The Boys: Full Season 3 Review

The third season of The Boys is now available to watch. Some plot details are described in the below review. You can see our reviews of the episodes below.

The first 3 episodes of The Boys season 3.

"Glorious Five Year Plan" is a review of the third episode of the boys season.

The last time to look on this world of lies is in the fifth episode of The Boys.

"Herogasm" is a review of the third episode of the boys season.

"Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed" is a review of the third episode of The Boys.

The Instant White-Hot Wild is a review of the third episode of the boys season.

One of the highlights of the third season of The Boys is its maturity. The show that begins its latest season with a coke-sniffer coming out of his lover's penis is the most emotional and introspective of the bunch. Eric Kripke structures Season 3 like a response to anyone who says The Boys is all violence, no substance, just by addressing storylines that have been building from ground zero. The best The Boys has been so far has been facing consequences, choosing to leap off cliffs, and dealing with demons before focusing on monsters.

Kripke's special effects department and fight choreographers are not in danger of being discredited because The Boys still kick a lot of criminal ass. In season 3, there are Seven-themed dildo implements and a hamster chewing through faces. Kimiko, Soldier Boy, Homelander, and Butcher all have great action scenes. The Boys never sheds the extreme violence that fans come to expect from Butcher's dispatch of superpowered scumbags and even still does so with a new hearse smell.

There is a book about the history of soldier boy and payback.

There are so many gruesome death-dealings in season 3 that they are accents. Kripke's writing team still has tremendous character development even though they toned down TV-MA gore. Most of the other characters are dragged through mud only to come out stronger in the Russian mobster LittleNina tugging on Frenchie's collar. Hughie wrestles with weakness as the human half of a supe-normal couple, Mother's Milk confronts his traumatic family history, and Starlight wages war against Homelander. It's a time of romantic dance numbers, psychological breakdowns, and owning our traumas instead of hiding them. Men are not able to solve problems with punches.

The panicking cast brings out more profound performances in the third season. As Homelander charts egomaniacal highs when leading a Vought International takeover and splits-personality lows when Mr. America berates himself in the mirror out of fear, Antony Starr continues his rampage towards what should be an Emmy nomination. Homelander is afraid for the first time, and Starr is flawless.

Since M.M. can't subdue his physical tics and suppressed rage, the characters are broken beyond repair. The Boys pays off with thoughtful resolutions that inspire revolutionary hope in a time of bleakness when wounded mercs and supes have to choose between their lives, cheap facades, dangerous drugs, or ultimate power.

Jensen Ackles was introduced as the Soldier Boy in the third season of the show. Ackles steps into an Anti-Rogers skin with the despicable smile of our nation's handsomest fraud, bringing all that opposite Chris Evans charm. Ackles punches his line delivery with a soulless unpredictability that challenges Homelander's god- complex because Soldier Boy doesn't feel or care for himself. It's difficult to decide which superhero is worse, as evidenced by the performances of both villains this season. The way Ackles smolders, stares into the distance at ghosts, and rubs Soldier Boy in machismo is terrible, but he's still able to collect droplets of empathy because he's that good at commanding.

That's right.

It is difficult to tell who is the biggest bastard of Season 3.

Kripke's deviations from the source material have solidified as a strength of the show. In The Boys, Kripke brings humility and humanity to the table. I think of Queen Maeve and Hughie as a couple or Frenchie's reclamation of self-esteem. Hughie joining Victoria Neuman's agency as Season 2 comes to a close is brighter than the end of Season 3. The comic panels pushed boundaries in an almost edgelord persistence. Kripke likes to let characters chew on their actions, wrestle with inescapable choices, and address the word " family" instead of hanging their heads like party favors.

At "Herogasm" or Hughie's first kill, for example, the epic adaptation of the material is still valid. The Boys is still about pushing audiences outside their comfort zones with hilarious unpreparedness, and that's why it has to be Prime Video's most obscene metahuman orgy sequence. The Deep returns to being the lackey goof who lusts for aquatic life, even though he is underutilized. From Love Sausage's re-introduction to Black Noir's imaginary "Not Chuck E. Cheese" mascot friends, Kripke's treating The Boys like a playground. Butcher's team is fractured into unlikely pairs, downplays its signatures, and pulls from a bag of tones that bounce around like Flubber, all of which work.

The Boys' commentaries and themes remain the same. The corruption that still hits close to home is what Homelander's Trump parallels embolden as. As A-Train confronted his Blackness from a place of privilege, he tackled systemic racism as well. Fearmongers hate fake news and lie in the media. The Boys is just calling out domestic terrorism at this point, so it's hard to consider it satire. I will never stop loving Homelander because of how real-world viewers of The Boys see it as an honest- to-goodness hero. Season 3 isn't afraid to suggest how bad our country can get without stopping the Homelanders who wave their red, white, and blue capes. The final act of Homelander is pure evil. This is America according to them.

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