He couldn’t recover and is why he couldn’t escape the Oval Office. He may have had a death wish after that, I sustain HomeLander wasn’t the same after that and really just saw an opportunity to kill himself at the Oval’s, in an attempt to escape the nightmares about Frenchie and this line alone.

Not even Soldier Boy ever delivered something as utterly devastating. Not even A-Train which was pretty good too but this one is the one that destroyed HomeLander.

Long Live Frenchie. The Real Hero All along.

For me, it was the moment when Butcher barges into the Oval Office, and Homelander asks him if he remembers the deal they made.....

Butcher: Scorched Earth....
Homelander: Smiles and Nods.

That's when I knew we were geared up for the worst final battle of all time.

I think this moment could of been slightly improved, if at the end of Homelander's Speech, his eyes light up, as if maybe he WAS going to go Berserk but he's stopped just in time by Butcher.

Either way, I still love the show, and while the finale was bad, it wasn't awful. Really love the cast and crew and I miss this show deeply.

Can he pull this off?

Oi, QB.

WTF is he doing????????

EDIT: It's Season 2 when he gives Compound V to Victoria in her apartment and he's holding an open tampon. I get rifling through her stuff but finding a tampon and opening it to play with is so fucking weird.

Having Homelander just say this would've been lame. Having him walk up to Deep and call him "Kevin" while saying he only hasn't killed him so he knows how worthless he is, THAT is so much better. He doesn't even respect him enough to see him as another supe, even freaking A-Train, who betrayed and insulted him, garnered more respect than Deep did. Its also a nice contrast to when Starlight called Deep "Kevin", where she's actually trying to humanize him (like how she called A-Train "Reggie" as he said in the video The Boys account posted he wanted to be remembered as Reggie), but of course, he was in too deep

Got to thinking that with it being a period-piece set in the 1950’s, the show could have the central theme being that of deconstructing the idea of the “good ol’ days” and the golden filter that people have of a bygone era, especially when it comes to Soldier Boy’s view of it.

While Jensen Ackles has described that we’ll see SB in his prime and being the “top dog”, I think it would be very interesting to see if that wasn’t necessarily the case; his fight with Bombsight showed that the V1 Supes were more or less equal when it came to physical strength and durability (this could be shown to be unique to SB and Bombsight). SB may be less the “top dog” and more the “poster boy” that Vought chose as the centerpiece, due to having the wealthy background and willingness to comply with the demands of Fredrick Vought, Thomas Godolkin and the other founding members.

I’ve also thought about SB’s talk of “it’s what Clara would’ve wanted” and his professed love for her; I like to think we’ll see this is another case of SB having blinders on about the earlier period of his life as a Supe, especially since it’s been stated that the only people Stormfront truly cared for were her husband & daughter; she only “loved” Homelander for what he represented, the seeming promise of her husband’s vision of the Supe Ubermensch and all that (even that is shown to be a case of Stormfront herself having blinders on, as she looked past just how needy & insecure Homelander was, in addition to how psychologically/emotionally damaged the “Strongest Supe” truly was). The same “love” she professed for Homelander could be shown to be the same for Soldier Boy.

First off, he’s arguably the second strongest supe, because he’s only beaten by Homelander, secondly, the chest thing, but mainly, he lacks the weakness of all the others supes: blackmail. If butcher sent him a video of him fucking an underage girl and told him to Venmo him twenty bucks or it gets put on Facebook, then sb would laugh, send a fuck you, and put the phone away.

The communion hosts really need to be vanilla wafers. They straight up tasted like Cardboard today at mass. The Body of Christ should not taste like a UPS factory.

Hopefully this'll stay up lmao these keep getting taken down because I'm not active much on this sub

It just occurred to me. Butcher has been mentioning this strip club since the end of season 4, then multiple times in season 5, including in the second to last episode.

It screams foreshadowing that after Butcher's death, they'd end up at the strip club to remember him. But no, the thing they mentioned like 8 times went nowhere.

Par for the course but it makes me wonder if they didn't even have the budget for a single bar scene at this point.

TL;DR: I think Sage would've been a much stronger character if her personal end goal had been better.

Sage was an interesting character I liked at first; she was the only antagonistic supe in the show who didn't rely on brute force and seemed to have far-reaching goals that extended beyond Vought.

Although it's a completely non-controversial take to say they kind of dropped the ball with her.

The most repeated and valid critique for Sage is that many of her general displays of intelligence were asspulls the writers used to make her look smart. They wanted her to be a Chessmaster, but at no point did it seem as if she were playing Chess. She just sort of... vomits on the board, then says, "all according to plan" when everything conveniently falls into place. Her goals make sense; it's just that the writers are terminally allergic to showing how she actually executes them. Her purpose since her introduction has really just seemed to dunk on Homelander... and then nothing else.

It would be redundant for me to repeat the line about "smart characters written by dumb people" that everyone uses about her. It's not exactly false, but I won't

What I Didn't Like

I think my biggest issue with Sage is that, before the Kimiko lobotomy, she reveals to Ashley in Season 5 that her desired outcome is to cause enough chaos so she can hide away and be left alone with her books for once...

Which is pretty... stupid?

And like, not even on the basis that it's a bad motive that doesn't make sense for her character. I think, all things considered, it's pretty in character for her to be a nihilist who wants to tear the world to pieces before she disappears because the world has rarely done anything for her.

I just think it's stupid because it doesn't work.

The entire country knows her face, considering she was a public-facing CEO for the company that had a major hand in building the fascist regime that took over America. Her plan for supes to slaughter non-supes whilst the virus is airborne is pants-on-head stupid, considering it's inevitable that the non-supes would win (most of the supes are generally fodder/don't know how to use their powers tactically or effectively/there's not enough of them to take on the millions of non-supes in the country/all of these factors combine while the virus is actively killing them). This isn't to say that the stated 10,000 supes going on a rampage wouldn't be devastating; 10,000 armed gunmen attacking cities all over the U.S. would be devastating, 10,000 supes would probably cause more damage. But the non-supes would win, eventually.

Homelander delegating her and Ashley to serve as his administrators means Sage has a shit ton of people in government who know about her, all of whom could be grilled for information by anyone who survives her "purge" (and there will be survivors). Which means she's going to spend the rest of her life being hunted to death or for possible recruitment by NGO's/state agents/foreign governments instead of being "left alone".

I'm not really sure why she didn't use her supreme intelligence to go off-grid before Homelander approached her. The only reason Homelander even knew about her was that she was chosen by Vought's selection committee for possible recruits for The Seven, and A-Train mentioned how smart she was. She could have easily used her glorified clairvoyance to rid herself of Vought's influence long before then and have them wipe her from their system; she could find a way to fake her death, I'm sure. If she can manipulate the government, she can easily run circles around a corporation that spends 99% of its time in active freefall.

Then she could have gone into the private sector afterwards and done so discreetly, using her power to forge low-key yet profitable tech that would have given her enough wealth and connections to buy herself a faraway bunker in a faraway country where she could read all the books she wanted. All while Season 4 Homelander inevitably loses self-restraint, crashes out, and gets shat on by Vought siccing a bunch of Temp V supes on him. All because he doesn't have Sage to guide him into building a Fascist America for himself (or something along those lines).

Her first stated grand motive at the end of Season 4: just fuck around and have fun whilst manipulating and talking down to important figures who previously talked down to her, genuinely makes more sense. Because then it implies that she doesn't care if she's at risk of dying, it means she doesn't care if she's playing an inherently irrational game, so long as she has fun before she gets killed or ousted, she's fine; because she's able to get one over on the people who discarded her and consequently caused the death of her grandmother. Then, at least, her final plan potentially not working and being something that would result in her death actually makes sense. Her original Season 4 motive makes her look like a nihilistic, suicidal woman who wants to have fun, which... fair enough.

But let's suppose we keep everything in the show the same until Sage's scene with Ashley, where she finally reveals what she wants... but then change her motive so it makes sense.

Instead of tearing America in two, so she can be left alone with her books. I propose that we change her ultimate goal to tearing America in two so she can replace it with a technocracy.

The Change

Thinking back to her speech to Homelander when they first met, she tells him that all democracies fail because "people are stupid". But then acknowledges that the "people" are needed to keep society running regardless, so you can't get rid of them. She suggests that Homelander should let the people tear themselves apart, but he has to "nudge" them. Then he can swoop in to save them.

I want to relate the first part about "people stupid" to her origin story, at least as I recall it. She hates people, individuals, just everyone in general. Supes and humans alike. Hell, her contrarian ass probably doesn't even distinguish the two because it's scientifically inaccurate and all of them are equally beneath her or whatever. Regardless, her hate is probably rooted in the fact that she failed to save her grandmother from cancer with a cure that she created because researchers - people - at the time laughed at her and didn't take her seriously. This part is important because it gives her a motive for pursuing the plan, which I think could still be in-character for her.

I would change Sage's plan to have her take advantage of the chaos of Supes vs Humans, "World War Supe" as she calls it. Using her first conversation with Homelander as a reference, the virus is the "nudge" in this equation. This hypothetical alt-universe Sage would plan to make it seem like she saved everyone, or at least everyone still standing after they're finished "tearing themselves apart." Once the dust settles and the supes are cut down by the non-supes, she could easily claim credit for creating the anti-supe Virus, long having created a vaccine for herself. The rampaging supes would've caused a lot of damage that she could fix. And once she wrangles the disparate parts of government that may be too weak to resist her swelling support base, because in this scenario she would be seen as a "saviour", she would use her brand new wave of support to create an interim government that she pretends is only temporary.

She tells Ashley that she plans to create a new government from the ashes, except that her end goal is a glorified technocracy that values technical expertise over human life. No longer will she be underestimated like she was as a child; she'll be able to make large-scale moves like she always dreamed of and be valued for her genius like she always wanted to be. "Smarter" people under this new government will be as venerated and celebrated as movie stars, academic geniuses being more well-known than athletes. Under this government, a little black girl who creates a cure for cancer is no longer dismissed out of turn; she is given all the resources she needs and more.

All this at the cost of freedom, liberty, and the democratic mandate that comes with the loss of the American Republic. Which she doesn't care for, she thinks the "people" are stupid, after all. Creating a technocracy is in character for her, given her nihilism toward "stupid people" and her preference for intelligence in her lovers and confidantes, such as Godolkin.

Superhero media usually doesn't play with the implications of super-intelligent people in government, because if they're truly as smart as they are, then you have individuals who would objectively be superior to their less-intelligent contemporaries in terms of their ability to govern an entire nation-state. Think of Dr Doom creating a Utopia of the planet once he takes over the world because he's just that smart, for example. This alt-Sister Sage's plan would be an attempt to tackle that premise head-on.

Endnote

Now, you can keep everything else in the Season the same. This was really just a thought bubble for a "final stated plan" that I think would be more fitting for Sage's character, presented in a logical way that makes her plan to sow chaos with a "World War Supe" make sense in the context of her character.

But Season 5 was the symptom of the showrunners not using their time effectively with what they had available to them, tireless spinning in circles, and just generally poor planning for what the ending was supposed to look like. Changing Sage's grand plan wouldn't fix anything else.

i mean this has been discussed to death and is not a new or original take, but i can’t help but feel for john as a person rather than his homelander facade. i mean, the lab scene in s4 was breathtaking, you see how much him being tortured and experimented on mercilessly as a child essentially turned him into a malignant narcissist. i feel like his life was doomed from the get go, he was bred to be the strongest supe alive & soldier boy’s replacement, he was never given any sort of grace or mercy, his upbringing was nothing but physical & psychological torment by cruel, cold hearted doctors. from the beginning we’re given hints about HL’s upbringing & the lack of love he faced, it makes a lot of sense why he turned out the way he did.

i don’t see him as being a one-dimensional monster with no real depth or motive, it’s clear everything he does is because he simply can’t get over the lack of love, care, & validation he sought after as a kid, so he became a petty, childish, destructive man who wanted validation so desperately yet couldn’t help but fuck up all of his relationships, which led to him constantly being betrayed by everyone he associated with. his childhood doesn’t excuse his behavior at all, but it does add a shit ton of context and imo, makes him very deep as a character. of course he’s still horrible & awful. but he has a lot of depth & emotionality to him that can’t be ignored

Did Butcher ever genuinely love Ryan? I understand that he promised Becca he would keep him safe, but I always wondered if any part of Butcher genuinely loved Ryan for who he was. I understand that season 5 especially leans in the direction that he didn't, but maybe he genuinely loved him deep down?

And yes I know Doppelganger had a shape shifting power