A lot happens in the fourth episode of The Boys' season three.
SPOILERS BELOW
Senator Neumann, aka Head Popper, holds a press conference under Vought CEO Stan Edgar's guidance to legally punish Homelander for his incendiary birthday speech but Homelander gets the upper hand and convinces Neumann to betray Edgar in exchange for some permanent V or superpower serum so that her daughter can be counted as a true denizen of Homelander's upcoming super-focused eugenic world. While I think the inclusion of a corporate-sponsored AOC lookalike is a clever snipe at modern politics, the nerd in me needs more explanation as to why she can't just explode Homelander's head whenever she wants. Understandably, audiences have been recently reminded of Homelander's super-speed but all it would take is a simple glance for her to kill him ... except for some still dreadfully-unexplained reason why she cannot do so.
Butcher, Huey, MM, Cherie, and Kimiko break into a secret Russian military lab. They find super-powered hamsters, some soldiers with horrible aim who Butcher and Huey impale or laser with their temporary super-powers, and an altered Soldier Boy who while not visibly aged at all now possesses some new energy-blast ability that renders Kimiko severely injured an unable to heal. Perhaps the Homelander-killing weapon is Soldier Boy himself, artificially augmented with a projecticle ability that removes super powers.
Kimiko had a pretty weird but funny fight where she pretends to be a high-class escort for a Russian oligarch before killing him and his bodyguards with superhero-themed dildos. We get another reminder of Kimiko's regenerative abilities, similar to last season's instance of her healing from getting her neck snapped by Storm Front, but this time it's surviving a bullet to the head -- which left me wondering what can't she survived. Answer: whatever new energy-blast ability evil Captain America's Soldier Boy now has.
Starlight's old beau Supersonic was killed off by Homelander as a reminder to Starlight to stay in line.
I'm wondering if this season will actually end in this spectacular fight above. While Butcher's shown super strength, toughness, and laser vision, we've yet to see if he has Homelander's speed or flight.
On another note, I'm very curious about one of Huey's new temporary powers. He has super strength which is pretty standard, along with what looked like the ability to teleport out of his clothes which felt like a call-back to him visiting the super-kid orphan where he was surprised by a shy boy's ability to also teleport.
Can't wait to see what happens next.