Spoiler Warning: The Boys Season 3
Season three of The Boys is undoubtedly the most controversial yet. The controversy had nothing to do with an incredibly graphic scene in the first episode involving a miniaturized supe and his romantic partner. The controversy is also completely unrelated to the buckets upon buckets of blood that were shed in the season, which came in the form of exploding heads and bodies. (Fans have come to expect gratuitous violence from the series.) There also wasn’t controversy sparked when one of the main supes, Chace Crawford’s The Deep, copulated with an octopus, at one point even bringing the cephalopod into his marital bed to “spice things up.”
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Instead, the controversy surrounding The Boys season three had to do with the increasingly progressive politics of the series. This probably came as a shock to the creators, who were anything but subtle as they crafted storylines for the series. After all, Homelander, the series’ primary antagonist, wears an American flag and is a parody of Superman. This season was a little more explicit than those that preceded it in its satirization of American nationalism and imperialism. The show’s characters leveled accusations against the news media, and there were direct references to political and social causes like the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite the backlash, the show’s creators likely have no intention to scale back the political messaging in future seasons.
With that, here is why season three of The Boys was the most controversial – and “wokest” – installment of the series thus far.
A-Train vs. Blue Hawk
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Several characters in The Boys’ season three were forced to undergo intense moral journeys. However, no one experienced more growth throughout the season’s runtime than Jessie T. Usher’s A-Train.
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Though the season shows that A-Train’s damaged heart is on its last legs, it is ironically in this same season that the character finally has a heart. He attempts to mend the relationship between supes and his community, forcing Nick Wechsler’s Blue Hawk to make an apology in the neighborhood of an unarmed black man he had previously murdered in cold blood. Blue Hawk fails to apologize and attacks some people attending the meeting. A-Train’s brother is paralyzed in the attack, and in a later episode, “Herogasm,” A-Train brutally murders Blue Hawk in retaliation, momentarily taking power back for himself.
However, his brutal brand of justice couldn’t salvage A-Train’s relationship with his brother.
Homelander Snubs Silver Kincaid
The infamous Seven, the squad of A-list supes led by Homelander, found itself a few members short following the events of previous seasons. As such, the team hosts a competition to find members to fill out the squad on a popular television show called American Hero. Though the favorite candidate of Vought Industries is Miles Gaston Villanueva’s Supersonic (who later in the season meets a grisly fate at the hands of Homelander), Erin Moriarty’s Starlight supports Silver Kincaid. The supe is a Muslim-American UNICEF Ambassador portrayed by actor Jasmin Husain (Quarter Life Poetry, The Handmaid’s Tale).
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Despite Silver Kincaid’s obvious qualifications, Vought Industries utterly rejects the notion of adding a Muslim-American to the squad. At one point, as Starlight argues her case, Homelander remarks, “Do you really think I’m gonna let a ** Muslim into the Seven? Captain Al-Qaeda? We’re Americans.” Homelander’s unapologetic racism lays bare what many members of Vought Industries were thinking but were reticent to express with such reprehensible language. The ultimate rejection of Silver Kincaid from the Seven represents the real-world whitewashing of American heroes.
An Unapologetically Homicidal Homelander
In season three of The Boys, there were moments in which Antony Starr’s Homelander showed hints of vulnerability. However, the notion that the leader of the Seven is somehow weakening has largely shot down by the end of the season.
At the end of the season’s finale, “The Instant White-Hot Wild,” Homelander descends, along with his son Ryan, into the midst of a rioting crowd. When a counter-protester hurls a can at Ryan, Homelander decimates him with his laser eyes, and the crowd roars in approval at Homelander’s callous kill. This scene was reminiscent of former President Trump’s comment in 2016 stating, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters,” This scene also shows how mob mentality allows America’s most powerful individuals to operate with impunity.
It’s possible that The Boys lost a few fans due to the politics it espoused in season three. However, it’s also possible that the unapologetic wokeness of the show’s creators might bring in an audience of previously uninterested individuals. Season three was the most progressively-coded season of The Boys so far, and there is little reason to believe that the show’s politics will change any time soon.
