[soldierboys]

THE BOYS 5.07 The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk

[mechanictonystank]

I’m still mad about the finale and s5 in general but I gotta say there is something really tragic and poetic about the fact that Homelander spent his entire childhood being watched and experimented on in a lab, then spent the rest of his life constantly performing in front of cameras, and in the end even his weakest moment and death happened in front of cameras too.

He never truly got to exist as an actual person. From the moment he was born, Vought turned him into a weapon and a spectacle for people to watch. Vought really did win in the end.

[homielander]

your favourite moment in the boys finale?

homelander's last words invoking the show's troubling sexual politics

"scorched earth" amounting to a room in mild disarray

monologue #23 abt how homelander has no friends & 0 play closing his arc w ryan

stan edgar reforming vought❤️

annie & hughie having a baby because the world is good & vought is reformed❤️

anus memorial

annie's long-anticipated power display used to launch...the deep. into the ocean

recalling becca&robin, who were maybe People, with Ideas. we haven't decided yet

maybe the real soldier boy was the friends we made along the way

Voting ended onMay 30

[blindmagdalena]

what makes me most sick about the ending of the boys is the engine of vought ultimately coming out as the true sole winner of it all. stan edgar is back in precisely the position he was in s1, spouting off about profit in the wake of so much blood. supes will continue to be created and abused. the gears continue to grind.

homelander was never the villain of the show. it was always vought. i was okay with homelander becoming the face of vought, i was okay with his death, i was okay with all of it so long as it meant ending the cycle. taking down the monsters that made him into what he became.

instead, we saw a victim of heinous abuse be shattered by hatred, delusion, fear, and humiliation. driven insane by the delusions that vought put in his head in the first place. he died slowly and painfully, stripped of the only security he'd ever known. he died scared and truly alone in the world, all while the company that created him happily moved on to bigger and better abuses.

i understand that this is probably in part due to the spectacular failure that is gen v's existence and subsequent cancellation. maybe if the writers hadn't been anticipating that series as a future catalyst for vought's downfall, we would have gotten more finality. instead, we're left with an absolutely dystopian ending in which victims have only three options: die as martyrs, survive to exist in compliance with the status quo, or become the scapegoat villains to be mocked, snuffed out and painted over.

my heart goes out to all the folks who're struggling with this ending. i know homelander is a polarizing character who's largely been treated as nothing more than a caricature by the show and fandom/world at large, but there is something in him that resonated with many of us. there is such tragedy in his character that deserved more respect. it makes me deeply sad for everyone who had any hope for a shred of dignity to be shown not just to his character, but to the abuse he endured, and what that turned him into.

[homielander]

i have been certain since season 3 that the seasons-long buildup of annie's powers would be justified in the final season and she would deliver a debilitating blow against homelander in the final battle. she is a believable counter given that her powers are externally sourced and therefore theoretically limitless (it would not break any powerscaling logic for her to incapacitate him), she was raised to be a shiny commercial product just as he was, she is nonetheless the series' truest "superhero", and she is the symbol of national resistance against him in an arduously long political plotline... so i am genuinely in complete disbelief that she was instead relegated to the deep duty. in the finale. her arc has moved so far beyond him, he has been in her periphery for ages now. is there literally any reason for this writing choice other than annie being a Woman who once suffered sexual violence? regardless of how pertinent it is to her character journey (not at all) it is assumed that it is appropriate and fitting for her second-last scene to be spent fighting her rapist. lol. it's just insultingly lazy

[homielander]

i really liked the scene with homelander and the legend. homelander's journey has always been about trying to resolve the tension between his longing for love and the supremacist mythology of self he is assembling (the latter is often in service of the former, he never quite consciously aspires to the figure described in 3.06 that is uncontaminated by any need for love). he has so much contempt for the supes who hang it up -- see his disdain for sony pictures and rote citation of their box office figures, lol. it's certainly a prospect he's envisioned before and finds intolerable, but i think something about the legend's frankness was comforting. how rare is it for him to hear expressed the cynical reality of the vought machine without any derision towards himself. yes, he is nuts, but such is the nature of superhero celebrity. yes, to be shoved out is horrible, but it is inevitable. it must feel strange to, for one moment, imagine a future where no performance is required of him (offered by vought's former scriptwriter!) and concurrently experience a rare moment of connection. i don't think abandoning semiotic construction entirely has ever occurred to him as a resolution to his problem. (and resolution is all he's after... this is why firecracker, despite her adulation, wasn't spared last episode. the particular religious iconography she invoked is too symbiotic, reliant, he's tried it, it didn't work. he strives to become a colder god, still beloved but transcending need.)

he doesn't quite allow himself to sit with what the legend proposes (although he delays seeking the means to immortality and calcifying his mythology, which is significant). relinquishing a script would be to "become nothing." could anyone love him for his authentic self? for homelander, an authentic self has never truly been permitted to take form; even after deposing the vought elders, he fashions himself from cultural scripts. could it still? who's to say... but a pat on the shoulder was enough for something to peek through.

[red-cosmicc]

claudia, oil on canvas 11"×14"

[dumboedits]

[kamillahn]

The Boys - 'Every One of You Sons of Bitches' - S05E03

[filledmouth]

Loss as a family heirloom

[dailyflicks]

THE BOYS (2019-) S05E01 ✦ Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite

[ruiviart]

IDK WHAT TO CAPTION HERES A HOMELANDER FANART AND EXPECT TWNETY MORE

[bisexualhomelander]

The Boys 3x08 "The Instant White-Hot Wild" || The Boys 5x03 "Every One of You Sons of Bitches"

Part 2

[pollyj]

On the Himalayan Trail

Romy Gill

[erotizmas]

the boys (2019-2026)

[bollcks]

THE BOYS Season 5 | Final Season Trailer

[deliciouskeys]

Babe, Jesus may be “immortal” but he had to die a horrible painful death first. Just FYI before you go casting yourself without realizing all the implications.

He cast himself as Jesus in season 3 - albeit he also had aspirations to be the old testament god “Like Abraham to Isaac if I say so”

I guess it’s all more ambitious than season 4’s “Like Caesar”.

[bisexualhomelander]

I don't know if it is deliberate that all his idols are people who were famously killed gruesomely/assassinated for political reasons.

Jesus. MLK, Caesar.

This man has a real problem with reading the biographies he so loves to their end.

[unhinqed]

THE BOYS 4x01