Compound V, Baby!
Episode 5 of The Boys sees us begin in Cuba with Popclaw being asked by A-Train about compound V. She tells him what happened, which leads to him injecting her with vials which kill her with a heroin overdose. Meanwhile Hughie feels out of sorts at the Believe Expo Starlight takes him to but he does his best not to stand out. Seeing an opportunity with a VIP club there, Butcher shows Hughie footage incriminating thee ringleader and tasks him with siphoning information from the man named Ezekiel. Starlight finds herself questioning her faith soon after while Butcher takes a more direct approach and laments God’s influence to one of the workers at the facility. Homelander shows up moments later and gets mad at his script while A-Train digs around at Popclaw’s house where he finds surveillance footage from when Frenchie and the others turned up. Having made it into the platinum club, Hughie prepares himself to be baptized before being dunked aggressively underwater by Homelander himself. Afterward, Hughie dries up and confronts Ezekiel over what he’s learned. He asks Ezekiel about the operation and threatens to release the video he has of him. It turns out they ship the compound out to various different hospitals across the country. Starlight gets up to do her speech at the Expo and has second thoughts, going completely off script and talking about morals. She delivers a heartfelt talk about sin and God’s influence before Hughie tells her he understands her turmoil after the dust has settles and tells her his girlfriend died. Meanwhile, Butcher and the others trace the compound V back to a hospital where they find that babies have been injected with this. After a brutal shootout that sees blood and guts fly round the room like confetti, Frenchie is cornered by Black Noir in the alleyway until The Female arrives and saves him. Despite being badly hurt and bleeding out, she rapidly heals as Frenchie returns and he calls her a miracle. While not quite as dramatic as the previous episode, The Boys delivers another enjoyable episode nonetheless. The religion aspect of this whole debacle brings up some very interesting moral questions and seeing this play into the main narrative is certainly a welcome inclusion here. It helps to add some depth to Starlight’s character too, especially seeing her religious upbringing and how difficult that must have been for her. With Starlight’s confession now out, and the ending leaving things wide open going forward, with The Boys continuing to hit all the right notes in its first season.
