Directors: Fred Toye
Writers: Michael Saltzman
Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minfie, Aya Cash, Giancarlo Esposito, Shantel VanSanten, Langston Kerman, Jessica Hecht
‘Nothing Like It In The World’ Air Date: 11/09/2020
The Boys Season Two is currently available to stream via Amazon Prime with new episodes releasing every Friday.
This is a FULL SPOILER review of the fourth episode of The Boys: Season Two, “Nothing Like It In The World.” Check back for more coverage of The Boys S2 each week as new episodes release.
We’re half-way through the second season and I’m still surprised at how this season manages to feel both really fast, and really slow. There seems to be a constant bubble boiling when it comes to Homelander (Antony Starr) snapping on everyone, but then the episode is also over sixty-minutes of mostly road-trip material.
The core of ‘Nothing Like It In The World’ revolves around Hughie (Jack Quaid), Annie (Erin Moriarty) and Mother’s Milk (Jessie T. Usher) going on a road trip to get information on Liberty, a superhero who has apparently vanished and could hold information about the latest member of The Seven. Of course, when they reach their source she explains she was paid off by Vought to keep quiet about Liberty after the superhero gruesomely murdered her brother in the ’70s. It’s not all that surprising to learn that Liberty is in fact, Stormfront (Aya Cash). In case you missed the not so subtle slaughter and racist remark last episode — Stormfront is a huge racist.
Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) gets awfully close to seeking revenger for her brother in the worst location possible. She wouldn’t win a fight against Stormfront by herself out in the open. But it’s important to remember that everyone’s arrows this episode are quickly becoming focused on Stormfront. That includes members of The Seven and The Boys.
Really, I’m not sure what this information does for the team. Another member of The Seven is hugely evil: surprise! An interesting twist on all of this will be if Stormfronts story is brought to an end by Homelander coming in to put a stop to a massacring racist superhero gone wild. That would get him his must desired grasp back on The Seven and the public-at-large.
During our road trip, we do get some quieter character moments. Or not so quieter moments in the case of Hughie and Annie breaking out in song to Billy Joel’s’ classic hit, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire.’ We finally get to see the two rekindle their romantic interest this episode only for both to pretend they can just shove their feelings aside and go back into their secret lives. It’s obvious that Annie is at wit’s end and struggling to hide her dual-life while walking the halls of Vought’s tower. Where, by the way, Homelander has taken to recasting The Seven, so see-ya A-Train (Jessie T. Usher).
A great fakeout this week was the revival of Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) in a scene I assumed was a dream. I did not guess that Homelander would be okay with having Doppelganger pretending to be Stillwell fulltime. Well, he isn’t, because Homelander kills him at the end of the episode in a moment of realization that he doesn’t need people to love him, he needs them to fear him. Major props to Antony Starr in trying to flirt up himself and offer a blowjob. It was very weird.
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) makes his way inside the secret compound where Becca (Shantel VanSanten) is being held on a major rescue mission, only it doesn’t go the way he dreamed it would. Becca sees through Butchers lies. Of course, he wasn’t going to be okay caring for Homelanders son, even if he is also Becca’s child. But that leaves the big question: what does he do next? This whole show has been built around Butcher wanting to kill Homelander for revenger, which shifted to saving Becca the second he found out she was alive. It may make sense for him to just return to wanting to destroy Homelander, The Seven and Vought to free Becca, but I guess we’ll find out next week. It does seem like he may have to fight Black Noire on his way out of the compound first, however.
Again, I feel like this season is doing a lot of set-ups and I hope it starts moving in on some stories sooner-than-later. At the moment I couldn’t tell you what direction the season is heading in. Especially when you tie-in the vignettes of The Deep (Chace Crawford) interviewing people about “what love means to them.”
