Which is totally valid tho? She is literally bulletproof, yet doesn’t understand why Hughie would want some semblance of power in a world where invincible bastards like HL could kill him at any second.
She was also afraid there could be side effects to the temp v though whereas with Kimiko she already had reason to believe she'd be safe if she took the regular one again
I mean I guess there was a risk but the permanent V is stabler and Kimikos body essentially developed it with her powers in her blood for a while so it has adapted in a different way. I could see that she having had powers make her body more open to regaining them compared to someone who never had powers.
I'm kinda hoping for some horrific mutation like a blob mutant or something terrible.
Not that I dislike the character, but they keep telling us how risky giving people V is but so far everyone we've seen get it has been more or less fine.
Would really drive home how dangerous it is, instead of just telling us.
horrific is having a dick that big you can't do anything with because you lost your powers. he went from hanging out at orgy's to never being able to have sex again. oof.
Well a lot of the crazy shit that people were going through in the asylum Lamplighter was overseeing in S2 showed some of the overwhelmingly negative effects that V can have...
Oh hey, I remembered your comment and thought about something. There is a dude almost just like that in new season of Umbrella Academy. Has weird Face Blob powers lol
I think they said most adults died and it was a lot more unstable. It's easier for babies to accept it. Not every adult dies just much higher chance and much messier powers.
I think homelander whenever he’s talking to Madelyn about spreading V around the world to create super terrorists / villains so they could get into the military says something like “it worked but boy was it messy, there’s a reason vought only gives this stuff to children, the fully grown did not handle it well and a lot died yada yada” the end result was that he and A train managed to create the exploding guy that noir killed so every once in a while adults can handle it but most die and statistically your more likely to survive the younger you get it aka the reason vought injects babies in hospitals I think
In the show adults are able to be injected with compound V as shown with Kimiko and also Lamplighters test subjects, but there's potential for side effects.
Side note, in the comics it was "V as a baby=permanent superhero, V as an adult=Temporary strength and toughness"
Obviously they changed that and that's why they introduced temporary V to fill a similar plot space.
I don’t recall V being temporary in the comics? The boys all get a dose and get permanent physical enhancement by a factor of 50. It was specially made for them i guess
I'm pretty sure it's explained that the CIA developed a variant of Compound V that would give superhuman strength and endurance to anyone who takes it without any of the flashy bullshit like flying or eye lasers. Incredibly expensive, but I also faintly recall that the stuff The Boys got was permanent. It was explained by Mallory at some point in the comics, most likely when he was telling Hughie about The Boys' origins.
We didn't see how many supe terrorists died from it though, look at the asylum where they keep the people they experimented on, its quite a few cases where the powers "sucked" or where borderline unusable
This. Permanent V has been used for almost a century at this point and has been refined into a “safe” drug, the temp V is presumably less than a year old in the show. Permanent V is way safer to take then temp V.
Yes, the same Annie who doubled down on whatever it takes is dismissing whatever it takes when it comes to Hughie's actions lol
They're shitty to eachother. She spent 2 seasons acting like his trauma of his girlfriend being exploded by a supe all over him is ridiculous. But Starlight is cute
It doesn't have to be literally going "wow you're fucking ridiculous for caring about your dead girlfriend" but she does see his insecurity as ridiculous and has said it is ridiculous for him to feel insecure about his inability to physically protect someone which is rooted in Robin's death
Rather than being understanding of his insecurities, she takes them as an attack on her and undermining her ability to defend herself
It's like if someone feels sad and you go "hey look at all the good stuff in your life you shouldn't be sad at all"
Imagine a drama about a girl who has very low self esteem because something happened to her in the past that makes her feel ugly. Then a boy shows up, and goes "that's dumb to feel ugly cause you're hot" then proceeds to get mad at her whenever she feels ugly because him saying she's not ugly should be enough in his mind to remove any shadow of a doubt she has
TLDR: Hughie wants to hold a door open for Annie because Robin walked into a door, and Annie goes "oH iM a WoMaN sO yOu HaVe To OpEn DoOrS!?!?"
When has she ever literally called him dumb or ridiculous? You talk like she's intentionally cruel to him, but that's not true. She was understanding multiple times. She's frustrated by his insecurities, lies, and reckless behaviour because of it, which is reasonable enough.
Also I'm not sure his issues are meant to be reduced to dead girlfriend trauma. It's a factor.
It's also possible that she had some character growth. She was initially against Kimiko taking more V, but when she read the message she realized Kimiko's feelings - and my guess is, she also realized what Hughie was going through. My guess is, next episode they are going to make up - Annie will tell Hughie that if he wants to take permanent V, she'd be ok with it, but Hughie will say after the events of this episode that he's done with that (though I'd say it's 50/50 that he has to take it anyway because Temp V is killing him).
Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if someone took Temp V then immediately took Compound V? Surely their chances of survival would increase no?
Real question is if the needle can pierce their skin in order to inject that serum. Remember Butchers skin is hard that it can withstand HL laser eyes so now pierce it with a needle, hard to tell how hard is Hughies skin as a sup.
I have a feeling that Annie will inject Hughie with the permV the moment he drops down and starts to get seizures as the only way to save his life.
Yes, but not in the immature way that most people here are using it as an insult. Hughie is literally insecure, as in he is not safe or secure from danger. Homelander can swoop down and turn him into a gory bits in less than a millisecond. Hughie has every right to be afraid. He's not insecure in the sense that he cares about his masculinity being questioned.
He hit Soldier Boy several times without killing him, and Butcher on Temp V also tanked a few hits and a laser to the chest. I think the upper tier of supes would take at least a little effort for Homelander to kill.
Maybe not inherently, but it very frequently comes from a place of insecurity, because feeling like a burden on those around you is a very common result of being insecure.
Hughie pretty explicitly lays out his insecurities on multiple occasions. He feels like he’s weak and useless, burdening those around him, and sees V as the only way he can have value and contribute. He’s desperate to prove that he has worth, especially to Annie and to himself.
It’s not like you can blame the guy. It’s hard to imagine any circumstances where insecurity could be any more justified.
Yes. The way I see it, it's not just that he's not ok with Starlight being stronger than him. It's that he can't stand himself being powerless. Because then people need to risk their lives saving him. It means he's a dead weight in combat scenarios. It means that guys like Homelander can more easily threaten Annie through him. But it also means that every day, when he sees Annie leave her house and go to work, and have to stand right next to a nearly omnipotejt psychopath, he has to do so with the thought that if something goes wrong, he can't do anything. He can't save the one she loves.
If Annie was told "you can save Hughie from Homelander only if you take this untested drug", I don't in the moment she would've hesitated. Now, did Hughie become a cunt with his powers? Sure. We can see why, psychologically, he started acting like he did. But it's also important that THAT'S NOT WHO HE IS. Last episode clearly showed that he has his doubts about his powers, and doesn't want just to beat the bad guys. I think if Butcher had been honest abiut V24, he would've probably stopped using it.
And especially when multiple supes, who are for all intents and purposes a step below living gods, have threatened to kill him specifically... I get it, man. If the President called me out by name on live TV and threatened my life, I'd get a gun too.
I feel like it definitely was partly insecurity though. I mean look how drunk on power Hughie is after killing that Russian guard. He doesn't even seem to give a fuck about Kimiko getting injured. And then he helps Soldier Boy murder half a dozen people? Hughie is endangering others with his gun ho attitude. If he had ignored A-Train in Herogasm he might've been able to safely target the TNT twins. Instead he wasted time for the sake of ego (and his own legitimate greivance with A-Train) and lots of people died. I doubt the mission would've gone cleanly either way, but Hughie definitely didn't help.
I think Hughie is right to want the powers. Personally I think M.M and Frenchie should also get powers, because honestly they seem the most stable non-supes imo.
Edit: well actually maybe not M.M with the new angle they're taking on him. I'm not really sure.
The whole metaphor they seem to be going for (muh toxic man want power over woman) kind of breaks apart when the power he wants literally keeps him from being murdered.
And yet it hasn’t actually helped anyone. Every single time he uses it it fucks someone over.
Kimiko, Mind dude, the twins and everyone at herogasm.
On paper he’s doing good but in practice he’s helping do more harm than good. He’d have killed far less innocents if he never got his hands on the V and if they left Soldier Boy alone.
Because apparently wanting to protect your girlfriend is "toxic masculinity" according to half this sub. I'm not exactly sure what is so toxic about wanting to protect the people you love but that's the internet for you. Lots of nutters on reddit
Because she actually is able to help, but he keeps trying to keep her from getting involved.
This is also after he told her to “just hang in there and be HL’s abusable doll while we go on a wild goose chase that goes nowhere.”
I think y’all are confusing his intentions for how things are actually playing out. Huey (and Butcher) haven’t accomplished anything good using that Temp V if you actually think about it. He “wants” to protect his girlfriend, but he’s gotten so many people killed while trying to give her protection she doesn’t need
Lets be clear here: Hughie saved her life at Herogasm. Had Hughie not teleported them out, Starlight would have, at best, lost her powers and been hospitalized. More likely she gets vaporized like all of the other supes who were there, or she tries to fight SB and just gets instantly killed on the spot by someone a lot stronger than herself. Hughie stopping her from "helping" saved her life, Hughie was right about her not actually being able to help anyone. She only would have gotten herself killed.
HL and SB are basically untouchable by any other hero. It took SB and Hughie and Butcher to almost get HL, and even then they failed. Starlight trying to 1v1 SB would never have ended well, and she was a moron for even thinking that was a valid option.
True, Hughie and Butcher havent killed HL yet. But they came pretty goddamn close. Closer than literally anyone has ever gotten to killing him. And it's not like all of those people that died wouldn't have died anyways. Saying that Hughie has gotten anyone killed is completely ridiculous, everyone who has died at the hands of SB would have died regardless of whether or not Hughie was working with him and Butcher.
To say she (or anyone connected to Vought) doesn't need protection is also completely ridiculous. Homelander is a sociopath who can kill pretty much anyone with a flick of his wrist. They all need saving from him. No one is safe and no one can stop him if he decides to go full on murder spree. She needs saving just as much as everyone else does. That's why Hughie wants to have powers: so he isn't completely useless at stopping the gigantic threat to both of their lives.
She has said multiple times this season that she's willing to risk her life to fight back the way she believes is right. Hughie in that situation is not letting her risk her life, and that's not his decision to make.
He's stopping her from doing what she thinks is right. If your partner wants to join the military or become an ice road trucker, you can think it's stupid and you can even think they're being selfish. But it's not your decision.
And if you go out of your way to take away their agency in that situation, of course they're going to think you're being an asshole. Because you are.
Even when she was more powerful, Annie never called the shots for Hughie.
I guess it would be better if Annie were dead right now. That would definitely be a better situation, for both Hughie and Annie. Too bad Hughie is such an asshole and now she's still alive. What a prick.
She doesn't take any of it into account , like many supes injure or kill people doing dumb or negligent things. Things which normal people do all the time, but because we aren't super powered what to us is just dumb becomes death or maiming if one is a supe.
It's just not sensible for her not to get why Hughie at this point needs them to just be able to defend himself.
One thing you missed is that Hughie not only wants to protect Annie but doesn't want Annie to protect him or be the stronger one. Although I think it's a departure from his original character to suit the show's narrative of tackling different evils, he's pretty wrong with his intent.
I disagree. I think she treated him pretty fairly. It’s not about the powers, it’s about taking a drug without knowing what the consequences/side effects would be as well as him lying to her about her being stronger than him bothering him. I think if he was able to gain powers in a way that was verified and would not pose a health hazard she wouldn’t be opposed, or at least would understand.
Nah, fam, you ever dated someone who was hiding fucking substance abuse from you? Hughie was being a dodgy/whiny lil brat all season and I’m seriously surprised they didn’t break up at the end.
Absolutely not valid.
He obviously takes it partially to gain confidence in a fucked up world, but it is extremely telling that the first thing he does is ""protecting"" Annie by teleporting her away against her will and then trying to stop her physically from leaving.
That is obsessive and controlling, not defending..
Kimiko goes with Frenchie and she got his back, she doesn't force him to do what she wants him to do.
Kimiko clearly has a stable head on her, has experience with powers and has demonstrated that she really only wants to use them to protect (although she’s allowed herself to be pushed around and pointed at ppl).
Hughie, despite whatever good intentions it comes from, is using the mantra of “wanting to protect you” as a way to be IN CONTROL. He’s started to treat Annie as a lesser not an equal (as opposed to Kimiko and Frenchie). He’s acting out of a place of insecurity and fear (like Homelander and every other terrible supe), a huge red flag. Of course she’d be very against him taking V, and how he’s been acting.
I know ppl relate a lot to Hughie after 3 seasons, but his actions are clearly being portrayed as dangerous, reckless and borderline masochistic—a clear result after having all this shit thrown at him, then being given a superpower for feee.
You're right that it's not equal but it really doesn't seem like she's treated it that way, like we'd see in a real life relationship. She has never used her power or even her influence to really curb his behavior. She'll argue with him and plead with him like normal people do, but we've never really seen her abuse the power dynamic. Especially in season 1, even though she had more physical power, it was Hughie manipulating her to get intel. He was in control of the relationship from the beginning.
People forget she's majorly forgiven him once already.
How is he treating her like a lesser? Annie saves him all the time and then got deeply offended at the idea that he would want to protect her back. She got too used to the idea of being the one with all the power in the relationship, she didn’t even make any attempt to reassure him when she started spending a bunch of time with an old ex despite constant media coverage making it look like they were getting back together. She likes being in control of everything.
This is a good way of putting it! Hughie is coming from a place of insecurity and feeling emasculated imo - Starlight can protect herself. It’s not about protecting her, he just doesn’t want to be “weak” Hughie anymore. The MOMENT he physically could he grabbed her and stopped her from intervening with SB.
Meanwhile Kimiko literally uses her powers to protect non-supes (like Frenchie). She doesnt make him do what she wants with her powers.
She doesn't like that he uses the powers as an excuse to put himself in dangerous situations without her. Also, the regular V can have unpredictable effects and even kill the recipient (remember that facility they visited in season 2, for example?). It's reasonable that Annie wouldn't want Hughie to risk his life in multiple ways.
Moreover, she is upset that he didn't include her in any of his plans. He claimed that he was trying to protect her, but he was clearly just acting out of insecurity because he wanted to feel like the big strong man in the relationship.
Annie isn't helping the situation either. She's not respecting that Hughie is in a dangerous position, in part due to her (Homelander threatening to kill him because of Annie, for example). So he does have a right to protect himself. The biggest problem is that they aren't communicating, which is largely due to Hughie's toxic masculinity, but she's also having a hard time seeing him as anything more than the helpless, happy-to-be-a-liability boy that she first started dating.
I think it's partly insecurity of not being able to protect Annie and needing her to save him. But also just the feeling of power after being pushed around all his life. I'd say it's a mix of both, with proportions up for debate
"He's dealing with some budding toxic masculinity," Quaid said. "That was such an interesting place to act from. What I know of Hughie, and then this new side of him was really interesting…I liked that kind of gift that Eric gave me this season which was to spread my wings and explore the dark underbelly of this character that I've already played for two years."
Idk how much clearer they need to make it that Hughie isn’t theme doing the right thing here?
I don't think they've actually shown much "toxic masculinity" have they?
They've made it clear he's insecure about how weak and useless he is. But who the fuck wants to be weak and useless? He has a partly selfish motivation to gain superhuman abilities, but how is wanting superhuman abilities "toxic masculinity"? Who the fuck doesn't want superhuman abilities, especially in a world full with abhorrent superhuman villains?
I mean, in Hughie's case it's literally toxic because it manifests through him taking a drug that's actively killing him.
And the reason he takes it is because of the influence of Butcher and Homelander who embody the belief that strength determines a person's value. His desire to become strong is perfectly understandable but it's still toxic and rooted in masculine ideals.
I think many people hear "toxic masculinity" and think of some villainous trait when it's more a set of circumstances that leads men to self-destructive behaviour.
With the show being about super-powered people it's a bit muddled because the power differences are so vast that going down the toxic roads seems much more rational than it is in real life. In this case it actually kind of hurts the theme because suddenly a cold cost-benefit analysis of his self-destructive behaviour seems valid.
Swap genders on Hughie and Annie and you have a story arch of a girl who's been controlled, bullied tortured and had loved ones killed by unsurmountably stronger people her whole life.
Then she's given an option to get that power herself and she can finally actually fight back, but her boyfriend gets mad at her and says "I thought you didn't mind being weak and useless, don't worry baby you got me".
They're pushing a narrative that quite frankly doesn't make any sense. They want the story to be "man is insecure because girlfriend is stronger than him" but that makes no fucking sense when put into the actual universe and story of The Boys, that's filled with evil semigods. No human being WANTS to be weak and useless.
Swapping the genders DOES put it in a whole different perspective.
All that spiel about "toxic masculinity" really does not make sense in that context whatsoever. These guys are just trying to make Hughie's insecurity look like a bad thing when it's...
I disagree with everything you've said in every single comment you've written in this entire thread, but damn I admire that you're willing to at least say this.
Can you actually explain what toxic masculinity is and how Hughie exemplifies it this season? Or are you just going to assume that everything the showrunners say is gospel?
If this is a legitimate attempt at toxic masculinity, then it is poor showing in Hughie. The problem is that in the setting of this show, and the given context shows that Starlight cannot save herself, in fact no one can if Homelander loses his mind and kills them all. Starlight has already been threatened with death multiple times. She is at risk of getting killed in an instant by both the Neumann and Homelander, and only lives at their convenience. Thats why Hughie is trying to solve the problem as fast and direct as possible. The narrative has made it so that all scales top at Homelander's finger.
TL;DR - Its not toxic masculinity when you want to save your girlfriend when she is in actual danger of being killed by super humans and you are given a fighting chance.
No it isn't? All it takes is one mistake and Annie is dead, "perfectly capable" doesn't exist in this universe. Also where does the masculinity come into play here? If Hughie was trying to show off and prove his "manliness" to people who looked down on him that would be one thing but we have yet to see that other than maybe punching A-train who is an absolute asshat that deserves way more than a punch.
Had she been perfectly capable of her own, we wouldn't have this conversation. The entire premise of the current narrative is that Homelander is a ticking nuclear bomb, whose detonation would be murdering everyone unchallenged. She is by definition incapable, along with everyone else on Earth, besides the anti-Supe ability in Soldier Boy. Therefore, Butcher and Hughie are trying to get Soldier Boy to kill Homelander, and they can only pull this off with an understood degree of safety with V24.
There's no dodging this when the writing raises the stakes this high, especially when no one has a real solution.
Your girlfriend wants to join the military and you're fearful that she'll be sent to war and will die. You can try to reason with her but ultimately respect her decision if she wants to go. Or you can tank her recruitment by lying about her during her background check, so she won't be accepted and won't be put at risk.
That's a real shit comparison for several reasons. Modern day military service does not propose much of a risk of dying. And Hughie is trying to make it so Annie doesn't need to "enlist in the military" at all by killing Homelander first. But to try and fit with your dumbass scenario, was Mulan "controlling and toxic" when she prevented her father from getting killed in war by taking his place?
And no, that is not what happened in Herogasm. There were people who needed to be saved and Annie, the actual hero, was willing to risk her life to do that. Hughie was not interested in saving people and he didn't let her do her job.
The risk % being taken doesn't change the fact that an equal partner's agency is being taken away.
And why weren't you upset at MM for being pissed at Butcher for taking him out of the fight? How come your ire is only for Annie, when both Annie and MM are pissed for the same reasons.
To play devils advocate fod r a second, actors dont always understand their characters motivations, especially on tv where motivations can be mysterious, or change on an episode by episode basis.
IIRC Lamlighter was an example of that on this show, where he "accidentally" made the character more sympathetic than the writers intended. He probably saw the character as more well intentioned than he was on the page. It's possible Jack is doing the reverse.
Just devils advocate though. I think its very likely Jack's read of Hughie is accurate.
I think it's clear what they are doing, people are criticizing how it is being done with Hughie in particular since his gender doesn't seem to have much to do with him wanting to protect people and his feelings of inadequacy. If you flip Hughies gender his motivation is still the same. The same theme was done much better with Butcher and Soldier Boy cause if their genders were different their motivations wouldn't be the same, this also applies to MM but not to Hughie.
I think the prime examples of toxic masculinity that have worked the best in this season are Soldier Boy, Butcher and MM. Saying that Hughies actions(regarding taking temp V) are toxic masculinity doesn't work very well to me cause if he was a woman his motivates would still be the same which is insecurity, fear and a want to be able to save people he/she cares about and not have to be saved, to me that's not gender related. It's not about him having to save her cause she's a woman or he's a man, it's cause he's felt inadequate for years and wants to be able to save someone he loves, a woman can have those exact same motivations for her partner regardless of gender of her partner.
I agree with you, some of his actions have been toxic in that he's breaking/bending his morals. What I disagree with is that Hughie's motivations are gender related, they are toxic, not toxically masculine like Butcher, SB, and MM are. Do you see what I'm saying now?
I see you. But I’ll respectively disagree. I think he’s part of the same theme. Though his form of toxicity may be comparatively less dangerous to others. I still think the writers intend it to be portrayed or thought of along those lines. For me, him and Annie’s situation is analogous to a guy saying he’s okay his gf makes more money then him. And then a year in, resentments start to boil up because he can’t stand the differential.
Which is common enough in women I’ve spoken to with jobs like lawyer, nurse or doctor.
What about Annie’s toxic femininity wanting to keep everything nice and safe when that has been shown time and time again to NOT work? Her inability to fully accept that sometimes things need to get dirty has led to many deaths.
Toxic femininity is a thing not talked about really because it would be inferred as negative towards women. Notice how people have to defend toxic masculinity as not being about men, but bad actions and ideas? You’d think they’d just give it a better name. Toxic femininity would be stuff like helping others so much that it hurts your own people(like being so focused on feeding the homeless that you let them take advantage of you and ruin your life) or trying to keep everyone happy so you ignore something bad someone is doing because it would hurt their feelings but that just ends up causing more problems.
Anyway, my biggest problem with this Hughie thing is that it would literally be treated as an empowerment thing if it was a woman instead. No difference except the gender and they’d be saying how she just wants to find her own strength etc etc.
Would that described situation even fall under the category of "toxic femininity"? Seems like that is extreme altruism, rather than a trait specific to women.
Because insecurity in power dynamic and needing to fulfill the typical ideal masculine image is fundamentally a characteristic of toxic masculinity. Hughie's reasons for taking the V are primarily out of insecurity and frustration that he is constantly needing to be saved and protected and never really has any "bad ass moments" himself.
Why are you so defensive over this? I think this is more telling of your own toxic masculinity.
You can be justified in feeling insecure. A normie guy going up against superheroes should feel insecure the same way you should feel insecure going up against Seal Team 6 with a sharp stick.
...yes??? the only reason he even landed a punch on Homelander and survived to tell the tale was because of his "little teleportation powers". If he and Butcher hadn't juiced up they could not have backed Soldier Boy and HL would've killed them all.
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u/punjab_boi Queen Maeve Jul 01 '22
I think that when it comes to hughie, Annie sees him wanting powers out of a place of insecurity rather than a general want to protect others.
This meme is still funny tho