Why is Butcher so obsessed with taking down the Supes? It’s clear he isn’t helping Hughie out of the goodness of his heart. This is Butcher’s vendetta, and it’s personal. Episode 4 gives us a few hints of what’s fueling Butcher’s hatred towards The Seven.
Memory Lane
The episode starts with Butcher (Karl Urban) waking from a dream of him having sex with his wife, Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten). He watches a video of his wife while he’s eating. The video shows her sitting on a park bench and walking towards the camera with a worried expression on her face. Looks like Hughie isn’t the only one with a lover he wants to avenge.
Next, we see Butcher in the Deputy Director’s office. He shows Susan Raynor (Jennifer Esposito) pictures of A-Train and Popclaw using Compound V. She asks for a sample, but he doesn’t have one yet. She also asks if Butcher knows about Translucent, and he plays it off. Susan tells Butcher she’ll help if he can give her hard proof she can use, then gives him a strong warning not to screw her over. After the meeting, Butcher calls Popclaw (Brittany Allen) wanting more information about Compound V. Popclaw said she told Butcher everything she knows, adding A-Train is the one running the operation.
The Female
Hughie (Jack Quaid), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and MM (Laz Alonso) are heading towards a noodle restaurant in an area where they think A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) makes Compound V. They follow a guy into the backroom of a store. Frenchie finds The Girl (Karen Fukuhara) locked in a separate room. Opening the door prompts two men to come in with guns blazing. Thankfully, The Girl has superpowers and uses them to crush the skull of the first guy. The second guy decides to shoot himself in the head to avoid a similar fate, and The Girl runs off. Butcher arrives later on to help. Searching the place, MM finds a sample of Compound V. The Boys decide to track her down before Vought, or whoever was hiding her, finds her first.
Frenchie meets with his girlfriend Cherie (Jordana Lajoie), who’s made a knockout gas that should be strong enough to affect The Girl. She grabs Frenchie by the balls and threatens to use the gas on him if she doesn’t see again soon.
A-Train sees police officers remove the dead bodies from the secret hideout where he makes Compound V. He goes straight to Popclaw, demanding to know who she spoke to. She denies telling anyone about the drug. When Popclaw mentions she heard what he said at the race, A-Train claims he had to say those things. Being single is his brand. He begs her to reveal who she spoke to because they’re in a lot of trouble. Popclaw insists she didn’t say anything. A-Train knows she’s lying because they were the only ones who knew.
Meanwhile, The Girl goes on a murdering spree — she walks into a manicure shop and kills the owner. Frenchie, Butcher, and MM pose as homicide detectives to investigate the owner’s death when they learn they had been smuggling immigrants into the country. Frenchie realizes The Girl is trying to work her way backwards to return home. The trio continues their search, not realizing A-Train was at the crime scene as well. Their search leads them to a train station, where MM discovers the Compound V sample he found earlier came from the Supes charity Samaritans Embrace.
Frenchie finds The Girl and tells her a story of how his father used to keep taking him away from his mother. He shows her the bullet wounds on his leg from when his father shot him. He tells her he knows what it’s like to want to go home. The Girl runs away, giving Frenchie the perfect opportunity to gas her — but he doesn’t. This angers MM, who points out Frenchie doesn’t follow orders. The two start arguing, and Butcher gives them a pep talk, saying they’re better together as a team than apart.
At the train station, The Boys find The Girl running on the train tracks, in front of the train. A-Train saves her, and they start fighting each other. Frenchie draws attention to A-Train’s presence at the station, allowing The Girl to escape. Frenchie, Butcher, and MM find her and instead of gassing her, Frenchie tries to talk to her again. The Girl attacks him, so Butcher decides to gas them both.
First Date
Butcher orders Hughie to go on a date with Annie (Erin Moriarty) so he can plant a recording device on her phone. He takes her to a bowling alley for their first date. When he asks about Translucent, Annie describes him as a loner spending time with his son. Hughie appears to look guilty since that boy is fatherless now because of him. All throughout the date, Hughie is torn between the mission and his growing feelings for Annie. She notices something is off with him, but he plays it off by saying he knows she’s holding herself back to not show him up on the first date. Annie responds by bowling a strike dead center. Later on in the evening, Hughie has a vision of his deceased girlfriend Robin (Jess Salgueiro) staring at him. This prompts him to tap Annie’s phone when she leaves their table.
Operation: Rescue Part 1
At Vought, Madelyn Stillwell has an important assignment for Homelander (Antony Starr) and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott). She received a call about a plane getting hi-jacked. If they can retrieve the passengers alive, no one will contest the bill putting Supes in the military.
Homelander and Maeve locate the plane and attack the hijackers. Homelander kills one of the hijackers with his eye lasers, but they also damage the admin panel on the plane. With both pilots dead, Homelander says there’s nothing he can do to stop the plane. He wants to leave. Maeve wants him to at least try to save some passengers. There’s a little girl Maeve wants to rescue, but Homelander is afraid she’ll reveal they let the other passengers die. The mother begs Homelander to take her daughter, and he goes off, even threatens to kill the passengers himself with his laser beams. Homelander and a reluctant Maeve leave the plane and watch it go down.
The remains of the plane are found with no survivors. During a press conference, Homelander says he and Maeve arrived three minutes after the plane went down. He states the tragedy could have been avoided if the Supes were in the chain of command (which is part of the military). Madelyn, who’s watching the conference on the news, is impressed with how Homelander spins the situation. Maeve sees the little girl’s doll wash up on shore, and she’s completely disgusted with Homelander and Vought. This takes us back to what Annie told Hughie in the previous episode: the Supes don’t want to play the role of heroes, they want to look the part.
Operation Rescue Part 2
While speaking to his therapist, Deep (Chace Crawford) admits he feels like a joke compared to the other Supes because he can talk to animals. While Madelyn is trying to stop the hi-jacked plane, Deep comes to her with a proposal to help the dolphins at Oceanland. Madelyn rejects the idea because Oceanland is Deep’s sponsor. She ignores his pleas to kill the sponsorship deal and tells Deep to play to his strengths.
Deep takes Madelyn’s suggestion to heart by breaking into Oceanland and kidnapping one of the dolphins. He’s driving the getaway car with one hand, trying to keep the dolphin hydrated with bottled water in the other, and the dolphin wants…oral sex??? Turns out the dolphin wants to have a relationship with him (can you blame her? He seems to genuinely care for her). The Deep’s speeding leads to a car chase with the police. When he slams the brakes, the dolphin flies through the front window and gets hit by a truck. The moral of this episode: never ask a Supe from Vought International to do a rescue mission.
