Death on The Boys finally sinks in
The Boys is full of death, but little grieving. Since season 1, Homelander has laser-blasted bystanders, punched Vought underlings through the chest, and ripped apart fellow supes nearly once an episode. The violence is so over the top that the loss of innocent life never really sinks in beyond “Good lord, someone needs to stop that guy!” It’s a bit of a miracle; each week, showrunner Eric Kripke and his team of writers and directors ride the edge(lord) between gleeful shock value and grotesque reality. There is no show that has made me yelp out loud more times than The Boys.
Which is why season 4 episode 5, “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” floored me. The episode is full of standard Boys absurdity, from the Marvel-at-Comic-Con parody of the V52 Expo to a standoff against Compound V-enhanced sheep. But through the mayhem, writer Judalina Neira and director Shana Stein swerve into a grim scene: Hughie (Jack Quaid) discovering that his estranged mother injected his dying father, Hughie Sr. (Simon Pegg), with stolen Compound V. Hughie almost gave the shot himself, a last-ditch effort to save his dad through superhuman means, but in the end threw the dose away, knowing long-term consequences all too well. His mom didn’t — and despite Hughie Sr. bouncing back for a moment, all hell quickly breaks loose.
Pegg’s screen time only amounts to 15 or 20 minutes of an hour-long episode, but it feels painfully long, in the way that standing by a declining loved one in those final years, months, or even days can feel. The Compound V causes Hughie Sr. to immediately lose control of his body, but instead of breaking a hip or having an accident, he teleports into a nearby patient’s torso, exploding blood and guts around the room. Hughie Sr. phases in and out of awareness of his actions. When he’s on, he’s in shock — how did he wind up holding a human heart? Hughie, who has seen these horrors before, remains calm… until it dawns on him that he’s never seen this horror before: his
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