Season three of The Boys continues after a really strong drop of 3 episodes on June 3rd, now the show switches over to weekly episode releases, starting with episode 4, “Glorious Five Year Plan”. General spoiler warnings apply.
“Glorious Five Year Plan”
This 60-minute episode deals with a lot of ramifications from the first three episodes. For example, Hughie discovered that Congressman Victoria Neuman has superpowers, was adopted by Vaught CEO Stan Edgar, and is operating under his orders. We also see the Boys following up on a weapon that was supposedly strong enough to hurt indestructible superhero Soldier Boy. It also opens up a lot of new plot threads that will likely be important to the last three episodes.
The Boys Season 3 Episode 4 does great job entertaining with powerful moments
This episode was directed by Julian Holmes, who is a veteran of sci-fi television. Holmes’ has worked on projects like Carnival Row, Daredevil, American Gods, and Lost in Space. On writing duty for this episode is Meredith Glynn, who was a writer and producer on Supernatural.
Episode 4 continues the series’ strong writing. Glynn does a great job of writing an entertaining script with powerful moments and brisk flow. It’s also filled with a lot of great humor, like when A-Train does a one-to-one recreation of Kendall Jenner’s infamously tone-deaf Pepsi ad about police brutality. There’s even a dildo-knife fight, something I never thought id write.
The story in this episode shifts focuses and goes further in-depth into the storyline of several other characters. For example, Frenchie and Kimiko are frustrated with Butcher and the events of this episode only push them to the brink. Butcher’s threatening attitude toward his teammates mirrors Homelander in many ways and it’s an interesting dichotomy. Fortunately, Butcher has people that call him out on his behaviors, and underneath it all, he isn’t totally self-absorbed, unlike Homelander. Both teams are dealing with the seeds of revolt. Leading to surprising and potentially heartbreaking moments.
Small details make a strong impression
The show has so many small details and visual Easter eggs. From small things like the many Vaught products, films, and advertising seen on television screens, commercials, and billboards around town. In the Russia area scene, there is anti-Homelander graffiti and propaganda. One of the highlights for me was the 80s-style Soldier Boy rap that starts the episode, which I’m guessing is a reference to rapping 80s athletes and the similarly named Soulja Boy.
Throughout the series, we’ve only had brief glimpses of Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy, but every appearance is extremely entertaining, such as his aforementioned terrible rapping. This episode teases a lot more of him to come.
Powerful performances
Antony Starr continues his powerful performance as Homelander and we get some really great moments with him and The 7, the Congresswoman, and best of all, with Giancarlo Esposito’s Stan Edgar. Homelander and Edgar have several great scenes including a fantastic face-off between the two in the main headquarters of The 7, where Edgar shows his deep understanding of Homelander’s mind and insecurities.
Karen Fukuhara’s Kimiko continues to pull at the heartstrings without saying a single word. Her facial expressions speak volumes and it’s hard not to sympathize with her. Kimiko, Frenchie, and Starlight pull a lot of the emotional weight of this episode.
Jack Quaid’s Hughie seems to have significantly less screen time this season. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it gives time to flesh out the other characters and the numerous interesting storylines going on.
Overall
Another really strong episode for The Boys, and while it doesn’t have some of the over the top moments we experienced in the last 3 episodes, this episode proves that the show can do subtlety, heart and humor just as well as it does shocking, violence and gore. There’s a lot of dangling plot threads after this episode that have me really excited to see where it goes in the next few episodes.
