I see this season as a result of bits of good writing mixed with bits of bad. Itās hard to do a season thatās almost entirely focused on character growth and character changes when everyone is preferring actions and movement.
+The events surrounding A-trainās character arc is great stuff.
+The events surrounding Ryanās internal struggle between wanting a family (Homelander) vs his need to fulfill his motherās wish to be a good person, is good stuff.
+Finally getting a drip feed of Kimikoās past has been good stuff.
+Starlight finally starting to just say F-it when it comes to certain events which has led her to violence
+Homelander not knowing how to run a business correctly like Stan Edgar predicted. He pivoted into something easy (clickbait and heavy politics).
+Also Homelanderās childhood reveal including his way of getting over that trauma.
+Ashleyās change from being confident and dominating to now a shriveled up human being who is too broken down and too scared at this point to even let A-train help her leave.
+The Deep finally(?) realizing that he is a full-on bad guy and wants to be a killer
+Scenes with Huey+Dad.
+Butcher attempting to keep ryan good and finally finding a way to see the good in supes.
-Hueyās personal storyline has been sidelined especially after the dad episode, as he gets taken advantage of or worse in multiple episodes. However he doesnāt seem to break or change a slight bit due to these events.
-Frenchieās storyline has been cyclical and at this point annoyingly used as a buffer between more important content.
-MMās back and forth on how he feels about his team and The Boys has also been cyclical.
-Neumannās story being cyclical.
-Waste of a Stan Edgar return
-Butcherās good ghost/bad ghost thing, while kind of cool conceptually, is kind of pointless when you realize how the ghosts are essentially unnecessary as Butcher would have reached some of these conclusions and moments on his own anyway.
-Homelanderās arc feeling a bit aimless after the childhood episode. I felt that he had found a better purpose and was finally starting to be a good father to Ryan, but instead he went back to business as usual, including a slight character regression once presented with breast milk.
-Sister Sage sorely needs a ārevealā episode for all of her planning
-New Noir needs more scenes and development, he is in an awkward ājoke but not jokeā character phase
-The showrunner not pulling the trigger on two extremely powerful Gen-V supes and instead using them as a tiny cameo, including wasting Tek Knight on a raunchy cameo when itās known that he is essentially a super detective with all 5 senses being super.
Again this list is almost even, but the list heavily favors the negative side because you quickly realize 2-3 members of The Boys are sucking away screen time with barely anything new to show for it, and thatās frustrating since they are not secondary characters but instead main cast.
This finale will probably not be that strong of a finale unless they have done reshoots. I expect a season 4 ending that will kill maybe 1 but leave things as safe as possible, because the original plan was for more than 5 seasons. If season 5 is at least as good as seasons 3 or 1 then this show will end very strong, because now they have enabled the āyou can kill off more than one main character nowā switch.