Warning: the below contains full spoilers for The Boys Season 3, Episode 4, "Glorious Five Year Plan," which debuted on Prime Video on June 10, 2022. For more, check out our spoiler-free review of the three-episode premiere.
Between The Boys opening Season 3 with Termite graphically exploding through his lover's penis, the impending "Herogasm" in Episode 6, and the death by dildoes in "Glorious Five Year Plan," showrunner Eric Kripke's putting the "O" in "superhero" these days. What else did we expect from a show that continually tries to one-up itself? As Vought International's marketing department might explain, sex sells — and as Trash from Return of the Living Dead would demand, sex and death are even better. The Boys still hasn’t disappointed in finding fresh and creative ways to blend pleasure and punishment in gleefully TV-MA ways. Welcome to another episode of Prime Video's most obscenely entertaining superhero program.
Although, I'd argue there are more significant storytelling victories in "Glorious Five Year Plan" amidst all the sex toy carnage and bloody dismemberment. Whatever hesitations you might have about Butcher wading right back into the same hardass waters for more vengeance-fueled brawls, the characters around him elevate ongoing subplots. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) experiences a harrowing realization as Butcher unleashes her for an assassination job like some caged animal. Hughie (Jack Quaid) tees up a massive moral conflict as he tastes limitless power for once in his life. You can sympathize with M.M. (Laz Alonso) trying to hold Butcher's Boys together despite his ruthless leader's best (or, I guess worst) efforts. Kripke's writing team is doing a splendid job finding more human reactions to explore versus the comic's all-in mentality on cartoonish "supe" malevolence.
The biggest complaint so far about The Boys by those still on the outskirts of this “all violence, no remorse” adaptation is its focus on bleaker than bleak storytelling nastiness. "Glorious Five Year Plan" doesn't fight any of those claims as superpowered hamsters maul Russian security guards — there's your Jamie cameo, fans — and piggish underworld bosses are impaled by Black Noir's (Nathan Mitchell) themed pleasure plaything. The difference here, and what The Boys is doing better by the episode, is that it emphasizes the consequences of violent attacks and the emotional responses to the corpses that pile sky high. Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Hughie, and Kimiko are all noticeably changed by the sight of a dead body — a different pulpy mess for each. The Boys asserts itself as far more than a display of barbaric acts of random violence carried out by the world's most sadistic anti-heroes, which adds an element of engagement to Season 3 that wasn't as prominent thus far.
Homelander (Antony Starr), meanwhile, continues his parade of depravity as one of modern television's greatest and most charismatic villains. Starr's playing an untouchable deity with an egomaniacal smile that'd make Freddy Krueger nervous, and the dynamic shifts even more magnificently because Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) finally gets burned. Homelander's hostile takeover of Vought International by his manipulation of Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is, in Butcher's own words, "f*cking diabolical." No one's selling a devil-without-a-care attitude like Starr right now, whether that's Homelander emasculating Hughie by using Starlight as a publicity relationship or Homelander becoming The Seven's de facto dictator. "Glorious Five Year Plan" drops a bombshell, and I don't think we're ready for the ramifications.
But can we also pause to recognize Giancarlo Esposito acting against Starr's dominant Homelander role? Few working performers could challenge the Emmy-worthy quality Starr brings week after week. Homelander and Edgar exchange psychological jabs in Vought Tower's boardroom, the smoothest battle of icy wits we've seen in an already outstanding rivalry between both Vought pillars. Edgar is still the colder son-of-a-gun in the room for all of Homelander's physical threats and American nightmarishness. I hope the proceeding investigation instigated by Homelander doesn't downgrade Edgar's appearances because Esposito's one of the show's mightiest weapons.
Of course, The Boys would still be fine thanks to no shortage of dangerous drama within all factions. Both The Seven and The Boys are in shambles under Homelander and Butcher. "Glorious Five Year Plan" ruptures relationships between Butcher's roster that M.M. warns may be irreparable, while Starlight and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) gear up for a mutiny with the aid of Butcher's secret weapon (yet to be obtained). Characters endure soul-crushing tortures, have their failures rubbed in their faces, are picked back upright, then shoved right back to the ground — and yet The Boys isn't about hopelessness. It's incredible how this latest episode ratchets tension so aggressively and promises both sides will fight until there's nothing left on the battlefield. Hughie for Starlight, Starlight for Hughie, Butcher for Ryan, Frenchie for Kimiko, Homelander for himself, The Deep (Chace Crawford) for his spot in The Seven, A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) for his late-stage activism — Kripke's packing the powder keg even tighter, which is already bursting at the bolts.
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