Following Popclaw's tip, the Boys find a Triad hideout holding an imprisoned Japanese woman they call "the Female". Frenchie frees her, and she kills her guards before running off. While MM finds evidence she was a Compound V test subject, Hughie goes bowling with Annie, bugging her phone at Butcher's request. Despite some lingering guilt, Hughie finds himself genuinely growing closer to Annie.
With their Compound V supply compromised, A-Train has Popclaw go into hiding while he searches for the Female. Meanwhile, Stillwell sends Homelander and Queen Maeve to save a hijacked airliner, but after he accidentally destroys the control panel, Homelander abandons the plane and its passengers, forcing Maeve to leave with him despite her pleas to find a way to save the passengers.
Meanwhile, The Deep tries to rescue a dolphin from the Oceanland aquarium and theme park that he's been forced to promote in spite of its shady practices. He fails miserably however, as he is soon road-blocked by the police, causing the dolphin to be ejected through the windshield, landing in the middle of the road and run over by a truck.
After the Female kills a woman associated with her captors, Frenchie tracks her to Penn Station and makes a momentary connection with her before losing her in the crowd just as A-Train arrives and tries to kill her. Frenchie attracts a crowd to distract A-Train, allowing the Female to escape. The Boys corner her, but she attacks them before Butcher uses knockout gas. Stillwell is pleased to see Homelander use the airliner tragedy to push for militarized Supes, rousing the crowd with a speech, all the while Maeve grieves for those she and Homelander allowed to die.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Amazon Chaser: Hughie plays with this; he may or may not be into it or just, y'know, flirting with a girl he likes.Annie: So it doesn't bother you that I could kick your ass in bowling? Or in anything? Or bench press you?
Hughie: Oh my god, is that a threat or a promise? - Artistic License – Biology: Unless that was a really young dolphin, it'd never fit in a van. An adult dolphin can weigh from 400 to 1400 pounds and reach a length of more than 13 feet.
- Asshole Victim: The Female kills a human trafficker.
- Beneath the Mask
- The Deep is shown in therapy, dealing with his confidence issues.
- After Frenchie brags to MM about his carefree bachelor's life, we're shown he's under the thumb of his girlfriend.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Rather than die a Cruel and Unusual Death at the bloody hands of the Female, the last guard sticks a pistol under his chin and blows his brains out.
- Bested at Bowling: Hughie and Annie/Starlight go bowling on a date. She plays clumsily, and Hughie cannot believe a Superhero is having trouble beating him. When he accuses her of holding back, she admits it. She worries No Guy Wants an Amazon and that he will feel diminished next to a more-powerful girlfriend. He disagrees, promises her superpowers are a part of her he respects and likes, and asks Annie not to deny them for his sake. Convinced, she throws an amazing strike and proceeds to crush Hughie at the rest of the game, to his delight.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: In a rare inversion this episode has The Deep getting sexually propositioned by the dolphin he's rescuing.The Deep: ...Okay, okay! If I just touch it will you shut up?
- Blatant Lies:
- Popclaw is revealed to be a dreadfully Bad Liar.
- Played for Horror with Homelander's cheerful assertions that everything is under control as he's planning to abandon the passengers of Flight 37.
- Celebrity Superhero: Taken advantage of by Frenchie, who uses A-Train's fame as a way to draw a crowd so he'll have to leave The Female alone.
- Classified Information: Invoked as a reason for Translucent's disappearance (as Vought doesn't want to admit their Supes are vulnerable), though the PR men realize that being slightly more specific will work better, so they say he's on a mission in South America to investigate MS-13
. - Closet Geek: Turns out Butcher is a really, really big fan of the Spice Girls and knows all about how their lives are going.
- Commonality Connection: Frenchie gets through to the Female by revealing how his father kidnapped him as a boy and held him prisoner for years, showing her the scar of an ankle chain.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like
- Annie mentions kicking the ass of a bully who punched her prom date...who never spoke to her again.
- The Female ends up attacking Frenchie who's only trying to help, though in fairness her experiences have hardly encouraged her to trust anyone.
- Crocodile Tears: Used by Homelander to seem genuinely upset about the deaths caused by the crash of the hijacked plane, to the news crews. When in reality he couldn't care less about their deaths, except to use them to push for Supers being allowed in the military.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Frenchie connects with The Female by revealing his father kidnapped him as a child and put out cigarettes on him.
- Dream Intro: This episode opens with what turns out to be a flashback to Butcher in bed with his wife Becca. The scene is contrasted via Mood Lighting against the bleak present where he wakes up alone.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Frenchie has this bad; even when the Female turns out to be a Supe on a Roaring Rampage of Returning Home, he still tries to talk her down when the others are urging him to just gas her.
- Empathy Doll Shot: A doll is washed onto the shore in the wake of Flight 37 incident (despite the likelihood of it remaining that intact). Worse, it belonged to a little girl Maeve left behind on the plane at Homelander's behest.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A-Train has Popclaw, Translucent had his son, the Deep has his dolphins... Even Homelander insists that Maeve not stay behind to die.
- Explosive Decompression: Weaponised when Homelander opens the airliner hatch while a terrorist is standing next to it.
- Fantastic Racism: Hughie tries to argue that Starlight is different, but just the fact that she's a Supe is enough for Butcher.
- Happier Home Movie: Billy's equivalent of this is surveillance footage of Becca in a park from 2012 which he watches over and over.
- Happy Flashback: Butcher dreams of better times, then wakes up with his Beard of Sorrow and Empty Fridge, Empty Life.
- Hidden Depths: Turns out Deep (pun!) really cares about saving sea life and is complaining to his therapist that his team doesn't respect him.
- Honey Trap: Butcher insists that Hughie go on his Not a Date with Starlight so they can hack her phone. Hughie is actually enjoying himself until a hallucination of Robin guilt-trips him into carrying out his mission.
- Hope Spot:
- Homelander and Queen Maeve take out the terrorists in the airliner and are applauded by the appreciative passengers. Turns out there's another terrorist in the cockpit in the process of killing the pilots...
- Frenchie has nearly talked the Female into coming with him, when she's startled by the TV changing channels and bolts.
- Impersonating an Officer: The Boys impersonate a homicide squad. They have to beat a hasty retreat when they realize A-Train is also 'investigating' and could recognize Mother's Milk.
- Knockout Gas: Butcher uses a canister of Halothane gas, which incapacitates the Female (and also Frenchie whom she was attacking).
- Lampshade Hanging: Homelander shoots down all of Maeve's suggestions on how to save the passengers on the crashing plane.
- Crash Course Landing? Homelander can't fly a plane, and even if he could he's accidentally destroyed the controls with his Eye Beams.
- Can he use his Super-Strength to lift the plane? There's nothing to stand on.
- Well can't he just fly at it and ram it straight and level? At that kind of speed either the plane flips over, or he'll punch straight through the hull.
- Take the passengers to safety one at a time? They have to do it 123 times.
- Well can't they at least save a mother and her child? That would mean leaving witnesses to tell the world they left everyone else to die.
- Leave No Witnesses: When Homelander says he can't fly the plane or gently bring it down without ripping it apart, he tells Maeve that they should just get themselves out. When Maeve asks Homelander to fly people down, he says he can't fly everyone down, and to just cut their losses. When the passengers beg to be saved, Maeve asks that they at least save a mother and her daughter, but Homelander refuses because they'll reveal that they left everyone else to die. Maeve reluctantly backs away, apologizing for abandoning them. Floating several thousand feet in the air, Homelander and Maeve see the passenger plane go down, killing everyone on board.
- Middle Eastern Terrorists: A group of them hijack a US airline, causing Homelander and Queen Maeve's intervention. It ends with tragedy.
- Milking the Giant Cow: A more chilling version than usual when Homelander does this while promising America's vengeance on the people who committed this terrorist atrocity.
- Mood Lighting: The opening happy flashback scene is washed in gold while the subsequent scene of Billy waking up has a blue tint.
- My God, What Have I Done?
- Hughie on hearing that Translucent had a son.
- Queen Maeve on seeing a doll washed up on the shore among the wreckage, having left behind the child it belonged to.
- Madelyn has the same expression while watching things on TV, but quickly changes to a So Proud of You look when Homelander turns events to their advantage.
- My Greatest Failure: We discover what lies behind the rancor between Mother's Milk and Frenchie. Frenchie was assigned to follow Lamplighter but went off mission. Lamplighter then murdered the grandkids of their previous employer Mallory.
- Mythology Gag: One of the suggestions Homelander turns down for saving the plane is to try and ram it so that he can force it level. This was exactly what his comics counterpart tried in his own adventures with stopping an out-of-control airliner—and it had the exact result he suggested it would here.
- The Nameless: Kimiko's name isn't given at first; Butcher just refers to her as The Female.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
- Frenchie tries to free a refugee girl being held in a barred cell with armed guards. Turns out there's a good reason for that.
- Homelander dooms Flight 37 by frying the controls with careless use of heat vision. Had he not, even with the pilot dead the autopilot could have kept the plane in the air, leaving multiple options to land the plane and/or save the passengers.
- The Deep tries to return a dolphin to the ocean, only to slam on the brakes to avoid a police car, sending the dolphin flying through the windshield onto the road
where it then gets run over by a tractor-trailer.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon:
- Discussed after Hughie realises Annie is pretending to be bad at bowling to protect his male ego.
- When Butcher's CIA ex-girlfriend threatens to throw him into a Black Site prison where he'll drink piss for the rest of his life if he screws her over again, Butcher says that's why their relationship didn't work, because "you can't have two alpha males."
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Hughie in his interactions with Starlight, whose Nice Girl persona makes it difficult to think of her as an evil Supe. Her casual mention that Translucent left a son behind doesn't help either, then when Hughie finds himself getting too comfortable with her, he sees a hallucination of Robin staring reproachfully at him.
- Parting-Words Regret: Hughie feels terrible about having to live with the fact that his last words to Robin were "Don't you ever besmirch Billy Joel." It was playful lovers' banter, but still not the very last thing you'd want to say to your beloved.
- Rousing Speech:
- Given by Homelander, to the news crews and the coast guard, in order to push for Supers being allowed in the military.
- Also done by Butcher to stop Mother's Milk from Breaking the Fellowship. His however involves...the Spice Girls?
MM: Man he gives the worst fucking pep talks.
Frenchie: No shit. - Safety in Muggles: Frenchie sees A-Train pounding the Female's head against the wall, so he loudly calls everyone over to see this famous superhero. A-Train has to let her escape when fans start taking pictures.
- Silent Credits: This is the first episode to close with no soundtrack other than ambient sounds from the bay where debris and luggage from the crashed plane washed up.
- The Sons and the Spears: Billy gives his quarreling teammates a pep talk about how the Spice Girls were nothing on their own but great as a team. Whether it works is questionable, but at least they can all agree that their leader gives awful pep talks.
- Spanner in the Works: Madelyn tells the Supes there appear to be three hijackers on board. Turns out there's four. Then when lasering this last hijacker Homelander destroys the controls as well preventing a Crash Course Landing.
- Stealth Pun: Just as the Female gets away from The Boys by jumping off a subway platform, who should come super-speeding up the tracks towards her, but A-Train.
- Take My Hand!: Done by both Homelander to Maeve, and Frenchie to the Female, for entirely different reasons.
- Tested on Humans: The Female is being kept in a cell and injected with Compound V. Given A-Train's fear of Homelander finding out, it appears this isn't a Vought operation.
- Toplessness from the Back: The opening flashback shows Butcher's dead wife from the back while they're in bed together.
- Tragic Keepsake: Butcher has a few seconds of footage from the day Becca died.
- Trespassing to Talk: The Deputy Director of the CIA swipes into her locked office only to find Butcher there.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Queen Maeve is appalled when Homelander won't even attempt to save some of the airline passengers. Since he can't save everyone, he doesn't want any surviving witnesses to his screw-up. The passengers naturally also denounce them for this before they're killed in the crash.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the past, Frenchie was tailing Lamplighter, but he went off mission, Lamplighter got away and killed Mallory's grandchildren.
- Xanatos Gambit: Madelyn sends Homelander and Queen Maeve to handle a hijacked airliner, figuring this will put public opinion behind Supes in the military. The plan goes disastrously wrong, but Homelander then turns it around by making a Bastardly Speech to the press of how they could have prevented the disaster if only they'd been called in earlier, which would have happened if Supes were part of the military.
