Launching its third season a week after fellow streaming giant Netflix dropped “Stranger Things,” Prime Video’s “The Boys” has a similar problem as the kids from Hawkins. Much like that show, the writers here have added too many characters that they seem unwilling to knock off and are willing to recycle themes even as they raise interesting new ideas on the fringe of their hit show. For a program that’s designed to be so subversive, “The Boys” is getting remarkably predictable in its third season and pushes aside some of its supporting characters largely just because there’s no time to cram them in over an 8-episode season. The show can still be very funny, and the performers are solid across the board, but there’s an energy missing this season, especially compared to the propulsive second chapter. Some of the themes in the season’s first half feel like they’re spinning their wheels through issues unpacked last year that then bloom into something richer in the back half, but the hope is that this will be looked back on as a transitional season, one that gets us from the set-up of the first two to something with more meat on its bones in the future.
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Last season really centered on Antony Starr’s superpowered psychopath Homelander as he fought with Butcher (Karl Urban) over control of his son Ryan and romanced a supe named Stormfront (Aya Cash) who turned out to be an actual Nazi. It ended with Homelander losing on both fronts as Butcher took Ryan off to a safe house and Stormfront hovered near death, her vile worldview exposed. And so season three starts with a Homelander that’s arguably more dangerous than ever because he has even less to care about in the world. One of his best speeches this season reveals how far he’s willing to go to blow everything up. A superpowered lunatic with a son and a girlfriend is a problem; one who’s alone is a much bigger problem. Without spoiling anything, Homelander gets sucked into a subplot that’s basically about right-wing conspiracies and rants about cancel culture, and, in part because Starr is the best performer on the show, it’s one of the best throughlines of the new season. Imagine if the politically craziest relative you had on Facebook also happened to be Captain America.
Divisions form once again between Homelander and Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who’s growing in fame and power within The Seven. She’s the anti-Homelander, and her followers are growing nearly as popular as her nemesis. This is a world wherein moral values are dictated and allowed by popularity more than ethics. Heroes like Homelander and Starlight are allowed to act on their value systems only when it’s something that will move their social status (kind of like modern politicians). The idea that heroism has become diluted by social media and celebrity culture is one of many interesting ones that this season of “The Boys” kind of raises but then drifts away from just as it’s getting rich. The writing this year has a habit of flirting with something deep only to jump to another issue instead, largely because of the breakneck plotting. Last season, the writing breathed more, allowing commentary. It feels like there’s no time here. There’s a difference between momentum and feeling too rushed by overcrowding.
Part of the problem is that the writers feel like they’ve run out of ideas for the other members of The Boys and The Seven, but are unwilling to just kill them off. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) starts the season out of the group, but that can’t last, of course, but he feels largely out of the loop narratively this season. The relationship between Frenchie (Tomer Capon) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) has really run out of dramatic steam even if it’s one of the only stable ones on the show. Maeve (Dominique McElligott) is literally sidelined for most of the season because it feels like the writers don’t know what to do with her anymore. The Deep (Chace Crawford) returns for more of the same material with enhanced aquatic perversion. A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) gets a fascinating subplot when a superhero is accused of over-policing in Black communities, but even that gets largely pushed aside in the chaos of the final few episodes.
Most of that chaos centers on the return of a legendary hero named Soldier Boy, played with witty charm by Jensen Ackles of “Supernatural” fame. The Winter Soldier of this dynamic is kind of a proto-Homelander, someone who murdered his way around the world a generation or two before the action of “The Boys,” and Ackles nails a different brand of detached nihilism, one that comes with unchecked ego. He gets that “The Boys” is largely about how power corrupts and superpowers corrupt absolutely. Even the characters with powers who try to avoid this eventuality like Starlight basically want to escape the world of the powerful and just be normal again. And even the characters who hate superheroes find themselves flirting with becoming them this season. Power is enticing; power will make you horrible. It’s a conundrum, and it’s a very timely show at its core given the state of the political world.
The problem is that there’s so much going on that the core gets lost in the non-stop chaos. All of this recap, and this review hasn’t even mentioned Hughie (Jack Quaid), who starts the year trying to control superheroes from within by working Congresswoman Neuman (Claudia Doumit), only to quickly learn the secret revealed about her at the end of season two. Hughie has become almost an observer on his own show, off on another adventure with Butcher and largely separated from Annie for most of the year.
Whew. Some would say that one of the reasons for the success of “The Boys” is that it’s about excess. There’s certainly no bloat or midseason sag. There’s no time for that. And that’s certainly valuable in a time when so many streaming shows feel like movie ideas stretched out to seasons. But there’s a smarter version of this show that trims the fat in the character roster of this superteam and focuses on what can be very sharp writing that’s as much about where the world is at in the 2020s as anything on TV. Sure, it’s arguable that one shouldn’t expect subtlety from a program that opens with an ant-man character ripping a guy apart from, well, inside an important part of his body. On that level, “The Boys” is consistently entertaining, but it could be so much stronger. For the first time, it almost seems scared to really unleash its true power. [C+]