaming, “I can do whatever I want!” That not-so-happy ending is a harbinger of how dangerous Homelander truly is now that he is completely untethered to anyone emotionally. Can someone fill the Oedipal mother role Madelyn Stillwell and Stormfront played in his life? If not, the world’s most dangerous human of mass destruction might explode.
The Boys Has Its Very Own Palpatine
The instant Susan Raynor said Vought was attempting a coup an unseen supe blew up her head. That left Mallory and The Boys with only one real ally in the US government, congresswomen Victoria Neuman. She led the anti-supe charge in season two. But her public hearing, when everything about Vought International was just about to come out, ended when human and superhero heads alike started exploding. Neuman’s own chief of staff died in the attack.
The truth about Stormfront and Vought’s Nazi origins resulted in the US forming the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. Neuman, logically, got named as its leader. Only, the show revealed Neuman herself was the supe behind the head detonations. She murdered the Church of the Collective’s chief right after he suggested blackmailing more supes.
She’s playing both sides—human and superhero, the government and Vought—against one another like The Boys very own Palaptine. And now she’s keeping a would-be enemy close by. Hughie decided it was time to go out on his own and ended The Boys season two asking Neuman for a job. Poor Hughie. He’s out of the pot and into the head exploding fire.
Compound V Has a Weakness
Frederick Vought wanted to make the Nazi regime’s plan of a super race real. Compound V’s true purpose is to make white people dominant over all others. Stormfront pushed that vision on Homelander while she still had all her limbs and eyes. But when he asked what would happen when hundreds of thousands of the “wrong” people also got superpowers, she told him not to worry. “Frederick had a solution for everything,” she said.
Was she talking about an antidote to Compound V, a chemical that would take away a supe’s powers? Or was she referencing some kind of concoction that can breakthrough even the most super powered person’s defenses? Either way, Compound V and supes, even Homelander himself, don’t seem to be completely invulnerable. There’s something that can neutralize them forever.
And in season three The Boys might be the ones who can find it.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.