The Boys Season 2 Episode 8: What I Know Review

The Boys Season 2 Episode 8 : What I Know Review

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After the events of the last episode, there’s no more time for screwing around. Rescuing Ryan from Homelander and Stormfront becomes the priority for The Boys and their plan is seemingly simple, get both Homelander and Stormfront out of the cabin they’re keeping Ryan in and then go and grab the kid.

Getting Stormfront out seems easy at first, the boys find proof of her ties to the actual Nazi party of the 1930s and get it to the news. Homelander is more time sensitive, since they can really only distract him with a very powerful loud piercing sound and use that time to go grab Ryan.

Sadly, this triggers the final confrontation between The Boys and one of the biggest bad guys they will ever know, who will win? The actual Nazi or The Boys?

The Good Boys

Since this is the final episode of the season, having it revolve almost entirely around Ryan was a great choice, but throwing Billy Butcher finally stepping up and seeing Ryan for what he is on top of that made it heartbreaking in every way. Since earlier in the season, Billy had some serious issues with Ryan being a descendent of a superhero and now they finally make an entire episode where he basically has to confront that issue and act like an actual father to his wife’s kid. It’s possibly some of the best work that has been done with Billy up to this point, we’ve never seen him be this emotionally invested in anything in his entire life.

Speaking of emotionally invested in what happens to Ryan, that also pushed Homelander to doing the one thing I never thought he would do… turn on Vought. At least that’s what it feels like he did towards the end of this episode after everything was torn away from him. The final scenes of him walking around looking like Carrie after confronting some of Vought’s men really are some of the scariest moments. This episode basically deprives Homelander of almost everything and it doesn’t seem like things are going to get better… I’m, not sure how it can get worse than falling in love with a literal Nazi, but this show has surprised me before.

Everything involving that literal Nazi is some of the best stuff of this series though. Admittedly most of the stuff involving Stormfront just involves her being beaten into a pulp and then effectively killed by a small child but frankly, I enjoy any show that’s willing to put a very big boot in the face of a very bad Nazi. The entire fight sequence with Stormfront, Starlight, Meave and Kimiko is one of the best all-out brawls that this series has had and I dare say without that incredible beating, Stormfront would’ve probably been able to dodge the blow that ended up turning her into a babbling German potato at the end. She’s not quite dead though, and since we have recently learned that apparently Nazi’s are extraordinarily hard to get rid of we might have to get ready to see her again at some point in the future.

The Bad Boys

So this one isn’t ‘bad’ so much as ‘I await the reveal of more information next season’ and that’s that this episode finally reveals who is responsible for all the head popping madness we saw last week, and also the death of Raynor in episode one. Turns out it’s been the AOC parody character, Victoria Neuman, all along, the one who wants to do something to reign in the superheroes… which she did by making her star witness’s head explode in a televised hearing? It’s not that it’s a bad reveal, indeed my interest is peaked as to what this means going into next season, but it’s a reveal that raises more questions than it answers and I don’t quite know how I feel about it so right now it’s on the bad side but only because “The Middle of the road boys” wouldn’t be a good subject header.

Also, can we just have a moment to feel bad for The Deep? Yes he was a scumbag when we met him, everyone in The Seven is a scumbag, but at least the Deep’s been trying his hardest to improve as a person and done what he could and not only is he given the least screen time despite having the biggest character arc but in the finale he is getting relegated to maybe 5 minutes and ends this season without his church or the Seven, I just worry they’re going to end up writing out one of their most interesting characters.

Stray Observations

“Fuck that Nazi bitch” is and will always be a fantastic line, more shows should just say it loudly because it’s fun to say that to Nazi’s
Of course Stormfront is the kind of idiot who believes in White Genocide. I’m just shocked it took them this long for her to bring that up. The cutaway to Homelander giving her a look that just screams “Wait, you actually believe that bullshit?” is just the icing on the cake
“Nazi’s Stormfront, Hitler’s star. Run her over with a car” is absolutely the catchiest anti-Nazi song I’ve ever heard
Why is it so fitting for this series that the last sighting of Homelander involves him masterbating over the town while exclaiming “I can do whatever the fuck I want”?

In general, as far as finale’s go, this was a pretty great one. We finally got to put the nazi to bed and now Vought as a company is more exposed than ever. There are of course some big questions regarding the Church of the Collective, Victoria Neuman’s actual plans, what happened to that one Supe who escaped the asylum a few episodes ago and what the new relationship between Meave, Starlight and Homelander is and I expect they’re going to be front and centre of season 3 but for now, Season 2 was a huge step up from the first season. It was extremely timely with its attack on Nazi’s (wow, I can’t believe I have to say that) and every episode just kept knockingg it out of the park to the point where most of the time I wondered why I even bothered having a ‘bad’ section for this review.

Watch this episode