Review: The Boys, "The Frenchman, The Female, And The Man Called Mother's Milk" | Season 5, Episode 7

“It’s over. We lost.”

Hughie, of all people, is the one to speak these words. They’re the inciting incident of this episode, after a fashion. Sure, last week’s installment ended with Homelander injecting himself with V1 and theoretically becoming immortal, as our heroes fled. But while that spurs on the “last-second Hail Mary” (Sage’s words) of trying to give Kimiko the radioactive explosion power of Soldier Boy, it’s really the inclination to throw in the towel and give up that drives this week’s interactions. And the perspectives are flipped from where they’ve been all season: Hughie and Annie become the fatalistic, it’s-over ones, with Mother’s Milk and Butcher (and Frenchie and Kimiko) taking on the role of motivational speaker. 

I wish I could say it worked.

I understand the impetus to make our most optimistic, never-say-die heroes the ones who need a pep talk. In the abstract, it ups the stakes, creating greater dramatic tension. But in the context of the entire season, it comes across like the creative team flipping peoples’ personalities to suit the narrative, rather than the other way around, undercutting any dramatic consistency for the sake of whatever fun ideas have been cooked up for this episode. (In other words, The Boys is now more Glee than Community, to borrow a handy comparison from Emily St. James.) By having Hughie and Annie lose their resolve, and others—who were already solidly depicted as nihilistic and cynical—pick it up in their stead, it weakens the overall story, because the characters lose their preexisting psychological investment in the plot—and we, as the audience, are left with less engaging protagonists.