The following contains spoilers for The boys season 2 finale.
The Boys’ second season has featured everything from some long-awaited superhero faceoffs and multiple exploding heads to literal Nazis and almost everything in between. The season 2 finale “What I Know” wraps up a surprising amount of plot in a single installment, as Stormfront finally gets her comeuppance, Butcher and Becca attempt to rescue a kidnapped Ryan, and Starlight finally gets the evidence that could bring down Vought. That none of these plots turn out the way most of us expected shouldn’t be surprising at this point, and yet…
Here’s a rundown of how everything wrapped up – or didn’t – and what we think it all might mean for The Boys season 3.
Stormfront’s Past is Exposed
The finale is another great example of the deft way The Boys has used Stormfront’s character to illustrate the insidious nature of white supremacy all season long – her explanation of the false idea of “white genocide” is particularly chilling – culminating in her declaration that a lot of people actually like what she has to say, and what they’re really afraid of is the word “Nazi”.
However, thanks to some sleuthing by Hughie and Starlight – with an important assist from A-Train – Stormfront is finally publicly exposed as the monster we’ve known her to be since Season 2’s second episode. Photos of Stormfront’s wedding to original founder Frederick Vought are leaked to the press, complete with giant swastika and photos with notorious figures from Hitler’s regime like Henrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.
A-Train Teams Up with Starlight
After eavesdropping on Stan Edgar and Alastair Adana, A-Train learns that the reason he’s been pushed out of the Seven is because Stormfront is a Nazi and virulent racist. Despite his previous beef with Starlight and Hughie (and, you know, the fact that he killed Hughie’s girlfriend in season 1), A-Train deliberately seeks the duo out to pass along a folder of information he’s stolen from the Church of the Collective’s apparently very extensive secret document database.
Though A-Train insists no one can know he played a part in leaking this material that will drive his rival out of his former superhero team, his willingness to work with someone he vowed to kill just a few short episodes to go certainly seems to indicate that he and Starlight could be uneasy allies going forward.
Read more
The Boys Season 2: What Is The Church of the Collective?
The Boys Season 2: Who Is Making Everyone’s Head Explode?
Butcher Makes a Deal
The Girls Get It Done
The “Girls Get It Done” marketing ploy that has infused much of The Boys season 2 has meant a lot of lip service to the idea of female empowerment, but not much backing it up with action. (Though Starlight’s arc has seen her reclaiming her own voice and working against Vought from within.) In the finale, we finally get to see the series’ women come together in a meaningful way – and beat the crap out of a Nazi at the same time.
The sequence in which Maeve, Starlight, and Kimiko team up to beat down Stormfront is both immensely fun and intensely satisfying, and a sign that Maeve definitely isn’t the lost cause that some of her Seven teammates might be.
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Ryan Accidentally Kills Becca
Victoria Neuman’s Secret
The final moments of “What I Know” contain one last surprise – Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, a vocal opponent of Vought and a blood-smeared bystander in the supervillain attack on Congress, is actually a supe herself. And, since her ability allows her to make people’s heads explode, she’s apparently behind the attack on her own hearing.
The episode doesn’t reveal much about her motivation – except power, and more of it – but her decision to murder Chruch of the Collective leader Adana rather than owe him a favor for the information he provided doesn’t bode well for anyone. Especially poor do-gooder Hughie, who’s decided to take a job with her campaign.
What Now?
The season 2 finale actually manages to tie up quite a few loose story ends, so much so that it’s hard to predict exactly what might happen when The Boys returns for a third season.
Starlight and Hughie finally admit what we all knew – that they’re both crazy about each other – and get back together officially. After a season’s worth of the two of them struggling to trust one another again, it’s nice to get to see someone on The Boys get what feels like a legitimate happy ending and these two deserve it more than most. If Vought doesn’t put some Starlight + Hughie forever merch on the market, they’re really missing a trick.
After almost sacrificing himself for Ryan, Butcher turns the boy over to Malory and her CIA team, despite his concerns over whether it’s possible for him to grow up to be better than his father. (“Becca thought so,” he says, and leaves it at that.) With Ryan in what appears to be child superhero witness protection, it’s unclear where Butcher’s story goes from here. And with Mother’s Milk finally returning to his family, Frenchie and Kimiko heading off to do some dancing on their own, and Hughie turning to politics as a legitimate way to fight Vought, it seems as though The Boys are going to spend some time apart. But with Malory’s declaration that she has some off the books cash to fund a group meant to help keep an eye on the supes…it seems unlikely they’ll stay away from each other for long.
