As if they don’t have enough to deal with this season of Amazon’s The Boys, the female members of The Seven have to contend with Vought’s latest marketing campaign, “Girls Get it Done,” an optics scheme that paints a false portrait of feminism among Vought’s superheroes. The reality, of course, isn’t quite as rosy as the campaign suggests.
Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is actively working to take Vought down from the inside while playing along as a model corporate employee. The disenchanted Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) couldn’t care less about any of her female teammates, barely mustering up enough enthusiasm for the cameras only. Then there’s Stormfront (Aya Cash), a powerful new member of the group that nails public relations while bucking corporate demands at every pass. She’s the ideal for Vought’s campaign, except she’s revealed quickly enough to be a white supremacist with nefarious plans for domination.
“Stormfront is, I describe her as a heart full of acid. She is not exactly somebody that you want to find her cute, cuddly parts. They’ve been wiped out probably long ago, but there are obviously moments that she has justification for herself. I don’t think those justifications pan out as an audience member. I hope they don’t, but for her, she thinks that she’s the hero of her own story. But the audience I don’t think should ever end up on her side,” Aya Cash says of her villainous character. “Because she is a white supremacist and she’s disgusting, and I don’t think that she should be glorified in any way. It was very challenging. I think understanding is fine, but you shouldn’t be on her side.”
Interestingly, the weekly episodic release of The Boys’ second season (read my review) meant that fans were initially duped by her frank attitude, especially in handling season one’s big villain, Homelander (Antony Starr). Of her character’s reception, Cash said, “Honestly, I think the weekly release has been harder for me, but its better ultimately because the truth is that that’s how the real world works. Oh God, this is such a longer conversation. But I think that we are often bamboozled by people who seem competent and charming and that the cult of personality tends to win over content in our world. So, the experience of watching weekly is actually important. It’s just a little harder as an actor not to be able to talk about the entire story and to get into some of these larger conversations without spoilers and the full context of the show.”
At the other end of the moral spectrum, Starlight begins this season in an ambiguous state. Reeling from Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) betrayal and the truth behind Vought, it’s not immediately clear where her allegiance lies. Per Moriarty, that’s intentional: “I think that the beginning ambiguity, it reflects what’s going on within her because, in addition to knowing that she needs to stay in the Seven to remain covert and takedown Vought, I think it’s probably really hard when you’ve been conditioned your entire life to worship this corporation. And it just recently, you’ve gotten the revelation that they’re the opposite of what you thought they were. I’m sure that she’s still grappling with that. I’m sure the combination creates a complex debate in her mind.”
Caught in the middle as Vought’s pawn is Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten), who was revealed at the end of last season to be alive. More shockingly, Becca was raising Homelander’s son in secret. VanSanten describes her insane journey on The Boys, “I mean, from day one on the show, I stepped on set and had to do a sex scene with Karl Urban. And then I went from doing a sex scene to giving birth to a superhero where I had a giant, funnel Is not the right word, but a tube that ran from my neck, down my spine, out my butt crack underneath the sheet that just spewed blood on everybody. I hadn’t read all the episodes. I didn’t get to read the graphic novel yet. I looked at Eric Kripke and asked, ‘What kind of show am I doing? This is so messed up.’ He said, ‘exactly!'”
More specific to this season, VanSanten says of Becca’s role as a mother, “I remember Eric Kripke explaining it to me as though I was raising the second coming of Christ, or the next Homelander, which would also be the devil. So, don’t fuck it up. Good luck. You have all the responsibility of saving humanity. I remember being like, ‘Holy shit; I never thought of it that way.’ From Becca’s standpoint, I was thinking of this being the most redemptive, unselfish thing that she could do. Still, I didn’t realize in the bigger picture of being a pawn for Vought that I was the experimental test to see if being a mother and teaching a child that I’m nurturing how to have empathy, compassion, feelings, love, respect for women, how we could possibly change humanity by having a hero to look up to. Once I understood that I instantly wanted to quit. I’m probably going to fail at this. I don’t think I’m good enough. Then again, I realized those were all the things that Becca must feel on a daily basis. It’s like, I have to be doing this wrong because she came into it all with all of her stuff too. And in that way, I find her to be quite heroic because she stepped up to that challenge and faces it fiercely and constantly. She’s one of the only people on the show that confronts Homelander until Stormfront comes along. But she has her powers, and Becca has pancake making skills.”
With all the plotlines converging just in time for the October 9 season finale, Stormfront and her partnership with Homelander proves to be a threat like no other. The Boys, all very human, will need superpowered women, Starlight and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), if they have any hope of making it through alive. But will they be enough?
Moriarty refers back to Vought’s initial campaign, “Girls do get it done. You see that in the end, and you realize that Kimiko and Annie were in charge. At the end of the day, it’s all lying on their shoulders. If you needed to rely on people to save the day, it’s always going to be the women of the show.”
“I completely agree. I think, without giving too much away, especially in the finale, you’ll see that The Boys need the girls,” Fukuhara hints at one of the most triumphant, thrilling moments of the entire season, involving our supercharged protagonists.
The explosive season two finale of The Boys will be available on Amazon Prime Video on October 9, 2020.
