The Boys season 2 recap: What happened leading up to season 3

Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys On June 3, the show will return for a third series. The incisive and hyperviolent superhero satire’s second season wrapped with a mind-blowing reveal — and, judging by the trailers for season 3, that’s going to be far from the show’s last.

A third season will feature more characters and storylines. Jensen Ackles is Soldier Boy. He’s a Captain America-like figure that predates Homelander (Antony Starr) in the series. To give you a leg up on all these developments, Polygon’s put together this speedy refresher on the ending of season 2.

Let’s start with the basics: Did The Boys truly break up in season 2 of The Boys?

Photo: Amazon Studios

The anti-supe team began season 2 already divided, but the finale episode, “What I Know,” sent them all on diverging paths. Hughie (Jack Quaid), M.M. Frenchie (Tomer Capeon) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) were hiding, while Billy Butcher(Karl Urban), made his way to them to find Becca (Shantel Vanden), whom he discovered was alive at season’s end.

The ideological split between Hughie and Butcher grew ever wider — the youngest member of the Boys remained adamant that supes can be taken down the “right” way, while Butcher was still prepared to do anything in his quest for revenge, including capturing Becca and Homelander’s son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), to get back at Homelander.

In “What I Know,” Hughie left the team to work with Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), the new head (heh) of the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs. Little does he know that the congresswoman is actually the mysterious brain-popping assassin who took out the CIA’s Susan Raynor (Jennifer Esposito), former Vought science officer Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman), Church of the Collective leader Alastair Adana (Goran Visnjic), and a bunch of other people at the hearing that was supposed to bring down Vought.

As for Butcher, he showed real growth and compassion by placing Ryan under Grace Mallory’s (Laila Robins) protection even after the poor kid accidentally killed Becca while trying to protect her from Stormfront (Aya Cash). But it sounds like he’ll have Mallory’s “off-the-books” backing to hunt supes once more in the new season.

“What I Know” seemingly ended on happy notes for the rest of The Boys: M.M. returned to his wife and daughter, while Frenchie and Kimiko set off together to “dance,” among other things. We have our doubts about just how “settled” they all are, and not just because we’ve seen the trailer for season 3. M.M. met Liberty while trying to find him (who later turned out not be Stormfront). revealed to Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Hughie how he’d essentially inherited his father’s mission to bring down Vought — a quest that claimed his dad’s life and threatened to consume his own.

Kimiko may have gotten vengeance for the murder of her younger brother, Kenji (Abraham Lim), who was framed as a “Super Terrorist” and then killed by Stormfront, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about her time in the Shining Light Liberation Army. And while “The Bloody Doors Off” explained what led to Frenchie dropping his tail on Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore), which led to the deaths of Mallory’s grandchildren, there’s probably even more tragic backstory to be explored there. So there’s no telling what will bring them all back into the fold with Butcher.

Who’s actually left in the Seven after the season 2 finale?

Photo: Amazon Studios

Even though season 1 already saw the loss of two supes — Lamplighter’s retirement and Translucent’s (Alex Hassell) gory death — membership in The Seven Really In season 2, the numbers fluctuated. A-Train (Jessie Usher), who was initially hospitalized, got up and went back to work but Homelander expelled him for failing to live up to their high standards. But thanks to some “divine” intervention from the now-defunct Alastair, A-Train was officially back in the Seven by season’s end.

Dominique McElligott’s Queen Maeve was desperate to defeat Homelander. She teamed up to The Deep (Chace Crawford), and found footage of Homelander leaving a planeload full of passengers in their death.

She successfully leveraged the video and Homelander’s insecurities into a reprieve for herself, Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude), who still broke up with her, and the Boys. Maeve was ostensibly still in the Seven at the end of the season — though the season 3 trailer mostly shows her in civvies — but The Deep remains excommunicated.

Starlight actually spent most of her time with The Boys to expose Vought’s vile practices. She rekindled her relationship with Hughie, but not before musing that Butcher might be right — that there’s no “going high” with supes, which could be a sign of things to come. However, she was framed by Homelander and Stormfront as Public Enemy No. 1 by Stormfront and Homelander and subsequently clearing her name, Starlight was at Maeve’s side during that final press conference. She’s still in the Seven, but it seems only in name at this point.

Lamplighter was an inactive Seven member who became inactive when he self-immolated in protest against Vought Headquarters, while helping Starlight to be freed. We did learn the circumstances that led to the deaths of Mallory’s grandchildren, as well as what he’d been up to since: namely, disposing of the patients at Sage Grove who either responded poorly to Compound V or refused to fall under Vought’s thumb.

Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell), a hunter, pursued Starlight (butcher) and Starlight (starlight). However, it was Maeve that took Maeve out of the commission, with an Almond joy (apparently he has a tree nut allergy). That’s one less unquestioning soldier for Homelander, who also lost his most powerful ally to date: Stormfront, who was introduced as an edgy millennial but turned out to be a supe named Liberty and the wife of Frederick Vought himself.

Stormfront revealed Vought’s real plan: to make an army of über-strong white supremacists, led by herself and Homelander. Homelander, naturally, was very interested in it. However, they were faced with opposition from Victoria Neuman (although who knows her true allegiances) and the Boys. But it was Homelander’s son Ryan who ultimately incapacitated Stormfront, killing his mom in the process. So, the Seven haven’t quite been decimated, but Homelander’s running low on allies.

Vought International: Where is it after Season 2?

Photo: Panagiotis Pantazidis/Amazon Studios

In season 2, Vought’s supes became part of the U.S. armed forces; the premiere episode featured government officials accepting the Seven’s terms on everything from who would be in command to acceptable collateral damage, i.e., loss of human life. But the multibillion-dollar conglomerate was hit with scandal after scandal: first, the exposé on Compound V, then the release of photos that showed Stormfront was an O.G. Nazi and not just a Neo.

Under Stan Edgar’s (Giancarlo Esposito) leadership, though, Vought managed to take control of the media narrative. The Compound V leak just led to a greater demand for the drug, which turned out to be the company’s real objective all along — as Edgar told Homelander, Vought is actually a pharmaceutical company, not a superhero company. That plan hit a snag after Stormfront’s background came to light, but in the finale’s closing moments, Edgar was back at the podium, deflecting the blame from his company and placing it squarely on one “bad apple.”

The Boys Prime Video will air season 3, which includes three episodes, on June 3. Here’s the latest trailer: