Episode 7 of The Boys finds all the good(ish) guys feeling a bit worse for wear. Here’s our review of The Boys episode 7.
Spoiler warning! These reviews will be spoiler-free for the week in question, but will discuss previous seasons and episodes in detail.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: at the end of last week’s episode, Firecracker offered to nurse Homelander. As in, breastfeed. Not that this is anything new for The Boys fans; Homelander used to regularly suck on the teats of Madelyn Stillwell all the way back in season one. Yet, the imagery hasn’t lost its shock value.
We also found out at the end of the episode that Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s mysterious Joe Kessler was only a figment of Butcher’s diseased imagination. In hindsight, the reveal is pretty obvious, as we’ve never seen another character interact with him, but the revelation itself was handled very well.
This week, The Boys are more fraught than ever. Butcher has never looked worse and MM, who has been suffering from severe anxiety, is tempted to escape to Belize with his family and leave all this supe stuff behind. Frenchie, who was broken out of jail by Butcher, still finds it difficult to live with himself while coming to terms with his violent past, and is pushing Kimiko away.
Then there’s The Deep. It’s a character we haven’t had a chance to discuss much in these reviews, but what a great performance from Chace Crawford. The Deep, a caricature of Aquaman, is often the butt of the joke, but this season has really allowed Crawford to explore the character more and it’s paying off.
Tilda Swinton is back, voicing The Deep’s forbidden lover, Ambrosius the octopus. The Deep was supposed to get rid of her a long time ago, but he’s actually just been hiding her in the closet and the two have been engaging in a passionate love affair. While hearing an octopus say “I came so hard” in Tilda Swinton’s voice is funny, the episode takes a darker turn quickly, which gives The Deep’s arc more stakes and more depth.
The episode opens with Ryan working on his own, bespoke TV show but it’s not going well. Ryan is clearly uncomfortable with the script as a Muppet-version of A-Train complains about ANTIFA. It’s scenes like this that often veer a little too close to silliness despite making a serious point, and this season of The Boys has juxtaposed the inherent goofiness of the series with timely and potent political themes more than ever.
Ryan’s storyline is by far the weakest this season. The Boys has always been good at balancing different storylines and characters, giving everyone a time to shine, but Ryan has definitely pulled the shortest stick of the lot. There are great bones here for an intriguing character arc, but every time we seem to get closer to any insight about Ryan, we’re swept away with another character.
In fact, episode 7 might be the weakest of the season. It’s a talky episode, although we do get a good action scene in The Boys’ headquarters. It’s also an opportunity for Erin Moriarty, who plays Starlight, to kick some ass after having taken a step back from the action so far this season. The episode also ends on a brutal high that promises good things for next week’s finale.
The Boys streams weekly on Prime Video.
