A Lot Happens in ‘The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies’ (RECAP)

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Boys Season 3 Episode 5, “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies.”]

Don’t leave the room while “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies” is playing, or you might miss something important. With so much going on, let’s get into it right away.

Changes are being made at Vought — Ashley (Colby Minifie) is now CEO, and The Deep (Chace Crawford) is in charge of crime analytics. He lets almost everyone in the department go after digging deep through their Twitters and discovering “tweets critical of Homelander,” leaving a vital part of Vought a ghost town. Great job, Deep.

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The Boys return stateside, where Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) talk about everything that happened in Russia and he promises not to use V-24 again. Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban) gets more V-24 from Maeve (Dominique McElligot)… and they get drunk together and hook up.

Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) winds up in an American hospital where she receives treatment for her injuries, but she and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) aren’t out of the woods. Nina shows up in the room and confronts Frenchie while Kimiko is unconscious. She’s not pleased about all the damage The Boys caused, and she demands that Frenchie work for her to repay that debt. She gives him an assignment — killing a man and his child — and tells him to call her when it’s done. When Frenchie returns to the room, Kimiko’s awake, and she’s delighted to have not healed. They assume Soldier Boy must be able to remove supes’ powers.

Later, Kimiko and Frenchie watch a movie. This leads to the musical scene from the trailers, as Kimiko imagines them singing together and dancing through the halls. While that wasn’t reality, the kiss she gives him sure is. (Finally!) After, Frenchie says he’s going to get coffee, but he’ll be “right back.” Of course, he’s taken by Nina’s people and does not come “right back.”

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Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), meanwhile, has wound up in America — and in New York City, to boot. He gets his own Steve Rogers-style sequence where he wanders around the modern city, baffled by The Seven, gay couples, and technology… and then he hears a Russian song that was playing while he was tortured, and he (accidentally) blows up the whole block. Whoopsie!

Back at Vought, Starlight insists they need to catch the guy who did that. (She finds out from Hughie that it was Soldier Boy, but none of the other supes know.) Homelander (Antony Starr), on the other hand, tells Ashley to book slots on all the major talk shows and says they’ll spread the message that everything is fine and people should go on with their lives. After that, Homelander and Maeve have an extremely tense discussion that covers everything from whether she’s planning to kill him (Homelander suspects she is) to their relationship (she says she always hated and pitied him). This doesn’t end in Maeve’s death, but it does end with Black Noir kidnapping her for Homelander.

Annie realizes what Homelander’s done and tries to go to Ashley for help. Ashley says Maeve’s at a rehab facility in Malibu, but Annie knows that’s not true; the new CEO just barely starts to speak honestly when she catches herself. “I am CEO,” she says. “Next time, make a f**king appointment.” You both hate Ashley and understand where she’s coming from here — she’s not a supe, and if Homelander came after her she wouldn’t stand even an echo of a chance. Colby Minifie is particularly great in this scene, too.

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Hughie, Butcher, and MM (Laz Alonso) visit a guy called “The Legend,” played by Paul Reiser. Legend was VP of superhero management at Vought before Stillwell. Legend reveals Soldier Boy was there to get his super-suit and Crimson Countess’ (Laurie Holden) address. “He’s headed there,” Legend says. “I didn’t get the feeling it was going to be a happy reunion.”

While all of this is going on, A-Train’s (Jessie T. Usher) story with Blue Hawk (Nick Wechsler) takes a shocking turn. An arranged meeting between Blue Hawk and A-Train’s brother’s community in Trenton is meant for an apology, but as one might predict, the racist supe doesn’t meet the people he’s wronged with sincerity or genuine remorse. Tensions escalate, and Blue Hawk winds up throwing A-Train’s brother at a wall, shattering his spine. A-Train later learns his brother might never walk again.

The Boys head to Crimson Countess’ place, where they restrain her and wait for Soldier Boy. Annie shows up, having been called by MM, and Butcher winds up drugging MM to stop him from killing Soldier Boy the moment he sees him.

Just as MM loses consciousness, Soldier Boy appears. Butcher tells him Crimson Countess is there, but he wants to make a deal with Soldier Boy — “a team-up,” as he says. Soldier Boy enters the trailer to find Crimson Countess, whom he admits he loved and felt betrayed by when she didn’t come to save him from the Russians. He might’ve loved her, but she didn’t feel the same. “I hated you,” she says. “We all did.” With that, Soldier Boy uses his powers to level the entire trailer park, leaving it a smoking, on-fire ruin. (Needless to say, Crimson Countess is dead.)

In the aftermath, Annie, Hughie, Butcher, and Soldier Boy all come face to face. (Butcher carries the unconscious MM from the wreckage.) Hughie formally takes a side: He’s with Butcher, even though he knows the guy’s methods are questionable. “We needed a weapon, Soldier Boy is our weapon,” he explains to an aghast Annie. She’s heartbroken and tells him he’s teaming up with a murderer; he says it’s the only way he can save her from Homelander. He offers her to come with them; unsurprisingly, she won’t. He leaves — and that’s the end of the episode, and maybe also of their relationship.

The Boys, Fridays, Prime Video