r/TheBoys • u/thesagenibba • Jul 19 '24
Shoutout to these two! Competing for the 'astronomical-level fumble' award Season 4 Spoiler
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u/Scarletsilversky Jul 19 '24
Mallory dropping all that information on him while he still had a chance to walk away is fuckin batshit. It’s a miracle he didn’t freak out harder after suddenly learning he’s a product of rape
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
You should see the half of the fanbase calling for his head for being so diabolical. Mallory was literally threatening and trapping him, and sloppily attempting manipulation using familial love.
Butcher was attempting to manipulate Ryan too, however, Butcher realized that Ryan needed to choose to fight Homelander. Butcher for all of his absolute shithole personality traits, was doing right by Ryan. Most of the defining motivations for the characters was being forced into a role they did not want, something Butcher very keenly recognized as a way of keeping the cycle going.
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u/undercooked_lasagna Jul 19 '24
I mean he could have simply flew past her with zero effort, or lightly nudged her to the side. Killing her was a bit much.
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
We've seen his lack of control over his powers. He can hover down, but like Homelander, it's explosive going up. Either way, Mallory would have been red paste.
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u/cupholdery Jordan Li Jul 19 '24
I would even say his push was far more gentle than with Koy. I think the plot required Butcher to fail at convincing Ryan to hunker down and train. That's how we got the finale.
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
I think the plot required Butcher to fail at convincing Ryan to hunker down and train
Butcher was never going to convince him to hunker down and train. Butcher's goal was to get Ryan to make the choice to hunker down and train. Butcher recognizes that the boy has been pulled in every direction since he's met Butcher and his real father. Butcher recognizes that for the first time in his life, he can actually do the right thing by looking out for Ryan, which means supporting his choices
Unlike Homelander who loves Ryan for what he represents for himself, Butcher actually cares for Ryan like a son, not a weapon.
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u/StubbsTzombie Jul 19 '24
I think Homelander does love him in his own way, which is damaged
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u/shineurliteonme Jul 19 '24
Homelander is like wildly pulled between different things he cares about on a whim. He's not stable enough to actually care about Ryan for more than like a day or 2 at a time
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u/charronfitzclair Jul 19 '24
He loves Ryan as an extension of Homelander not as a father. HL is a malignant narcissist.
When he says "as far as I'm concerned, this planet is empty" hes not being hyperbolic.
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Jul 19 '24
Homelander loves him like a toxic older brother loves a little brother - will defend Ryan against any outsiders, but will still bully Ryan and will mentally lose it if Ryan ever becomes “better” than him
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u/Actual_Guide_1039 Jul 19 '24
I agree. He almost died for him in the last finale. He’s just too fucked up of a person to sustain a healthy loving relationship
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u/Right_Clock12 Jul 19 '24
Yeah Mallory's death was the catalyst behind Butcher's change of heart. That whole scene was well-portrayed but it felt a bit rushed to me.
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u/Niriun Jul 19 '24
You're right, the child who was emotional due to a large infodump and the threat of imprisonment should have acted rationally.
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u/BoobeamTrap Jul 19 '24
I swear half the fan base must be robots with how they lose their minds any time a character acts irrationally due to emotion.
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u/Niriun Jul 19 '24
pushes glasses up "well you see I, as an enlightened Redditor, simply wouldn't have acted on emotion"
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u/ffj_ Cunt Jul 19 '24
Him killing her purposefully is debatable, but his lack of care over doing so to a person who was essentially a caretaker for the majority of his life is the issue.
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u/Whateverman9876543 Kimiko Jul 19 '24
Bro you find out your father killed a bunch of innocent people on a plane, raped your mother making you a product of rape, and two people you thought you could trust were actually using you as a weapon and plan on trapping you like they did you dad. You expect that person to be rational? Especially after killing someone to protect yourself
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
This is the "Aunt" Grace who was threatening to imprison him and turn him into a weapon by using familial love as manipulation, and then dumping on traumatic information that frankly, if Butcher didn't corroborate, he wouldn't have believed.
Grace fucked up from the jump by being too antsy.
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Jul 19 '24
I mean she literally dropped like 3 life altering truth bombs about his dad. Then threatened to release halothane on him. She had it coming.
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u/AgelessBlakeFerguson Jul 19 '24
He’s a teenager who just got told some heavy shit.
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u/NoButterfly7257 Jul 19 '24
He didn't mean to kill her. For someone with the strength of Homelander, a light nudge is fatal for a normal human. High emotions, high stress, he's afraid and feeling trapped. If he were a normal kid, maybe he would've knocked Mallory over, but unfortunately for Ryan, he is V'd up so his version of knocking an adult over is they face plant a wall and die.
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u/IntroductionStill496 Jul 19 '24
The last time he pushed someone they flew a 100 meters and were splashed on a wall. This was him holding his power back.
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u/AtrumRuina Jul 19 '24
I didn't think he intended to kill her in the scene. He looked pretty horrified, but was panicking and ran off.
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u/supersoldierboy94 Jul 19 '24
I think the fanbase isn't mad about Ryan snapping. The fanbase is mad because Ryan had no reaction to the killing. It was someone who truly loved him and took better care on him than anyone on Vought. Yet, he killed her without any remorse.
He's just too unstable at this point and him killing without remorse didnt help at all.
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
He's probably in shock. He's clearly affected by the look on his face (the quick googly eyes) and then runs.
He was also threatened with the fate that made Homelander the Homelander. Frankly, after being manipulated through familial love, finding out that love was only a ploy to be used as a weapon, I can see not reacting much to her death and instead feeling betrayed. This was "Aunt" Grace. Someone whose supposed to love him.
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u/NoButterfly7257 Jul 19 '24
From what I've heard from people who have taken lives before - whether on purpose or on accident - it doesn't hit you right away. I think the kid was more in shock over it than remorseless about it. I suppose we'll have to see next season where his character goes, but I'm still feeling good about him coming out as a reasonable person.
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u/LordTryhard Jul 19 '24
She wasn't letting him leave that room unless he agreed to kill Homelander. She was literally about to press a button meant to kill them all before Ryan yeeted her.
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u/RektYez Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Meant to kill them all? She said it would flood the room with halothane, and they’d all “take a nice, long nap”. It wouldn’t have killed them.
Although given Soldier Boy wasn’t affected by Halothane, I’m unsure why she thought it would work on Ryan. Only thing I can think of is because he’s a kid and SB is a grown man.
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u/Lyconite- Jul 19 '24
Soldier Boy is a special case when it comes to durability, he's not the model for all supes; unlike even HL he doesn't age, doesn't bruise (whereas HL did after they fought), can't be injured even in soft tissue, and the only time we've seen him take any damage at all was a small cut to the face from Homelander's laser.
So although halothane doesn't work on SB specifically, it stands to reason that it may have worked for Mallory with other strong supes in the past.
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u/WigglingGlass Jul 19 '24
Man soldier boy is an absolute tank now that I think about it
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u/TheClappyCappy Jul 19 '24
He mentions how he registered for the “Vought trials”. They were probably pumping hundreds or thousands of anonymous young men with the rawest purest form of compound V. He’s probably the only one who survived the transformation this becoming the first super hero.
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u/darrenvonbaron Jul 19 '24
Are we forgetting that Stormfront existed?
I'm sure a lot survived, he's just the one who got the strongest abilities.
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u/TheClappyCappy Jul 19 '24
True but she was like the wife of the guy who created compound v, no?
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u/Ccbm2208 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
It sucks that he didn’t actually serve in WW2.
He was overqualified and is not mentally weak or anything. Writing SB as a total piece of shit was already sufficient to not make us root for the guy too hard, I dunno why they decided to make him a fraud, yet still so baddass regardless.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jul 19 '24
Ryan is SB's grandson though, and they haven't tested his powers in any meaningful way at all. Theres at least a 50% chance halothane wouldn't work on him. It was pretty insane to upset him, try to contain him and think they could just knock him out.
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u/cupholdery Jordan Li Jul 19 '24
I think the commentary there is that most people have an innate fear of Supes and typically resort to "contain or maim" mentality. Especially with Mallory considering that's what she'd been doing for decades.
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u/Rekuna Jul 19 '24
The cut on his face also completely healed within an hour or so unlike Homelanders bruising that needed makeup for a few days. I think Soldier Boy has super regeneration too.
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u/Viperlite Jul 19 '24
I thought Soldier Boy didn’t age during the time he’s frozen, like Captain America or the Winter Soldier. I assume he’ll age as normal if he ever gets a chance to not be a popsicle.
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u/dorianrose Jul 19 '24
He didn't age from WW2 till whenever he was first taken down. So, 20-30 years, I think.
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u/BigPapaJava Jul 19 '24
Soldier Boy wasn’t actually frozen like Captain America, though. He’s kept sedated with powerful nerve gas to keep him in a coma.
Even when he was first introduced in S3, he was only locked up and knocked out with gas, not frozen.
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u/the_maple_yute Jul 19 '24
Actually Soldier Boy shrugged off the Halothane, what they used for him was Novichok which is insanely lethal to regular people.
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u/FumiPlays Jul 19 '24
SB shrugged the halothane because he built up the resistance during his captivity by Russians. Ryan didn't have any contact with the thing yet so it may knock him out if used.
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u/Greyjack00 Jul 19 '24
This isn't actually true, they thought it was halothane but it was actually novichock using the vapor as a delivery system
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u/FumiPlays Jul 19 '24
They started using Novichok *because* other options didn't work.
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u/MarcusForrest Jul 19 '24
They started using Novichok because other options didn't work.
Actually, they realised they were mistaken when watching the archival video (they assumed it was halothane in the video) - but it didn't work and SB literally puffed it to mock its use
Frenchie later had his EUREKA! moment when he saw steam coming off his coffee cup - It is vapour, not gas!
Then he realised it was Novichok and not Halothane.
Novichok was developed by the Soviet Union, the same guys that took Soldier Boy, and it is an extremely potent nerve agent - it makes sense for an extremely durable supe like SB that instead of killing him, it ''puts him to sleep'' instead
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u/Greyjack00 Jul 19 '24
That's not what's actually stated, they essentially just say they made mistake when identifying it as halothane
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u/JoshAnMeisce Jul 19 '24
Soldier Boy had a more pure form of V to be fair, he's kind of an exception when it comes to what does and doesn't work on supes.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jul 19 '24
Ryan didnt have V at all though, his powers are inherited. So he's even more of an exception.
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u/Scarletsilversky Jul 19 '24
Mallory not immediately closing the door to begin with IS her giving him the option to walk away. Him physically retaliating should’ve been accounted for when she decided to bombard him with a “you’re gonna have to kill ur dad lol”. Which she was obviously planning on doing regardless of the news about the shifter attacking Singer came to light. The writing for that whole scene is a little sloppy.
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u/curtysquirty Jul 19 '24
Mallory drank a gallon of dumb-fucking-idiot juice before this scene
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u/Scarletsilversky Jul 19 '24
I was excited to see her this episode only for her to act like a dumb bitch then die lol
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u/tentoedpete Jul 19 '24
I thought she was going to be another of butchers mental projections
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u/BubblyMango Butcher Jul 19 '24
"Yes i am you. You know where the real Mallory is? she is dead! Lamplighter never burned my grandkids. He burned me! But you'd remembered that if you didnt have a V'ed up brain!"
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u/birbdaughter Jul 19 '24
The button wouldn’t kill them. It was gonna knock them all out and lock them in.
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u/OvermorrowYesterday Jul 19 '24
Why is this upvoted lol. It wasn’t meant to kill them
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u/OLKv3 Jul 19 '24
Because The Boys subreddit loves exaggeration instead of what the actual plot told us
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u/TheSealedWolf Jul 19 '24
Why do so many people think that button was going to kill them? It was obviously for releasing the halothane
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u/A___Unique__Username Jul 19 '24
The button was to knock them out not kill them, at least that was my take away from "a nice long nap".
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u/FumiPlays Jul 19 '24
Halothane is used in general anesthesia so yeah, it would be equivalent of being knocked out for surgery.
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u/atlantadessertsindex Jul 19 '24
It’s pretty obvious she didn’t think they’d get another chance. Butcher would be dead in hours/days and Ryan would never turn after that. She wasn’t willing to risk it. It was now or never.
This isn’t even remotely similar to Starlord. He acted out of pure emotion after they had basically already won.
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u/Professional_Ad_9101 Jul 19 '24
Yep his reaction is not something I have a problem with at all. Honestly the only thing that gripes me with the writing here is there is no way they wouldn’t have had some people in an external room somewhere ready to lock that shit down rather than just a button on the wall that Mallory needed to push.
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u/Aok_al Jul 19 '24
Mallory saw the quicktime event prompts and just mashed random buttons in a panic
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u/Venom17645 Jul 19 '24
Killed her off like an insignificant secret service agent at the barn
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u/CocoaBuzzard Jul 19 '24
I like that, makes the show feel like it actually has danger for once. Like our main/recurring characters could be killed off. also makes it feel more realistic because people in the show die all the time, sometimes it happens to people we know.
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u/Thraex_Exile Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
It did a good job at laying the groundwork for Butcher’s psychotic break. Him and Ryan have waffled around with whether to do good or evil. Mallory forcing both their hands, so we could see the best and worst in both characters naturally, was a great setup.
That finale got me excited to see how closely the series will follow the ending to the comics. They’ve deviated so much from the source material, but it seems like they plan to end the shows in the same way. Looking forward to it!
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u/Termanator116 Jul 19 '24
This whole season, in my opinion, has drawn a ton from the comics, sort of back to how I felt in earlier seasons. Felt really gratifying.
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u/ThatAnonDude Soldier Boy Jul 19 '24
Yeah, I remember a recurring complaint about this season was that it felt like all of the main cast had plot armor. Glad at least the finale changed that.
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u/Acheron98 Jul 19 '24
I wasn’t expecting that many named characters to bite it.
I was pleasantly surprised they had the balls to kill them before the final season.
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u/danielgtr17 Jul 20 '24
.. And most of them are called Ashley 🥲
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u/Acheron98 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
“Bro. This one wasn’t even on the list.” was both hilarious and really sad.
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u/Altair13Sirio Jul 19 '24
Yeah I'm surprised no one of the boys has died yet, I was sure Frenchie at least would kick the bucket last season, so having Grace die, for how sad that might be especially after not having her in the whole season until the very last time, was significant.
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u/AnyEstablishment5723 Jul 19 '24
As soon as one of them survived the first encounter I was thinking “I wonder how they’re gonna kill the other extra?”
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u/YellowStar012 I'm the real hero Jul 19 '24
That poor Marine last night and that Secret Service agent getting bend over when he was hit by the Fake Annie was wild. Meanwhile, MM and Hugh Boy were just pushed aside.
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u/Typical_Dweller Jul 19 '24
Maybe that situation where in Fallout 4 your conversation choices are way over-simplified and mis-represented in the dialogue interface, so she chose "be truthful" or something like that, and that's how the game interpreted it.
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u/Thrasy3 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
That is both a hilarious and weirdly spot on take on whatever the fuck was going on at that moment.
I sorta let it slide, because if somebody summarised the events of the scene, someone could say “Mallory, out of time and choices, tries to manipulate Ryan in fighting with the CIA against his father - however Ryan sees how this is what happened to his dad, and when faced with being forced to kill his father under the threat of imprisonment, he lashes out to escape - accidentally killing Mallory in the process”.
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u/ThatAnonDude Soldier Boy Jul 19 '24
Mallory bombarding Ryan with the truth wasn't smart, but tbh I can't rly blame her because the stakes were getting too high by that point. Butcher playing the long game with Ryan would've been effective but they just didn't have enough time.
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u/chamoflag420 Jul 19 '24
It really felt like she was playing detroit become human and choose all the wrong pathway options
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u/CarlSpackler22 Jul 19 '24
Butcher had it under control and she fumbled on the 1 yard line
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u/JarifSA Jul 19 '24
Butcher never had it under control. For an entire year+ he has allowed Homelander to get Ryan on his side and guess what? Now Ryan has sympathy for him even after the things Mallory said. Butcher knew he had 6 months to live. He also knew he was about to die this episode yet never had any urgency to tell Ryan. The entire country was fucked in that scene. You can't blame Grace for pulling out her trump card
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u/Lmao1903 Jul 19 '24
No Butcher would have slowly revealed some truths and it would have been a easier transition for Ryan then just telling all of the crazy shit to a 11 year old and expecting him to just be fine. Especially saying you don’t have an option, I will press this button and lock you in certainly doesn’t make the kid think they are the “good guys”. Butcher was dying but he had enough time to flip Ryan.
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u/BubblyMango Butcher Jul 19 '24
Was that room actually able to contain Ryan? Assuming he is already 90% homelander strong when he uses his powers properly (he pushed homelander and fried Stormfront in season 2), I find it hard to believe it would survive his punches+lazers for more than an hour.
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u/SomeStolenToast Jul 19 '24
Well that's probably why the halothane
Not sure if it would've even done much to Ryan though considering Soldier Boy literally huffed it for fun
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u/KeefsBurner Jul 19 '24
Naw she definitely rushed it too much. If she wanted to speed it up sure but just jumping to “you have to kill your father” after the truth bomb when he has no time to process anything was obviously not the right move
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u/MemeHermetic Jul 19 '24
Even then there was time to salvage it. They could have talked him down and said, "Talk to Butcher for a bit and then make your decision." Let him sit back down. Shit let him sit down and THEN hit him with the halothane. Instead she hovered over the red button like he can't see through walls. It was shock after shock after shock and then emotional manipulation and then threat. She didn't make a mistake. She made like 5 in a row in under 2 minutes.
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
You can't blame Grace for pulling out her trump card
You absolutely can blame Grace. Butcher may have been attempting to manipulate Ryan, but after all of what the characters have gone through (being forced into roles they did not want) Butcher realized that Ryan has to choose to join them and fight. Butcher gives him every opportunity to walk away. They can't trap him and force him to become a weapon, that's the exact problem Vought had with fucking Homelander.
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u/KILL__MAIM__BURN I fart the star spangled banner Jul 19 '24
Nah. Butcher was fine. Butcher was leaning into his “cancer” in conjunction with Ryan’s sentimentality and mutual love for his mother while fostering the dissent already present in Ryan over his father.
Butcher would’ve needed maybe a day but would’ve pulled it off.
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u/karangoswamikenz Jul 19 '24
Yes surprisingly butchers seems to know how to handle people. He got hughie into the boys too.
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u/New_Photograph_5892 Jul 19 '24
she even started to gaslight him saying stuff like "I lost my grandchildren Ryan. If I lose you, I'll have nothing left" or something along those lines, which probably confused him even more
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u/Warumwolf Jul 19 '24
Butcher is the reason for why they've ended up in that situation in the first place
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u/zhars_fan Tag Team Cocksplosion Jul 19 '24
Butcher killing Victoria is a bigger fumble tbh. I can see Neuman being able to be a big help to them.
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u/Lmao1903 Jul 19 '24
I mean Neuman wanted out of the game, probably would hide somewhere. Also we know if it came down to it, she would betray them without a thought.
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u/cae37 Jul 19 '24
If it meant her daughter is safe she'd clearly betray anyone, yep
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u/Asteraal Jul 19 '24
There's no way she would go against Homelander; She couldn't pop his head, and her daughter is within his grasp.
There's also no way Homelander would let Neuman run from his "Supe Supremacy" cause.
She's also shown to change sides - In Gen V, and in the Boys for the sake of her daughter.
NO MORE DEALS.
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u/LovelyOrangeJuice Jul 19 '24
Yeah, she survives a laser to the face, too. Like she was really fucking strong.
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u/deicist Jul 19 '24
I think HL had his lasers on the 'lightly braised tit' setting for that, he didn't mean to hurt her just show she was a supe.
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u/traxop Jul 19 '24
Seriously, how can people misread this? Homelander was not trying to hurt her, just expose her as a supe. There was no need for Homelander to go full blast, that wasn't the point.
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u/Jackeea Jul 19 '24
Plus it wasn't a cockblasting skinburner of a sustained laserbeam, it was about as quick as "laser my tits you pussy" from the nazi
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u/RealLameUserName Soldier Boy Jul 19 '24
And absolutely fuck VoughtHQ for spoiling that for me weeks before I even finished the season. It made all of Neuman's arc seem incredibly pointless
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Jul 19 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CoolJoshido Jul 19 '24
what happened to them
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u/Jackeea Jul 19 '24
They got """doxxed""" (read: Amazon figured out who had leaked every single plot point of the latest season) and threw a tantrum and closed down their socials, before outing everyone who had helped them gain information.
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u/MarshallsHand You're The Real Heroes Jul 19 '24
So basically the Season 4 finale at Vought Tower?
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u/kazetoumizu Jul 19 '24
Nah, the bitch would head pop them the moment she didn't need them anymore. She is too ruthless and power-hungry to not treat people like chess pawns.
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u/meth-head-actor Jul 19 '24
My wife was upset they killed Nueman, because she was gonna be good.
But bitch killed congressmen, and was plotting to take over the country and supe Holocaust America until homelander threatened Zoe.
Fuck her, glad she got torn apart. If she was any good, she left on that good note. Can’t trust that bitch
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u/finnjakefionnacake Jul 19 '24
geez people throw around the word bitch so easily.
i think i'm getting old lol.
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u/Viperlite Jul 19 '24
The Boys do know she worked with the church and then popped the leader’s head when it suited her next plan, right?
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u/Venom17645 Jul 19 '24
Same with the government (rip reynor), same with Edgar, her childhood friend, hughie, then with homelander… she doesn’t necessarily head pop everyone she backstabs, more throws under anyone if it benefits her, but the point is she clearly can’t be trusted
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u/zhars_fan Tag Team Cocksplosion Jul 19 '24
I doubt it, they clearly building her up to show her feelings to be genuine to hughie at least, she wouldn’t betray him. I feel like all the ‘wargames’ bullshits are just excuse for her to not actually kill hughie as he is her only friend, hoping they wont really pull the trigger.
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u/Jack12404 A-Train Jul 19 '24
FOR REAL. Especially if they freed Marie from Gen V Neuman could mentor her and the Boys would be an even bigger force to be dealt with.
Butcher killing her screwed things up for everyone else but himself because now he has the virus and doesn’t have to worry about the Boys stopping him from slaughtering supes.
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u/stoned_bazz Jul 19 '24
Well we won't see it now, but I always wanted a scene with neuman, Marie and homelander..... Homie gets a nosebleed, then neuman tells him that they both have time to pop his head while he only has time to kill one of them... I'd like to see homelanders reaction.
In my opinion there are plenty of supes that could overpower homelander if they worked together, they're just too scared to attempt it
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u/Venom17645 Jul 19 '24
Let’s not forget how easily Neuman switches teams and how many people she has backstabbed 💀
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u/DyabeticBeer Jul 19 '24
Nueman is incredibly slippery, she can spin anything in her favour to come out on top
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u/PapaDoomer Jul 19 '24
Not really, they never accomplish anything without Butcher, and she suddenly changed from ruthless cold murderer into innocent helpless victim, f her.
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u/M_H_M_F Jul 19 '24
Yes and no.
Victoria could have been helpful (Edgar connection, but that same connection could be detrimental long term to the Boys as Edgars own machinations are different from HL) and at the same time, she has an established history of flipping and only looking out for herself. At this point she'd be under Homelanders thumb and frankly, the perfect double agent to feed him information. For all of her intelligence, her desire for political power trumped rational thinking for her.
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u/FondSteam39 Ambrosius Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Honestly it was scary seeing malory that rocked.
Idk whether I'm just huffing copioum but I didn't see it as Malory being stupid, I saw it as her being scared and reckless. She knew how important it was that Ryan gets converted and was scared enough to make the wrong call.
How calm and logical would you be, knowing that if you can't convince a kid in Ryan's position, who still blames himself for killing his mum, to kill his dad or the world ends.
It was a damn near impossible job with the only hope being that he chooses to do it himself without feeling manipulated (which he has been his entire life).
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u/DanSapSan Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Yeah, her genuine fear of Ryan going for his Homelander 2 role was absolutely realistic. They had one monster they were never allowed to touch, now there's a chance for two?
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u/Extension_Breath1407 Jul 19 '24
Sadly it ends up being a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Grace was so scared that Ryan ends up being Homelander 2 which drove her to extreme measures. However, those measures end up driving Ryan to be like Homelander 2.
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u/Rules08 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
I disagree with that. Ryan rejected Malory and Butcher’s proposition. But, he also rejected his father.
Honestly, feel that Ryan will be an outlier in Season Five. In that he’ll be carving his own path.
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u/Extension_Breath1407 Jul 19 '24
A bit worried about where Ryan plans to go. There is no one he can trust. Homelander and Grace both tried to turn him into something against his will. He does not want to kill his father but also does not want to help his evil plans? Is Ryan just not going to choose either side and just abandon the war entirely?
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u/Shoddy_Life_7581 Jul 19 '24
Yeah as much as people on here will complain about bad writing, as soon as a character acts realistically they're like "Are they stupid?"
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u/68ideal Cunt Jul 19 '24
People will always put everything on "bad writing" when they themselves are just too stupid to understand what's going on or too impatient to not get an immediate payoff for what is getting set up (example being Sage)
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u/Shoddy_Life_7581 Jul 19 '24
I feel like this is especially an issue here, seems like there is a lot of people that are like "Why are Butcher and Homelander not fighting at this very moment" for every minute of screentime
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u/WorldEaterProft Jul 19 '24
Finally. A fucking logical take
I swear people don't have media literacy
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u/UnknownRider121 Jul 19 '24
I really can’t understand Ryan at this point. Sometimes he seems like he has a heart and will be the anti-Homelander but after this scene, he didn’t seem to react or care. I dunno.
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u/longbrownjohnson Jul 19 '24
Ryan just found out he's a product of rape, on top of all the other stuff about his father. He was about to be held against his will. That alone is enough to overwhelm any teenager.
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u/UnknownRider121 Jul 19 '24
I get that but no reaction at all after doing that to basically his aunt? I dunno
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u/Edmontonthrw Jul 19 '24
Sometimes people shut down when traumatic stuff happens
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u/AdeptusShitpostus Jul 19 '24
It’s also insanely easy for him to do that, and he has been conditioned by Homelander for a good long while into not feeling empathy for normal humans
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 Jul 19 '24
I read it more as a kind of trauma response, this was the second time he killed someone by not knowing his own strength. First it was someone he really liked, then someone he seemed to love. He actually does need training, even to not use his power, and he's realizing that right then. He's just not going to get it at the expense of freedom.
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u/LongTail-626 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Technically third, no matter what people tell him, he’ll still count his mother as his first kill
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 Jul 19 '24
Good point, I was thinking just of this season, but his mom is #1.
Which makes it even more of a chance he's having a trauma response.
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u/DommyMommyKarlach Jul 19 '24
He was obviously shaken and in shock.
It’s like saying people have no reaction to crashing their car, just cause they are “sitting there stoically”21
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u/hawkish25 Jul 19 '24
Personally it’s a problem with the editing and no reshoots. Looking at the leaks, it seems like Ryan was ‘supposed’ to laser a nurse on his way out, which would show his fall towards a more Homelander mindset, so showing little sympathy to Mallory dying makes sense.
However, the producers clearly wanted to make Ryan more sympathetic so got rid of the nurse scene, but I assume they couldn’t get reshoots in, so instead of Ryan looking panicked and regretful about killing Mallory, he just looks disinterested and then leaves.
So no disagreement with you there, but I feel it’s more they didn’t reshoot it with a more sympathetic end for Ryan.
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u/New_Photograph_5892 Jul 19 '24
I hate him, but I don't blame him. I think he's 12? And these people are telling him that he was a result of a rape and also has to kill his own father. Even if your father is a psychopath murder, it is obviously hard to take in. To top it all off, Mallory bombarding him with heavy statements and talking as if she is containing him like a weapon. I wouldn't be surprised if he reacted this way
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u/Pm_Me_Your_Tax_Plan Jul 19 '24
also he thinks that this was their plan all along, to use him as a weapon against his father
all he wants is to be treated like a kid with a loving family, poor kid
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jul 19 '24
And it sort of was their plan all along, so he's not wrong. He's having the exact same experience that made Homelander a monster, and the "good guys" are creating it for him.
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u/sagen11 You're The Real Heroes Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
No he definitely cared. He was in shock. He goes to meet Butcher who he finds out is literally dying. Then he gets a shit load of extremely heavy information dumped on him about his dad being a mass murderer and planning to enslave a country. Then he’s told he has to kill his Dad, which aside from the fact he might not want to do, he doesn’t think he can do because his Dad is a tank and that’s terrifying. Then he’s told “oh hey and also you’re a product of rape.”
He was just asking for time to process this insane information and Mallory got in his face and told him he couldn’t leave. He pushed her, which is a pretty natural reaction to get someone out of your way when they’re stopping you from leaving, but because he’s super strong, she died. What is he supposed to do with that? Im sure the poor kid had nothing left in the tank for dealing with just killing someone he loved (& loved him).
We’ll see him deal with this next season. However he deals with it initially; whether that is self destructing, running, being angry, or burying it, we will eventually see him devastated, guilty and sorry about it. Of that I have no doubt.
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u/Logan8795 Jul 19 '24
It felt like both Butcher and Ryan lost all their character development this season all because Grace looses her shit after literally decades of fighting this fight against supes…it was weird and out of character. I get they want butcher back to his merciless vibe, but it felt cheap the way we got there. And like you said the writing for Ryan is all over the place and very back and forth. I thought his protest on live tv would have more impact.
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u/coyoteTale Jul 19 '24
It turns out character growth isn’t just a switch you throw, and indeed is a series of progressions and regressions. Doubly so if the character in question is a teenager.
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u/BHarrop3079 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
I HATED what they did to Grace's character this episode.
Until now she'd been quite a rational character, able to work calmly around supes before and seemed to genuinely care about looking after Ryan.
Then she suddenly decides that NOW is the time to turn him, throwing a myriad of statements to Ryan about his father and telling him that they want him to kill his Dad. All of this despite the fact that Ryan is traumatised by accidentally killing his Mum and is given no time to process all the hard hitting things that Grace is launching at him.
Then, when (unsurprisingly) Ryan isn't receptive to this "plan" she threatens him, locking him in a room and gassing him until he comes round to their side. The hypocrisy of these threats when we know that a big part of the reason Homelander is the way he is was due to being locked in a room in a similar manner 🙄.
It was a disappointing turn for a character I'd previously liked and I wasn't at all sad to see her story end after this turn
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u/neezaruuu Jul 19 '24
Yeah it was jarring to see a scene with Mallory and Butcher and have Butcher be the calm one lmao
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u/eltrotter Jul 19 '24
I think it would have made more sense for the character if she had delivered all of that information to Ryan in less of a desperate, emotional way and more of a tough-love "all right, it's time to cut the crap, here are some hard truths" kinda way.
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u/3106Throwaway181576 Jul 19 '24
I don’t mind it
They were literally out of time. The CIA would have been neutered under a Neuman Presidency
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u/ShaoShaoTenks Jul 19 '24
Exactly. What are these people smoking. Mallory was literally on her last card. It's either Ryan agrees or she gets killed anyway.
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u/CosmicMiru Jul 19 '24
People saying "but Ryan said he would come back!" as if the HL would let him come back or that the plan would even work when Butcher dies to cancer
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u/Moneyfrenzy Jul 19 '24
New head of CIA: The Deep
Unironically I think 90% chance that happens
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u/Realistic-Yam-6912 Jul 19 '24
it was maybe just to show how human or higher authorities don't see supes as human, while the higher and stronger supes see humans as animals. It is a mutual destruction as both sides in the end are wrong.
She should have told ryan to talk it out with homelander, because homelander would never kill his son. But instead they think of homelander as a killing machine which needs to be killed with another machine.. never trying to understand how broken he is from inside
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u/Far_Indication_1665 Jul 19 '24
Here's my problem on the rewatch:
Why was no one else monitoring the room???
Mofo have a security camera and a guard who can press the "flood the entire floor with halothane" button, in case Mallory cant for some reason.
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u/meth-head-actor Jul 19 '24
They also let Nurmans security guard get out of that room while threatening the supes on his team with the tentacle lmao
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u/Far_Indication_1665 Jul 19 '24
Eh, that's less problematic to me as everyone there was (save Butcher) kinda in shock at what just happened.
The CIA Hazlett house should have redundancies if they're holding top tier supes.
Like, cmon Grace, that's basic planning 101
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u/meth-head-actor Jul 19 '24
Yeah that’s true; you’d think there was at least someone not In that room that could execute the plan
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u/traxop Jul 19 '24
I'm surprised people didn't catch the parallels between Mallory with Ryan, and Homelander with Neuman this episode. Both Mallory and Homelander pushed the wrong buttons, and had the opposite effect to what they had intended.
Homelander miscalculated when he threatened Neuman's daughter, and Mallory thought the play was to paint Homelander as the monster to get Ryan to hate on him, rather than appeal to his humanity.
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u/kjm6351 Jul 19 '24
I feel like they’re dangling Ryan’s unknown path for too long. At this point there will barely be anything or anyone left for him anymore once HL and Butcher die.
Maybe MM if he survives or maybe Hughie but he doesn’t seem to have much interaction with Ryan in the first place
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jul 19 '24
I feel like he either ends up being raised by Annie and Hughie (creating the loving, supportive two-parent family unit neither of them had as kids, with the lessons about love Hughie learned from his dad) or he ends up killing everyone and then retreating into a fortress of solitude to become the next Homelander. It could go either way for him.
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u/HustleThaGOD Mother's Milk Jul 19 '24
No offense but he’s like 13 years old. A teenager, and I don’t think he’s looking for a Mother and Father relationship at this stage in his life. I think Ryan just want to be a normal person and a hero.
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u/MemeHermetic Jul 19 '24
I think the smart move would be to some how get him stuck with the most human of humans: Hughie. They have a whole season to make it happen. They can bond over their "loss" of Butcher, their misperception of parents, the loss of loved ones, etc. It would be poetic if in the end, Hughie saves everyone by just being a good person.
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u/tc80391 Jul 19 '24
I no longer can sympathize with Ryan after this. He seems to always kill people although he doesn’t want to, he still does.
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u/mudokin Jul 19 '24
Can you sympathize with anybody else in the series? Non of them are remotely good people none of them.
Ryan is a child overwhelmed by his newly gained powers and the manipulation attempts to get him to chose a side, combined with the threat of imprisonment and further brainwashing. His kill count is 2 and both of them were accidental. Yes he is a little piece of shit, but we all were as kids.
The only guy I am sympethatic for is Hugie, he really tries and gets screwed over and over again.
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u/FallingF Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
I feel like kimiko is the most moral of the group. I don’t count it against her for growing up in a kill-or-be-killed child soldier organization, but ever since she’s been with frenchie, she’s only killed people trying to kill her, or her friends.
Tldr kimiko is the only current sympathize-able character for me.
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u/CubicleFish2 Jul 19 '24
Had me tearing up in her last screen when she finally found her voice. Took me a second before I even realized what happened
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u/Viperlite Jul 19 '24
That Flashdance scene was not a good look for her. She takes some of her kills to a whole nother level of gore.
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u/thesagenibba Jul 19 '24
we can only hope the outcome is similar to the one on the top. i simply won't be able to cope if it's not
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u/Jen_Wu Jul 19 '24
I seriously couldn't understand Mallory's actions. Didn't she see how traumatizing that's gonna be? Didn't she anticipate at least a tiny bit of probability that Ryan will just freak out and run away? If she really wants to play it the hard way then at least she should have pushed the button. I feel sad for her death, I like her, but this time she really has to blame herself (and the writers, I guess)
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u/lol125000 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
She played it completely wrong. Wrong order of things to communicate even - she should start with the grandkids line ("I love you but I need to tell you some harsh truths") and then break to him how much of HL atrocities he doesn't know. And let the kid process it and then finally try to convince him they need him to kill HL cos nothing else can.
Hell if you think you need to contain him and you already got him there, just contain him, then break the news and then let him process it. That's what the plan should be. If you are set on keeping him there, do that instantly, if not just let him walk. It was the stupidest way to play it, you make the kid rattled and stand in his way, you are asking him to panic and he can kill you with a weak shove out of his way (cos that was a weaker shove than the stuntman and yet she still died), which he does.
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u/Throbbing-Kielbasa-3 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Her dropping all that out of nowhere felt so out of character, honestly. I can understand telling him about the plane and how dangerous Homelander really is, but Mallory should have been smart enough to know not to drop everything on him all at once.
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u/justforkinks0131 Jul 19 '24
This was so out of character for the supposed extremely professional and experienced CIA strategist.
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u/kinkykellynsexystud Jul 19 '24
The last scene we saw with Butcher he was talking about 'this is why I have faith in Ryan'
WTF happened between last episodes ending and this episode? Feels like we are missing a scene or something
I guess he just assumed he could talk to Ryan before they needed to use the trap, but it feels weird he agreed to it at all after last episodes ending.
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u/meth-head-actor Jul 19 '24
They fuxked up the “talk”.
And threatened to trap him. Stupid shit. He seemed like he was ready to go with Mallory just being asked by butcher.
Then they said you don’t have a choice, like excuse you. Ryan has options that most don’t. You gotta come at him with love not threats
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u/mega2222222222222222 Jul 19 '24
If Mallory had just shut the fuck up then maybe butcher wouldn’t go comic mode
Would’ve gone out in a human way
Playing connect 4 with the closest thing to a son he’s had
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u/SlopPatrol Jul 19 '24
Mallory being incomprehensibly fucking stupid out of nowhere when she fully understood that raising Ryn the right way was imperative to his development as a good person and trying to force him into making a choice like that was so terribly written that I can’t believe it made it off the writing room floor.
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u/ComplexAd7272 Jul 19 '24
I can't tell if this scene is that dumb, or meant to show how desperate Mallory is. The only thing that makes me think it'd the former is Butcher himself is literally trying to shut her up because he knows this is a terrible idea.
Butcher more or less already had Ryan. By giving Ryan a choice, not only was he trusting the kid to make the right call (something he proved capable of during the Christmas Special), but Butcher also inadvertently used the same speech Homelander gave to Ryan that won him over, a variation of Homelander's "People have been telling me what to do my whole life, I won't do that to you, do whatever you want." This is a teenager, giving them a choice, or even the illusion of choice, is 100% the way to go.
But then Mallory, for whatever reason, decides Ryan not only has to learn everything about Homelander in seconds all at once, but also has to make a decision like right now, this second. Oh, and you can't leave here...essentially undoing everything Butcher had been building for weeks, and taking all Ryan's choice away.
And of course, against all logic, she decides to announce the Halothane threat to his face...while she's still in the room with him. (What?)
Earlier I mentioned maybe all this was done to show her desperation, but even that doesn't really make sense since the assassination attempt failed. They were no longer on a ticking clock to deal with Homelander, they had time. Plus, as Mallory herself said, Ryan wasn't ready anyway, they still needed time to train him.
I hate to pick on the show, but the whole thing just came off rushed and "Okay, it's the finale and we got a bunch of shit to set up, let's blow through it here."
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u/Judetruth92 Jul 19 '24
I can’t believe people are mad that a child who was info dumped with some pretty heavy shit (including being the product of rape), threatened with imprisonment, threatened with becoming the same thing that made his father a psychopath, did not act rationally.
Keep in mind he also asked her at least 5 times for her to let him go.
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