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The Boys (Prime Video) continues its transgressive brilliance into a third season. As the Supes and Vought International operate in public damage control mode after the ugly revelations and frequent head explosions of last season, Butcher (Karl Urban) and his crew of Supe chasers are operating under federal oversight with their gun hands tied behind their backs. Everyone keeps saying everything is back to normal. But the louder that’s said, the more false it sounds. And besides, there are still old scores that need to be settled.

Opening Shot: A city destroyed. Burning buses, twisted rebar, piles of rubble. Homelander (Antony Starr) drops out of the sky. “Stormfront. I knew you’d be here. How could you do this? I loved you.” She turns to face him, but instead of Aya Cash, the evil Nazi Supe is played by Charlize Theron. “You’ll always be in my heart,” she tells Homelander. “But the Fourth Reich is in my soul.”

The Gist: It’s the world premiere of Dawn of the Seven, which director Adam Bourke (P.J. Byrne) and Vought Studios have re-cut to offer a sanitized – read: Marvel-ized – telling of the Stormfront-as-Nazi unmasking of one year before, and everybody’s posing on the red carpet. Homelander (Starr) grins awkwardly alongside Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), Hugh “Hughie” Campbell, Jr. (Jack Quaid) arrives on the arm of his girlfriend Starlight (Erin Moriarty), and A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) makes nice for the cameras, with all of them herded along by Vought PR honcho Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie). Vought’s bossman Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) is there, too, accompanied by Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit). “And thanks to Congresswoman Neuman for joining us tonight. I hope it demonstrates Vought welcomes the oversight from the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. We’ve been able to root out a few bad apples together.”

For Butcher (Karl Urban), a world where Homelander is kowtowed and chasing Supes is a public relations gambit passed down by Hughie in his new position as liaison to Neuman’s oversight bureau is not a place that allows him the freedoms to which he’s accustomed. Catching naughty Supes is a dirty job – and dirty is what The Boys have always done best – but things are seemingly different now. “Butcher’s the guy you want in a shooting war, no question,” Neuman tells Hughie over bagels. “But we’re in peacetime.” Needless to say, Butcher is restless. He’s also dealing with the sudden growth of a conscience thanks to his burgeoning relationship with Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), the young son Homeland fathered when he raped Butcher’s wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten). Ryan inherited his Supe dad’s considerable powers. He’s probably even more powerful. But for now, Butcher has him hidden from Homeland’s clutches.

At Vought HQ, Edgar promotes “V24” to Secretary of State Robert Singer (Jim Beaver), who’s running for president. It’s a temporary one-shot Supe solution for military units, “24 hours of power,” and worth millions per dose. “We’re still working out the kinks,” Edgar says blandly. But Beaver isn’t buying. Not yet, anyway. Not after the chaos of last year. “You used a Nazi to sell it,” he tells Edgar. “Compound-V is radio-fucking-active.” Besides a military contract, the Vought boss has another trick to counteract all of the bad press. He makes Starlight, with her 96% approval rating, co-captain of The Seven. Homeland is disgusted, but she’s intrigued. “I mean, the first female co-captain of a Superteam, ever,” she tells Hughie. Imagine the pageants.

As Starlight continues her hosting duties on American Hero, the competition reality show that will crown a new member of The Seven, Homelander visits his quarters, where he nurses his psychosis and considers the dark secret he’s housing there. And Butcher, still busted up over The Boys’ sudden lack of effectiveness (and lack of blood and guts), gets handed something really freaking heavy: information about Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), a Captain America type who was Homeland before Homeland. He died in the eighties. Or did he?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Prime Video also features some Boys universe bonus material with the adult animation anthology series Diabolical. And in 2019, HBO brought the legendary DC Comics title Watchmen to the small screen with a lauded adaptation of the material from Damon Lindelof.

Our Take: Karl Urban, once a blonde Adonis in Xena: The Warrior Princess, is so good in The Boys as the scowling, glowering one man wrecking crew William “Billy” Butcher, you almost want the show to just feature him and his team getting their hooks into Supes, stomping them down, and watching them burn. But everything evolves, and in the sadistic alternate reality of The Boys, that actually makes for more devolution. This season, The Seven, vaunted for so long, have taken a hit to their public reputation, as has Homelander, whose hearts and minds media tour Antony Starr plays with a hilarious rictus plastered on his face. (“It’s all the left wing media can talk about: How could you not know all along that Stormfront was a Nazi?”) Homeland has to smile so hard just to keep the laser eyes at bay. But you know it won’t be for long. Is he going to stand by and watch Starlight ascend to co-captain? Is he going to let The Deep (Chace Crawford) upstage him with his post-cult tell-all book tour? When will the lasers come out? “What if we share a different destiny?” Homelander asks Butcher in a terrifically imagined tete-a-tete late in the first episode. And they agree that shock and awe will always suit each of them better. In The Boys, devolution, blood and lasers are always just a grudge away.

Sex and Skin: Starlight and Hughie are a regular item in bed, but nothing is seen. What is seen, however, is a Supe known as Termite climbing into his lover’s penis for a little inside stimulation. What? Well, see, Termite can shrink down super small, and…when it comes to The Boys, maybe it’s better if the “Sex and Skin” question is tabled until later in season three, when the infamous “Herogasm” Supe orgy from the comics finally comes onscreen.

Parting Shot: Hughie eavesdrops on Neuman’s alleyway confrontation with a nervous guy who keeps calling her “Nadia.” “You have a platform now! We should tell everyone about Red River!” The guy’s right about the Congresswoman and Bureau of Superhuman Affairs chief having a platform. To Hughie’s horror, he’s very, very wrong about absolutely everything else. Except the color red.

Sleeper Star: Most everyone in the Boys cast is terrific. But Laz Alonso and Claudia Doumit are standouts as Marvin T. “Mother’s” Milk and Victoria Neuman, respectively. MM thought he got out of the Supe chasing game, thought he could co-parent his daughter and forget all of the evil. And Victoria? Her evil has a long history.

Most Pilot-y Line: Since the events of last year, Maeve has been passing Butcher Supe intel on the sly. But this time, what she’s brought him is a little power-up help of the green glowing vial kind. “It’s Temp V. One shot makes you a Supe for 24 hours. I mean, they think. It’s still in R&D.” Butcher is wary. (“Oh, great. So powers, maybe. Maybe my bollocks swell up like footballs.”) But does anyone think for a second that he’s not gonna inject the Temp V?

Will you stream or skip the wicked superhero series #TheBoys Season 3 on @PrimeVideo? #SIOSI

Our Call: STREAM IT. A howling satire of our real world and the superhero fictions we create, The Boys also features a ripping mean streak all its own. It’s brash. It’s bloody. And if the boys wanna fight, you better let ‘em.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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