Old Boys

The second season of The Boys ended this weekend.  That went fast.  Spoilers ahead.

While I enjoyed it quite a bit, I did find Season 2 disappointing after the stellar first year.  For one thing, it was mostly variations on what they did better first time around--a tight-knit conspiracy of mostly regular people trying to take down psychopathic superheroes, with some fraternization between the two groups.  Also, Stan Edgar, head honcho of evil corporation Vought wasn't nearly as interesting as Madelyn Stillwell, who held a similar position in the first season.

The show also didn't answer one of the big questions set up in the first season.  Or actually, they just ignored it.  Near the end of the first season, the Boys' cover is blown.  Which means in the second season, they're highly wanted criminals by the government and by Vought.  So how do they hide?  Well, they hang out in a basement but otherwise don't let it bother them.  If they need to go out in daylight, they do it and nothing really happens. (A similar problem, I suppose, with the whole world finding out about Compound V.  It was the deep dark secret of Season 1, but now that it's common knowledge, how can they get that genie back in the bottle?)

Worst of all was what, I suppose, amounted to the main arc of season two.  The new member of The Seven is Stormfront, who turns out to be...a Nazi!  Yawn.  The show already had great villains--it didn't need to resort to this cliché.  Maybe this is in the comic book--doesn't matter. (This also leads to some "satire" of modern-day politics.  As in the first season, the show is never worse than when it's at its most explicitly political, as if the audience is too stupid to get the point.)

Anyway, Season 2 ended with some triumph, some tragedy, some surprises.  Things are certainly set up for a third season.  And since The Boys is the most popular show on Amazon Prime, not even Homelander could stop that from happening.