Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
Sam and Cate free the young supes imprisoned in the Woods. They go on a rampage, killing all the regular humans in the Godolkin campus. Marie, Jordan, and Emma try to stop them. At the hospital, Andre learns that his dad has sustained permanent damage from using his powers—and the same may happen to him. Nevertheless, he ends up joining his friends in trying to save the humans left on campus.
What a bunch of tropes in this work
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Marie uses the bodies of the campus massacre to summon a rain of bloody darts and save Ashley and her board. She had previously only done this uncontrolled at a much smaller scale during her Traumatic Superpower Awakening.
- All for Nothing: All the imprisoned supes that Cate freed from the Woods never got a chance to enjoy their freedom since all of them were killed in order to stop their rampage.
- Ambiguous Ending: By the end of the episode, after Homelander fires his laser at Marie's chest, it Smash to Black and then we get a news report of Marie, Jordan, Andre, and Emma being framed for causing the massacre at God U while Cate and Sam are praised as the new Guardians of Godolkin. After the incident, Marie is revealed to have survived Homerlander's attack and she wakes up in a mysterious room with Jordan, Andre, and Emma who are wearing hospital gowns. What exactly happened after Homelander fired on Marie that led to these events is left a mystery.
- An Arm and a Leg: Marie ends up making Cate's left hand blow up before she could use her powers on Jordan.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Not only does the core group get wrongfully framed and imprisoned for the campus massacre, Homelander has taken complete hold of the Vought propaganda machine and propped up the true culprits as heroes, gaining two powerful allies for his supe supremacist agenda in the process.
- Call-Back:
- During the trustees' meeting in how to fill the empty spots in the Seven, Maverick's name is brought up. His dad Translucent's perverse proclivities are also mentioned, as they hope Maverick is not like that.
- When Homelander confronts Marie, he hypocritically chides her for attacking her own kind (Supes), like how he chides A-Train for doing the same thing to Blue Hawk.
- The Cameo:
- Homelander lands in from above, just after Cate loses her arm.
- Billy Butcher shows up in The Stinger, investigating the now-abandoned Woods.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The killing spree on the God U campus plays out like a school shooting, with lots of the carnage being displayed through security footage and the alleged culprits receiving a snappy nickname from the media in the aftermath.
- Hypocrite: Once again, as in his typical fashion, Homelander shows his hypocrisy in his false accusation against Marie by calling her an animal for “attacking her own kind”. Coming from a guy who’s killed his own friend and who’s hurt others of his “own kind”.
- Miscarriage of Justice: The episode ends with Marie, Jordan, Andre and Emma getting wrongfully framed for the campus massacre and institutionalized. Cate not only gets away freely, Vought also hails her as one half of the new Guardians of Godolkin, the other half being a mind-controlled Sam.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Sam asks one of the imprisoned supes when was the last time he saw the sun. The guy asks if "Gangnam Style" is still a thing.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Cate makes Social Media Jeff eat and then blow himself up with one of the explosives he'd previously used to kill a Supe in similar fashion.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: While the episode ends with Marie and her allies being wrongfully accused for causing the massacre at God U, Cate and Sam becoming the new Guardians of Godolkin despite being the true perpetrators behind said massacre, and Homelander gaining more support for his nefarious agenda, The Stinger reveals Billy Butcher is investigating the Woods where he may come discover the virus that can wipe out Supes, including Homelander, which would give the good guys a chance to finally defeat Homelander and his Supe allies for good.
- Skewed Priorities: When the campus goes on lockdown, Justine and Harper are sealed in their dorm room. But what distresses them is that they can't get a signal on their phones, which means they can't post anything online and nobody will know if they die.
- The Stinger: Billy Butcher shows up at the Woods, expressing his usual view on supes: "What a bunch of cunts."
- Take That!: At the Vought PR meeting, Ashley suggests hiring Annie Leibovitz to photograph Andre because one of the suits has concerns about his skin colour. Leibovitz is an acclaimed photographer whose notorious weak spot is her inability to properly light Black skin.
- Your Head Asplode: When a supe tries to attack Social Media Jeff, he disables her (and every other supe within range) with the same sonic device a guard at the Woods used on Andre. Then he places an explosive inside her mouth, blowing up her head. Cate then captures him moments later, and kills him by commanding him to blow his own head up in the same way as she livestreams it.
- Wham Episode: All the imprisoned supes are freed from the Woods. Led by Sam and Cate, they kill anybody on campus who isn't a supe. In the end, Jordan, Emma, Andre, and Marie—who were trying to save people—are blamed for the slaughter and are placed in an unknown room, while Cate and Sam are praised as the New Guardians of Godolkin. The Stinger has Billy Butcher showing up at the Woods, smirking.
