Billy Butcher ain’t giving up the bloody fight against Homelander despite the world’s most powerful Supe getting his hands on V-One. There was always a Plan B, mate, and in The Boys‘ penultimate episode we found out what it is. It’s wild. It’s dangerous. And it could definitely work. The group is taking a lesson it learned from Homelander’s own father to execute a strategy that could finally stop the killer Supe once and for all.
In episode six of The Boys final season Soldier Boy stunned Sister Sage by giving Homelander V-One. It turned Homelander into a nearly indestructible Supe. And that’s the key to Butcher’s now-necessary backup play. Homelander is nearly indestructible. There’s still a way to beat him forever.
V-One might keep an already overly powerful Supe from aging, but it’s possible to remove it from their body. Moments before Soldier Boy handed it to his son he freed Bombsight from the burden of de facto immortality. Soldier Boy used his chest blast to force the V-One out of Bombsight’s body entirely. In episode seven we also saw that, despite Homelander’s newly enhanced powers, enriched uranium can still harm him. Even with V-One Homelander is not immune to the effects of massive radiation. We saw just how much it weakens him previously when Soldier Boy locked Homelander inside a chamber with radiation-emitting enriched uranium earlier in the season. It took a weakened Homelander more than an hour to get out.
Radiation is the key to Butcher, the late Frenchie, and Kimiko’s plan. Soldier Boy only developed his unique, powerful chest blast after the Russians performed experiments on him. The Soviets exposed him to massive, atomic bomb amounts of radiation. That turned him into a biological nuclear reactor. He couldn’t control that power when the Boys first freed him from his cryogenic sleep, but he can now as a relieved Bombsight found out. Now Kimiko has that same radioactive chest blast.
Frenchie kept exposing Kimiko to dangerous (for her!) amounts of radiation. After sad sack Sage got off the couch and did the calculations—three times—they found the exact level and exposure needed to recreate what the Russians had done to Soldier Boy. Frenchie and Sage turned her into a nuclear reactor. They turned Kimiko into a Supe who can take away all the Compound V and V-One flowing in Homelander’s veins.
Homelander is not an unbeatable god. She can stop him if she can hit him with a blast of her radiation.
As can Soldier Boy. He gave his son V-One to honor the Nazi woman who loved them both. But he had no intention of sticking around to be a part of his weird kid’s life. Homelander, who thinks he’s God, wasn’t okay with his dad living a life of debauchery in Bogotá, so he choked him out and put his father back into cryogenic sleep in Vought Tower.
Soldier Boy really hated Homelander before. Imagine how he’ll feel when he wakes up this time. And we know he will be. That would give the Boys two walking nuclear reactors who can blast the super out of the world’s most powerful sociopathic Supe. And if they do, only then will the Boys be finally able to give up the fight.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He would not take V-One, but thanks for the offer. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.