This episode is what I hoped the entire show was. We finally get to see another side of Homelander's origin, which is confirmed to be canon and set up season 3. We now understand Black Noir's role in The Seven, as the guy who keeps Homelander in check, which is a bit similar to the graphic novel but I'm pretty sure it'll be very different when we understand the full context of the character. I think after Season 2 of The Boys which was a bit weaker plot wise but stronger character wise, Homelander has potentially become one of the best TV Villains I've watched, and this short but great episode gives the character another dimension to hopefully see explored in the main. Series with a lot more time. We already know about his abuse and experimentation as a kid, but we get to see how badly this affected with him having severe PTSD and what looks like anger issues from it. At the time of the show I suppose he has had them more under control, but we realize at least at first he was trying to do good, which I think shows a great new angle at Homelander, who can too often seem fully evil. I think the gore is needlessly excessive at times in The Boys, but the way it was utilized here with Homelander's powers being too strong and accidentally hurting people was effective. Reminded me of how it was done in Invincible but in a darker way. So yeah, I honestly don't have that much to say about this episode, but what about the rest of the season?
Well I have mixed feelings. There's some cool concepts, the superhero couple, 90s cartoon, anime inspired episode, but they're mostly so cliched and basic it feels like wasted potential. I'm kinda confused what this show so going for, cause I thought this was supposed to be funny? I had like a few laughs, mostly from the Rick and Morty style episode from Justin Rolland which was actually creative and fun. But then there's multiple serious episodes, and it feels like they didn't know what they were doing. The anime inspired episode was totally serious, then why not have more variety in tone, cause half of it was more serious, maybe a little comedic, and the other half was trying way too hard to be funny and often failing. Not gonna bother mentioning the poop episode as I already reviewed it. Why couldn't we just have more episodes like 3 (the butcher one) and the finale building up the world? This just seems like something they quickly threw together without much effort except from the probably overworked animators (which were the saving grace for some episodes) to have something in between the extra long wait from Season 2 to 3.
It feels like The Boys has devolved into the media it criticizes on the show. Also it's needlessly edgy, there's so much swearing and sexual humor that don't fit with the episodes. Obviously with such a small runtime you can't do much with the stories, but aside from the stories feeling obviously rushed, most of the episodes also feel lazily written. I was hoping this was going to take place in the world of The Boys, as in it would be canon and build up the world in new and interesting ways, but the stuff that happens here completely goes against things we know, it just feels unbelievable and badly written to the point where it makes no sense and it actually would hurt the world building. Obviously none of it is canon except the last one, but then I ask what's the point of this? Like a few changes could've made episode 3 canon, the teens with crappy powers could work too, especially the Envision episode could tie into things and was interesting, though the episode was super predictable. Which was a problem with almost all the episodes.
I think the biggest example of this was the seventh episode, which had great animation, but a pretty dumb and cliched plot. So this old dude somehow steals some compound V for his dying wife, which gives her destructive powers she doesn't want, you get the obvious dialogue you'd expect and heard 50 times from these type of things before, Vought comes to get them, she drops them all- Wait, by the way, why is Vought portrayed so incompetently in these shorts? Like they do almost nothing right, heh. Anyways it all culminates in this monster coming out of the old lady, all the Vought soldiers being destroyed and then the old guy stops it with a taser?! Uh... what? Actually it turned out the old lady shot it at the same time but that genuinely confused me initially. So it seems his wife then sacrifices herself and we see her fly into a field... okay, maybe a little rushed? Like do you expect us to care from a cliched 10 minutes? Also I know I said I wasn't gonna mention it, but doesn't this plot have some of similarities to the fifth episode that shall not be named? It just seems like a complete lack of originality and actual effort put into the scripts of many of these. Almost the plots in the episodes are super forced, and I suppose they can get away with some things due to the runtime, but it still felt badly executed. Look at something like Smiling Friends, which came out recently, can accomplish with 10 minute episodes. Ultimately this was just a big lack of potential, and with it being barely movie length I wonder why did they settle with this? While The Boys: Diabolical doesn't affect almost anything in The Boys to hurt it, that also makes it disposable, as it's not good enough to stand on its own and the only tie-in is minimal. Overall, it had a few enjoyable episodes, some pretty bad ones, the animation was at least solid, so it just gets a mediocre 5.5/10 from me.
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