The Boys Season 2 recap: Episode 3, ‘Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men’

In Episode 3 Amazon Prime’s The Boys Season 2, Homelander damages his son, The Boys have a whale of a time, and Stormfront is more than a little racist.

Episode 3 of The Boys Season 2 begins with Hughie (Jack Quaid) listening to Billy Joel on a boat, which seems to inspire him. After punching Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) square in the face, we’re informed that The Boys are still coordinating with Colonel Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) to bring Kenji (Abraham Lim) to a CIA safe house. Complicating matters is that Kenji is brother to The Boys’ own Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and they promise to protect each other.

As for The Seven, the drama still unfolds for them. We see that, although A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) can still get a lady’s phone number, his heart problems from abusing Compound V remain. Also, Homelander (Antony Starr) has an awkward breakfast with son Ryan (Cameron Cravetti) and Becca (Shantel VanSanten). Vought’s Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) leaves a meeting about the Homelander movie, panicked after a phonecall.

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The Boys Season 2, Episode 3 recap: The truth comes out

Why sent Ashley scrambling? It was Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Hughie leaking the truth about Compound V to the press. In the immediate aftermath, A-Train warns to not f**** with the money.” Though it could function as a direct threat, it also stands as a more general one.

In the backdrop of this story, The Deep (Chace Crawford) has been undergoing therapy due to his feelings of abnormality regarding his gills. When he learns about supes being created by Compound V, he laments that he could have been born normal. However, none of this stops The Deep from wanting to rejoin The Seven.

The Boys Season 2, Episode 3 recap: Family time

The Boys has established Homelander as being egomaniacal, and now it seems he’s training Ryan in his ways. When Ryan declines Homelander’s command to jump off the roof, Homelander ends up pushing him off. For obvious reasons, Becca is startled by this, as it’s a 20-foot drop. Ryan survives quite unscathed, demonstrating he likely has superpowers. However, the big demonstration is after Homelander grabs Becca’s wrist, prompting Ryan to push his biological father to the ground!

When he gets back at The Seven HQ, Homelander confronts Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) about her communicating with Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude). In this episode, Queen Maeve also talks again to Elena, who wants her to leave The Seven due to Homelander’s intense jealousy. Meanwhile, on The Boys’ boat, Kenji uses a soda pop can to free himself in time to telekinetically crash an NYPD helicopter that’s tracked down their stolen boat.

The Boys Season 2, Episode 3 recap: Second wind / Pinnochio

After the helicopter is shredded, Hughie calls Starlight, saying she’s his “second wind” (inspired by a line from the Billy Joel song). It almost seems relevant to what’s going on at Vought, where CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) gives an office speech suggesting that Vought will recover from the Compound V scandal. Later, Homelander Edgar that The Seven are his real family, not Vought, and suggests that Edgar himself is not Vought International.

Bat on The Boys’ boat, some weird sharks crash their larger boat prompting them to board the attached speedboat. The Boys then realize it was The Deep who attacked them, and the supposed superhero tries to block them with a giant whale. Much to The Deep’s own dismay, Billy Butcher decides to power through the whale, which means they end up immersed in its body, beached. When Hughie seemingly gives up and stays in the whale carcass, Butcher humorously remarks that “Pinnochio is staying put.”

The Boys Season 2, Episode 3 recap: The canaries in the coalmine

Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) manages to talk Hughie out of the whale, and the group enters a storm drain that’s ostensibly linked to the CIA safe house.  There, Mother’s Milk compares Hughie to a canary in a coal mine. However, they are all in danger when members of The Seven show up There is a somewhat lighter side at first, when The Deep apologizes to Starlight, even mentioning the psychological reasons he had abused her. However, Homelander wrecks the moment more by telling him to cover up his gill, calling it “disgusting.”

A number of things happen in the underground tunnel. A-Train tries to use his powers, but he has heart trouble. Then, when Starlight finds Hughie, she immediately stuns him with a blast (though she arguably had to, to conceal the fact that she helped Hughie leak the Compound V info). However, Homelander tasks her with simply killing Hughie, and threatens to kill her if she doesn’t.

The Boys Season 2, Episode 3 recap: Revelation about Stormfront

Fortunately, they’re all momentarily spared from Homelander’s wrath after Kenji caves in the ground, then crashes the ceiling on Homelander. Kenji and Kimiko escape through the hole in the tunnel, finding themselves in a cityscape. To their dismay, Stormfront (Aya Cash) blasts at Kenji and Kimiko into an apartment building. As they fight, she executes every black person she sees in the building.

Eventually, the fight ends up on the building’s roof. Getting the upper hand, Stormfront ends up breaking Kenji’s hands, which were a vital aspect of his superpower. Then, as if it means nothing, she twists his head around as Kimiko secretly watches in horror (she also happened to witness Stormfront’s impromptu, racist murder campaign.

Moments later, Stan Edgar gives a press conference announcing he had no knowledge of Compound V, pinning all the blame on the deceased Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) — conveniently, she can’t defend herself — while giving Stormfront credit for stopping Kenji, the alleged “superterrorist.”

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