#it just not working causes immediate cuck impotence

[shivroy]

watching a vending machine malfunction is so sexual

[lionheart49er]

My Thoughts on The Boys Season 2 Finale

*This Post Contains Spoilers for “The Boys” Season 2 Finale*

First off, before I get into spoilers, I just want to saw how much I love what “The Boys” have been doing. I loved Season 1 and I feel Season 2 is just as fun and crazy with more in-depth social commentary, especially with the character of Stormfront and her satirizing of alt-right conservative media. Overall, I love how the show combines dark humor with poignant satire of superhero media, celebrity culture, and large corporate conglomerates. And in many ways, the finale was just as good.

The show takes its imperfect social material and elevates it. Turning the macho grim-dark superhero parody that only barely deconstructs superheroes and never deconstructs the just-as-toxic macho characters like Billy Butcher into a show that is just as willing to deconstruct Billy’s toxic masculinity as Homelander’s fascist superhero antics. I think the show does a good handling these serious topics with sprinkles of anti-capitalist ideology. And yeah, the irony of an show with anti-capitalist themes being streamed on Amazon Prime does not escape me. 

However, I read The AV Club’s review of the finale and it raised some points that I simply did not agree with. And I’m going to argue them here. 

The AV Club had a big issue with the reveal that Victoria Neuman was the head-exploder who was working for Vought. They came out with it the belief that this was somehow the show attacking “both-sides” and conflating progressive politicians like AOC with literal nazis. To be frank, I am just not agree with this take. 

First off, I don’t the show did a good job showing how wrong Nazism and fascism is through the characters of Homelander and especially Stormfront. In particular, Stormfront was a character I was initially worried about. There is a risk in portraying Nazi characters where they came off as likable enough to where they can appeal directly to white supremacist and real-life Nazis. And Stormfront’s goofy portrayal as a Tiktok-using millenial-type was certainly running that risk initially. But the show cleverly pulled the covers to show the dangerous ideology that was powering the seemingly innocent meme-exploiting superhero to show how real-life white supremacists and alt-right groups use playful memes and social media to spread hateful ideology. And the show never condones Stormfront’s hateful ideology and always portrays her as in the wrong. Hell, even Homelander is weirded out by her blatantly racist beliefs. 

I say all of this to show how Stormfront is portrayed in the show is way different from how Neuman is and probably will be portrayed. Obviously the fact she is based on progressive  AOC and Iihan Omar, so we immediately are on her side, especially when it comes to the matter of regulating superheroes since we’ve seen how messed-up superheroes like Homelander and A-Train abuse their powers without consequence. Then, it comes the twist that Neuman was secretly working with Vought the whole time. Now, the AV Club believes this means that Neuman is going to be presented as just as bad as Stormfront. Which I simply don’t agree. I don’t see this as the show implying that progressive politicians are worse or even just as bad as Nazis. And I believe the reveal makes sense when looking at Vought and how Stan Edgar runs his business.

I think the reason why Neuman works for Vought is explained in the dining scene between Billy Butcher and Stan Edgar. In that scene, Stan explains why he is willing to work with an awful white-supremacist like Stormfront. Obviously, Stan Edgar as a black man hates the living hell out of her but the man is business-minded as hell. He sees how useful Stormfront is in causing divisions in society. And those kind of divisions are profitable as hell as we know in real-life how much media can prey on said divisions. Even though Stan personally hates Stormfront’s blatant racism, he is willing to tolerate it because her endeavors ends up aligning directly with Vought’s goals to simply make as much money as possible. The scene really shows Edgar’s thinking and reasoning when it comes to how he runs Vought. And it’s a great scene in general especially when Edgar calls out Butcher for his own white privilege. But this scene also shows why Edgar would want someone like Neuman on his side.

The fact is we don’t know yet how genuine Neuman is or was for her progressive superhero-reform goals before joining Vought. We don’t really have a handle on her backstory yet. So whether she is a genuine progressive who is forced to work for Vought or simply a Vought double-agent is not known. However, either way I don’t think it implies Neuman is worse than Stormfront. In fact, more so this is just a brilliant move on Stan Edgar and Vought’s part to curb the superhero narrative in their favor. Just like how Vought benefits from Stormfront’s racist beliefs, they could equally benefit from Neuman’s progressive beliefs. In fact, Vought has already been doing shady stuff under the guise of progressive ideology this entire seasoning (the blatantly pandering “Girls get it done” campaign, the co-opting of Queen Maeve’s gay status for LGBT+ brownie points, etc.) In many ways, it is a reflection of pink capitalism and how much corporations want to appear “woke” while still benefiting from a corrupt capitalist systematic status quo. Essentially, Edgar knows he’s going to get backlash for Vought’s attempts to take-over the world by distributing Compound V. So he wants to control the narrative by having someone on his side pretending to be working against the man but really working for it. This also parallels a lot of brands who claim to be fighting against a capitalist system but is merely paying lip-services to such changes and just another extension of a major corporation’s capitalist endeavors. Just look at all the Che Guevara and Karl Marx merchandise you can buy online. I believe Edgar is working that exact angle with Victoria Neuman.

And there was genuine foreshadowing for this too. This twist did not come out of nowhere despite what some people like the AV Club would have you believe. The fact that Stan Edgar is constantly watching news coverage of Victoria Neuman on TV. During the head-exploding courtroom scene, you can see every person Victoria stares at explodes soon after. After the first time we see someone’s head explode in the beginning of the season, it immediately cuts to Victoria Neuman. So this wasn’t just some twist the writers pulled out of their ass in the last minute. This was clearly planned. Besides, it is entirely possible that Neuman is or at least was a genuinely progressive before being forced to work for Vought against her will. She does mention her daughter multiple times in the season. It is almost a cliche how much sympathy the show pulls from its asshole characters by giving them a kid (just check the Honest Trailers video). But that could very well be the case. Regardless, I do think we will get some understanding as to why Neuman is working for Vought in the next season for whatever reason. And I am genuinely looking forward to it. Besides, this doesn’t even ruin her character and we could see her human side explored in the next season. One of the things I praise this show for is going in-depth into even its worst scumbaggy characters (Homelander, The Deep, A-Train, etc.) to explore their human sides while still presenting them as awful people.

Also, I think the reason why Neuman takes longer to explode the Scientology guy’s head in the last scene while she easily explodes heads quickly in the courtroom scene is just to show to the audience that Neuman is the head exploder. Besides, there is no reason Neuman has to be quick to explode his head since there is no threat that she’ll be exposed for it. I’m sure she can explode heads much quicker when Season 3 comes around.   

So really that was all my thoughts on the whole Victoria Neuman reveal. I just wanted to give some more praise for The Boy’s awesome finale. The episode was full of fun, awesome moments that were super satisfying. The three female superheroes kicking the shit out of the Nazi, Homelander being rendered completely impotent by the end, Billy Butcher deciding to do the selfless thing to protect the child for once (right after nearly trying to murder him), Edgar pointing out as a black man how little he can lash out, The Deep getting cucked out of The Seven, etc. I loved what the Season 2 finale did. I am looking forward to Season 3. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts.