I haven't truly binged-watched a show in a long time. Yes, even with the epidemic, I'm more often working or doing chores than watching something on streaming.
But The Boys is so irreverently good, so twistedly watchable, that I started it on Friday and spend Saturday finishing it off.
There's currently only one season, and when the last episode was over, I thought: Well, they just blew everything we knew up. Where could they go from here? Could a Season Two be even close to as good as this?
Dear Reader, I think it can.
Below is my outline for a Season Two.
Major Spoilers for the The Boys Season One follows
Butcher
Butcher starts Season Two with everything he's built his life on for eight years suddenly knocked out from under him. His wife's alive, she's been raising the kid she had with Homelander, and she's never, not once, tried to contact him about it or tell him the truth.
He's going to struggle to come to grips with that. He'll be in denial at first, and then angry when his ex-wife (and is she even his ex?) lays it all out for him. There'll be fights. He might try to move in with them -- insisting on a husband's prerogative -- he might try to "rescue" Becca (which she'll resist, confusing him more).
He might even try another attempt on Homelander's life, using his new family as bait.
All of these efforts, this raging at the new reality, will fail.
Finally, at the end of the last fight with his ex-wife, when the bleak truth has settled in, he'll remember something Homelander dropped at the end of Season One, when he was talking to Stillwell (who was all tied up with explosives at the time): The name of the scientist who created Homelander.
Butcher will shift gears at that point, away from Becca, and towards a new goal: To track down this scientist, and guilt him into making a formula to undo his greatest mistake. Something that neutralizes the effects of Compound V, making Supes normal again.
Homelander and Becca and the Kid
Meanwhile, Homelander has been trying to play house with Becca and his son.
But he's bad at it. Incredibly bad at it. Becca doesn't really want him there, the kid wants a dad but can't relate to someone raised in a lab, and Homelander himself has no role models to imitate.
Butcher himself might help here, in a scene where he's feeling low and takes pity on Homelander for once. Gives Homelander an in, something he can do to bond with his son.
But it's too little, too late. In an attempt to show "tough love", Homelander ends up killing the kid's favorite pet. Becca drives him out of the house, tells him not come back.
The Seven (as was)
With Homelander distracted, Maeve steps in to lead The Seven.
It's a literally thankless job. Their new manager at Vought feels nothing but contempt for Supes, seeing them as just more dangerous versions of spoiled celebrities. And every interview Maeve gives, someone asks her about Homelander. Even when he's gone, he overshadows her.
So she begins making some changes, to get some attention. She brings back a disgraced Supe, makes them part of the Seven. She gets back with her ex, and comes out of the closet.
It all unravels, though, when she finds out how Starlight has betrayed them all (in working with Hughie to take down Vought from the inside, tracing the route of Compound V to supervillains) and Homelander returns, all in a rage from his failed family experiment.
Hughie and Starlight and the Gang
Finally, "The Boys" has stopped being an all-boys' club. Kimiko and Frenchie are an item, and more and more Kimiko is willing to help them in their crusade against Vought (though reluctantly at first).
Hughie and Starlight's relationship remains fragile. They're friends and allies, but arguing constantly about the best way to go about things. Each time of them reaches out to rekindle their romance, the other pulls back, wounded and mistrustful from their last fight.
Because of all this back-and-forth, Starlight doesn't realize how deep she's gone to the other side until Maeve confronts her about it towards the end of the season, framing everything as Starlight's attempt to undermine her and take over leadership of the Seven.
The Climax
Everything comes to a head all at once.
Homelander returns in the middle of Maeve and Starlight's fight, pissed at everyone and everything.
Starlight's fight delays her helping Hughie and the gang getting into Vought's headquarters for the final piece of the evidence, making them think Starlight's betrayed them.
They break into the lab themselves, where they find Butcher, happily switching everything over to churn out the Compound-V antidote. He's carrying a rifle that's been modified to fire doses of the antidote, so he can make Homelander mortal.
And everything goes to shit when the world's first supervillain team chooses that moment to assault The Seven in their Vought HQ.
