Recap / The Boys S 0205 We Gotta Go Now

Protests emerge against Homelander when a video of him killing two civilians surfaces. Stormfront helps Homelander regain popularity, and the two enter a sexual relationship.

Butcher plots his retirement at his Aunt Judy's house after failing to rescue Becca, prompting Hughie and MM to intervene. Noir attacks the three, but Butcher has Edgar call him off by threatening to release information on Ryan.

Annie discovers Stormfront has been in contact with Edgar regarding the Sage Grove psychiatric hospital. A confrontation between Annie and Stormfront ensues over the former leaking Compound V to the public and the latter's past as Liberty.

Maeve reveals to Elena that she is planning Homelander's downfall and recruits the Deep to assist her.

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Tropes for this episode include:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Billy is ready to retire to his aunt's house and quit going after Supes (or maybe commit suicide). Hughie and Mother's Milk go after him to talk him out of it, and a clash with Black Noir and Edgar motivates him into returning to The Boys.
• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: After noticing Black Noir, Billy goes back to his aunt's house... and locks the stained-glass doors to it.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: Homelander fantasizes about how satisfying it would be to mow down a crowd of protestors, then has a minor freakout in private over how close he came to ruining his status and reputation.
• Almost Kiss: The opening scene from a movie set has Maeve almost kissing her in-story Love Interest, only for another explosion to go off in the distance, conveniently killing the moment and reminds them to keep going. She hates this scene with passion, especially since it's implied Homelander forced it in and now is watching replays of the last take, solely to mock Maeve.
• Anvilicious: In-Universe example. The Dawn of the Seven movie is not one for subtlety. Special mention goes to the scene when Maeve randomly stops mid-battle to give Ruby a Gay Aesop.
• Archetypal Character: It's implied the Seven always has someone with Super-Speed as part of the team - previously it was Mr. Marathon, A-Train is just being laid off and Shockwave is already hired for his spot.
• As Himself: Greg Grunberg is playing Dawn of the Seven character Agent Bill Pearson. He is even credited as such.
• The Atoner: Annie's mother continues to try to make amends with her.
• Awesome by Analysis: Mother's Milk is told that Butcher was handling a dog toy over the phone with Hughie. He recalls that his dog Terror is at his aunt's house, and concluded where he went.
• Bad "Bad Acting": The Dawn of the Seven snippets that pop-out throughout the episode are full of it, with flat deliveries and looking at the camera. On top of that, Maeve has a hard time containing her personal disdain toward the heavy-handed "inclusive" rewrites.
• Bad Liar: Stormfront easily picks up that Starlight is onto her and is lying about not leaking Compound V. The one moment that earns Stormfront's praise is when Starlight is venting about her mother (because she's telling the truth) to hide what she's doing in Stormfront's trailer.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Butcher buys a soft toy and turns up at auntie's place to see "his boy". Turns out he's referring to his bulldog, Terror.
  • A-Train's Dawn of the Seven scene where he talks to Homelander is revealed to be using Homelander's stunt double, only after the cameras cut.
  • Annie and Stormfront's Snark-to-Snark Combat in the latter's trailer has Stormfront accuse Annie of "turn[ing] on [her] own people." Annie tries to confirm if she means white people, and then Stormfront clarifies "Superheroes."
• Beef Bandage: After getting worked over, Butcher slaps a packet of frozen peas on his injured face which ironically has Celebrity Endorsement from Homelander on it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: During their sex scene Stormfront encourages Homelander to take a shot at her with his Eye Beams, pointing out that she knows he's been wanting to do that for a while.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Stormfront is good at keeping her Nazi bullshit hidden, but when she's alone with A-Train, she let's the mask slip and he notices.
• Blackmail:
  • Billy gets Edgar to call off Black Noir by threatening to expose the history and pictures of Becca and Homelander's son. Butcher is strongly implied to be bluffing, but fortunately Edgar decides he can't take the risk.
  • When A-Train refuses to deliver script lines which firmly establish him as leaving The Seven, Ashley puts her foot down for once and gives him a choice of leaving with dignity and a generous severance package, or being fired for abuse of Compound V.
  • Annie prevents Stormfront from reporting her leak of Compound V to Vought by threatening to expose Stormfront's past as Liberty to the public.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Homelander isn't even trying to hide what he's doing to Maeve.
  • Some of the memes that Stormfront plans on spreading about are accusations of fake news, such as claiming that the body that Homelander laser'd was photoshopped.
• Blood Knight: Butcher starts beating the shit out of a random guy at a punk show, only stopped when the rest of the audience gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Bondage Is Bad: Homelander and Stormfront enjoy giving or receiving pain, as seen by their ending scene together. She asks Homelander to laser her in the chest with his eye beams, which he does to her delight. Further, she enjoys being thrown around into walls by him (and throws him into them too) before the two have violent sex. They're the worst characters on the show, and thus far the only ones with sadomasochistic tendencies.
• Booby Trap: The Boys set several nail bombs around Judy's house to trigger when Black Noir enters to make his move against Billy.
• Break the Haughty: After a series of bad moves believing that he could keep up and later fix his image by himself, Homelander breaks down in a hallway watching his tangent and being booed online. He is finally pushed into taking Stormfront's advice.
• Brick Joke: Judy tells Hughie that the stuffed toy he's holding is Terror's fuckpig. Later, Butcher pulls out the toy he bought; a Homelander doll.
  Butcher: Terror, I bought you something. Fuck it.
• Burner Phones: Butcher destroys his SIM card after taking the call from Hughie.
• The Cameo: Greg Grunberg As Himself playing Agent Bill Pearson.
• Collateral Damage: Homelander's subplot is based on his accidental murder of someone standing behind a super terrorist he was killing.
• Color Wash: As part of spoofing the genre, Dawn of the Seven is the most orange of orange-tinted movies.
• Cool Old Lady: Butcher's aunt has a hidden room in her basement where she makes drugs.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If getting the skin of your face ripped off, then your neck snapped doesn't qualify, then there is having your own pistol crammed into the eye-socket.
• Cruel Mercy: Homelander is torturing Maeve by showing effusive support of her being gay, forcing her to star in a shitty Coming-Out Story action movie.
  Maeve: If I never see her again, will you stop?
  Homelander: I don't know what you mean!
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite setting off several IED's in his face and emptying two sidearms, the Boys fail to do more than scratch Black Noir's suit who takes them down very easily.
• Deal with the Devil: Maeve is willing to get The Deep back into the Seven by speaking for him, but only if he can do something for her.
• Death Seeker: Butcher finds out he now has nothing to even live for anymore, after finding out Becca is alive and unwilling to make a run with him. In the opening scene, he starts a brawl with the biggest guy he can find in a Bad Guy Bar, with a clear intention of being beaten. When Black Noir shows up in his aunt's neighborhood, he plans to just walk out and be done with it. While trying to talk him out of this, Hughie admits that he's also tempted by thoughts of suicide.
• Destructo-Nookie: Homelander and Stormfront, destroying an apartment (plus hurting themselves) between and during their intimate moments. It's clear that, for both of them, part of the excitement is being with a partner who is mutually nigh-indestructible.
• Did Not Think This Through: Homelander shows up at Neuman's rally without a prepared speech and makes the crowd even angrier, so they turn on him even more.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Homelander's speech from his surprise appearance at Victoria's rally is made of this. He tries to emphasize saving American lives, someone questions if he means only American lives. He tries to explain that he was taking out Super-Terrorists as usual, and people respond with horror that the incident caught on camera isn't the only time where this has happened.
• The Dog Bites Back: Ashley, after having been pushed around by The Seven and being hounded by A-Train since he knows he can't do anything against Homelander (who helped make the decision), manages to rein A-Train in from his protesting by angrily giving him Vought's ultimatum.
• Double Meaning: Starlight is not happy to see her mother casually chatting to Stormfront. Ostensibly she is trying to reconcile them, but Stormfront also drops a hint (which she later confirms) that she knows Starlight is the one who leaked the news on Compound V to the press, so there's an implied threat as well. Stormfront has another conversation with A-Train later, who readily picks up on her racist subtext.
• The Dragon: It's revealed that Black Noir serves as this for Stan Edgar, being commanded by Edgar to take out The Boys. He's even watching on an In-Universe Camera, which is just as well.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Starlight hasn't been returning her mother's calls, so Donna tries to meet with her daughter by turning up at a busy film shoot and casually discussing the matter with Stormfront. When Starlight wants to know why she'd discuss the matter with a stranger, Donna just says that Stormfront isn't a stranger; she's Starlight's teammate. Even without knowing why Starlight is concerned about Stormfront, it shows Donna's failure to comprehend that her daughter has a private life that is separate from her role as a superhero.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Thanks to Stormfront and her team's manipulation, Homelander's public image begins improving. You know, Homelander, who she kept on smearing just a few weeks prior. And let's not forget how it's almost a routine in-universe of people forgetting about the massive Collateral Damage related to Supes actions.
  • Averted with Donna January, whose daughter is not ready to forgive her.
• #EngineeredHashtag: In-Universe with #BraveMaeve.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite all the atrocities he committed, Homelander feels legitimately disturbed when he imagines himself killing the entire rally crowd with his heat vision. Could be just a case of Pragmatic Villainy though, considering that doing that would very likely damage his public image beyond repair.
• Expy: Agent Bill Pearson, a (heavily implied to be) Badass Normal federal agent who is a liaison to superheroes and also helps motivate them with snarky tough love, and extends this motivational snarky tough love to other non-powered people such as the hacker Ruby in a similar way that he expresses that same kind of attitude to superheroes such as Queen Maeve. Phil Coulson, anyone? His first name even rhymes with Phil and his last name is four letters off Coulson (As a bonus, he's clearly working with the aforementioned hacker Ruby, recalling Coulson's partner Skye\Daisy Johnson.)
• Facial Horror: Kimiko rips a man's face off.
• Flawless Token: Vought is setting Elena up as this, much to her and Maeve's dismay.
• Flipping the Bird: The soldier in the crowd of protestors does this, whereupon Homelander lasers his finger off and then sweeps his beam across the screaming crowd...fortunately it's an Imagine Spot.
• Foreshadowing: Stormfront is shown talking on the phone to a minion working at the Sage Grove Centre, and Starlight finds emails referring to Sage Grove on her laptop.
• Gay Aesop: The in-universe Dawn of the Seven movie and its surrounding marketing are trying to do this, in the most mangled, corporate-committee-written, misguided way possible. Maeve and Elena's faces when they have to listen to the two script doctors presenting the new rewrite say it all—and that's before they really get obnoxious with their pitches.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Hughie's speech to get Billy to back off on his blaze-of-glory approach to retirement, though it doesn't escalate enough to get physical. Mother's Milk backs him up.
• The Ghost:
  • Mr. Marathon, A-Train's predecessor, gets brought up by Ashley.
  • Lenny Butcher, who was Billy's Morality Pet since they were young.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Implied with Homelander when he tongue-in-cheek misnames the "Girls Get It Done" slogan as "Girls Get It On".
• Go Through Me: Butcher scoffs when Hughie tries to stand in the way of him making a Heroic Sacrifice, but then MM appears behind Hughie and says Butcher won't get past him so easily. Later Butcher stays behind to slow down Black Noir so the others can escape, though they come back for him anyway.
• Green Screen: The CG 'mutants' are a couple of guys in green spandex and chrome bubble helmets, waving sticks in the air while simulating a Million Mook March through the rubble of a once-proud American city.
• Guile Hero: Nothing The Boys throw at Black Noir can stop him, until Butcher comes up with his bluff Just in Time.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The Russian mobsters are discussing musicals.
  • It turns out that Stormfront is an ex-member of the Church of the Collective. She viewed it as "pure," but then left when they "started accepting all kinds of people".
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Perhaps to further show that The Seven are not professionally trained, Black Noir is this. He tries, and Billy doesn't see him until the last second, but his attempt at hiding in broad daylight costs him.
• Highly Visible Password: The passwords Starlight types into Stormfront's laptop ("Liberty" and "Adele") are shown in plain text.
• Hypocrite: Stormfront criticizes Starlight for not being honest when she herself is hiding her true Nazi self.
• Hypocritical Humor: Stormfront tells Starlight not to be racist when she makes the "white people?" comment.
• Identical Stranger: Judy claims that Hughie is the spitting image of Billy's younger brother. His role as a Replacement Goldfish is further established by their roles as weaker but more moral characters who acted as Billy's Morality Chain.
• Imagine Spot: Homelander fantasizes massacring protesters using his eye beams.
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Homelander fires his laser at the crowd protesting against him, killing hundreds... until it's revealed as just his fantasy of dealing with the situation. What's new is the fact he's clearly afraid of his own vision.
• Infodump: Zig-Zagged. The script for Dawn of the Seven is clearly a hack job and so is doctoring on it, but when A-Train wants to remove a particular info-dump, it's to remove the part where he's announcing his departure from Seven.
• Infraction Distraction: Starlight pretends to be Trespassing to Talk to explain why she's snooping around in Stormfront's trailer.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Stormfront figures out that Annie leaked Compound V to MSNBC. In turn, Annie reveals that she knows that Stormfront is Liberty.
  • Billy reveals that Becca had a son with Homelander to Hughie and Mother's Milk, and also makes it known that he holds such information to Black Noir and Edgar.
  • Maeve makes it clear to Elena, without making it explicit, that Homelander is extremely dangerous and she can't just walk away from Vought's campaign.
• Just Here for the Free Snacks: A homeless woman isn't happy to turn up at a Church of the Collective event and find there's no food, only a thick tome handed out by The Deep.
• Leave Me Alone!: Kimiko blames herself for her brother's death and is taking out her rage in contract murders. She forcibly rejects Frenchie's attempt to talk her out of this.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Having not been party to the conversation where MM tells Butcher that Hughie is his canary in the coal mine, Hughie has no idea what Butcher is talking about when he thanks Hughie for being his canary.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Enforced In-Universe by the marketing team of Vought that, for PR reasons, think Queen Maeve and her ex-girlfriend Elena should be respectively portrayed as a Lipstick Lesbian and a Butch Lesbian, like "Ellen and Portia". Even though Queen Maeve is not even a lesbian. That goes without mentioning Vought's decision to switch Maeve's so far largely tomboyish image into that of a Lipstick Lesbian, rather than simply handing that role off to Elena and at least avoid a jarring shift in their marketing. Instead it's proposed for Elena to make herself over as a Butch Lesbian, who is more of a Lipstick Lesbian, and she refuses of course.
• Meaningful Look
  • Stormfront calls Starlight on how she's been giving her the eye all day.
  • When Hughie asks if what Butcher said about having photos of Homelander's son is true, Butcher replies that of course it is, then the two exchange knowing smirks.
• Mood Whiplash: When Billy tries to blackmail Black Noir, he responds by slamming Butcher against the wall in a Neck Lift and is choking him to death when a Halleluiah ringtone sounds. It's Mr. Edgar, calling on Noir's mobile.
• Morality Pet: Lenny, Billy's younger brother, who essentially shared Hughie's role since their childhood. He could get him to stop his Unstoppable Rage without much effort, compared to the adults that couldn't hold him back.
• Necessarily Evil: Part of Homelander's speech involves this claim, trying to justify his actions. Stormfront's strategy with memes to get Homelander's reputation back up also uses this, but in a more effective manner.
• Never Mess with Granny: Judy, Billy's aunt, is a drug dealer who is willing to have her house get wrecked to fight a Supe.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain
  • Homelander flies down, casually kills a Supe Terrorist with his Eye Beams, then flies off with a cheery wave without noticing that he's accidentally killed an Innocent Bystander. This exposes the indifference Supes have towards Collateral Damage like nothing else has beforehand. His attempt to manage a crowd of protestors without Vought PR guidance only makes things worse.
  • Homelander enjoys Maeve's fear and humiliation after he exposed her relationship with Elena. This only makes Maeve determined to take Homelander down to protect Elena from him.
  • Butcher is ready to give up his crusade against Supes, but facing down Black Noir and the CEO of Vought Industries helps him get his groove back.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Agent Ruby Cruz, Maeve's love interest in Dawn of the Seven, is a leather-clad tattooed goth lesbian hacker.
• No Bisexuals: After Maeve is outed by Homelander, Vought is only interested in playing her up as a lesbian, despite Elena noting she's really bisexual.
• Not Helping Your Case: Homelander destroys his image with an incident of him slaughtering people getting caught on camera and spreading throughout the internet. He is then required by Edgar and the others at Vought to keep quiet while they all sort out his controversial incident. However, Homelander goes on to try to save his reputation with an appearance on Victoria's platform, and it just gets worse. See Digging Yourself Deeper above.
• No-Sell: Black Noir, after already seen tanking Naqib's explosion with minimal damage, seems to only have his armor damaged by the explosives that The Boys use.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Butcher goes to drive off when he sees Black Noir perched on the roof of a nearby house, and realises he's been tracked from where Becca was held.
  • Ashley's panics when Homelander barges into a rally of congresswoman Neuman. Her reaction only goes worse as she continues watching the transmission since Homelander is only making his situation worse with each sentence. She ends up pulling out a hank of her hair in stress.
  • Victoria Neuman herself when Homelander lands next to her. She's clearly expecting being assaulted or maybe even killed on the spot.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Mother's Milk tries to be dismissive toward Hughie's concern about Butcher, until Hughie mentions Billy was nice during the phonecall. This instantly gets M.M.'s attention.
• Ominous Walk: A sound-only version when The Boys are listening to Black Noir walking slowly across the floor above them until he hits a booby-trap. After a slight pause the footsteps always continue.
• Pandering to the Base: In "Rise of the Seven", the scenes of Maeve coming out as gay are clearly this in-universe, with Maeve's love interest even looking like a stereotypical punk lesbian. Which is then confirmed by the writers, who reveal that they're basing a lot of their decisions on trends and what "most Americans" are comfortable seeing.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Starlight figures out that the password to Stormfront's laptop is the name of her mother "Adele".
• Patriotic Fervor: Homelander tries to inspire this in the crowd at the rally, invoking soldiers he fought alongside for the freedom of all Americans... until a trooper from 101st Airborne shouts "You don't speak for us!" and the crowd goes into a frenzy.
• Power Perversion Potential: Homelander and Stormfront's statuses as Flying Bricks means using their powers to have rough interplay in their Destructo-Nookie. The most notable one is Homelander lasering Stormfront in the chest at the latter's request.
  Stormfront: Oh, it hurts. [Beat] Don't stop!
• Professional Killer: Kimiko takes such work under the Albanian mob, with Cherie getting a cut. Frenchie is not happy that she's going down the same dark path that he did.
• Propaganda Machine:
  • Using mostly memes depicting Homelander as a lesser/necessary evil that is fighting for America against Super-Terrorists, among other arguments, Stormfront and her team manage to get his image cleaner despite having been caught on camera slaughtering people.
  • The Church of the Collective is working at rehabilitating The Deep; he's gotten married and is making Church videos where he speaks out against sexual harassment and bullying.
• Put on a Bus: Happens in the movie Vought is making; A-Train gives a big farewell speech because he's been fired from the Seven.
• Queer Colors: Spoofed when the marketing department of the lesbian (actually bi) Maeve wants her to wave a rainbow flag. Maeve is not amused.
• Raised Hand of Survival: The opening scene shows the female hacker in the Dawn of the Seven spot raising her hand from the rubbles.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: In-Universe, A-Train gets Put on a Bus in the movie because he's off the Seven.
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: Kimiko and Cherie are working as hitmen for the Albanian mob, with their target in this episode being The Mafiya.
• Safety in Muggles:
  • By calling in the local fire brigade to check on a natural gas leak Mother's Milk manages to delay Black Noir's attack long enough for the group to prepare for it.
  • Elena refuses to participate in Vought's publicity machine, but Maeve knows that keeping her in the public eye is the only protection she has from Homelander.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Elena had it with being part of Vought marketing in just a few minutes
  Elena: Ok, let's get one thing straight. I have no interest in being in a public relationship.
  Ashley: Oh, you will be compensated.
  Elena: I am not for sale.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Frenchie gets fed up with Kimiko using wanton murder to vent her rage and grief, and tells her to fuck off and kill as much as she likes if she wants it so bad before leaving.
  Frenchie: Go be a monster.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Between Terror and his newest girlfriend, the Junior Homelander Cuddle doll.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: The Russian gangsters are discussing the validity of a Puerto Rican playing the lead role in Hamilton when Kimiko comes for them.
• Shell-Shock Silence: When Black Noir tosses Billy across the room, the sound drowns out as we watch the aftermath from Billy's impaired point of view.
• Shooting Superman: Mother's Milk and Hughie, in desperation to get Billy out of the fight, shoot at Black Noir.
• Shout-Out:
  • Joss Whedon is stated to be responsible for the rewrites on Dawn of the Seven. Technically doubles as a jab at Justice League, which he significantly rewrote and refilmed after the departure of Zack Snyder, although Eric Kripke says that the slam was unintentional.
  • The Russian mobsters that fight Kimiko discuss Hamilton. One doesn't like the casting for Alexander Hamilton while the other points out the casting's intention. One of them then voices that they like Dear Evan Hansen.
  • Hughie compares his situation with trapping Judy's house to Home Alone, "except way less delightful."
  • Hughie catches Mother's Milk watching Outlander on his laptop.
• Shutting Up Now: Homelander stops his speech when the crowd chants for him to go away.
• Slave to PR: Homelander is trying to score literal popularity points to bounce back from Stormfront's prior anti-campaign. When he learns one of his recent vigilante actions cost him 9.5% of public support, rather than improving it, he's pissed. He goes over the edge when his further mishandling of the situation leads to public outcry and further drops.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Annie and Stormfront near the end of the episode, with both revealing each other's secret so that neither of them can be reported to Vought.
• So Much for Stealth: Terror's barking gives away that The Boys are hiding in the basement. Moments later a gas grenade comes tumbling down the air shaft.
• Stylistic Suck: Dawn of the Seven is everything anyone has ever accused your average superhero blockbuster of. Bad dialogue, overdone colour contrast, lackluster acting and progressive themes shoehorned in for nothing but image reasons, all written and produced by a committee chasing after target groups.
• Suicide by Cop: Butcher plans to just go out to Black Noir and go down fighting, until he snaps out by the end of the episode.
  Butcher: I'm knackered. I could use a little lie down.
• Take That!:
  • The writers really weren't fans of that moment in Avengers: Endgame where all the female heroes stand together. Once Vought gets a third female Supe onto the Seven, they milk the girl power angle for all it's worth, with a movie on the Seven having a scene where Starlight, Maeve and Stormfront stand together just so they can say "Girls get it done!".
  • Homelander mentions Joss re-working on the scene just filmed, a cringe-inducing bit of LGBT-themed schlock.
  • Hughie says that Vought have been hiding that Liberty and Stormfront are the same person by "moving her around like a Catholic priest".
  • Judy snarks that it's cheaper to buy prescription drugs from dealers illegally than it is from the privatized American healthcare industry legitimately.
• Team Pet: Billy's dog, Terror, is properly introduced in this episode. He previously made a cameo in the fourth episode of the first season.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: "Well, come on then, [Beat] cunt."
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Maeve sits, blank and silent, through the PR team's presentation of their shitty queer campaign.
• Token Minority: Maeve is being set up for LGBTQ representation by Vought after Homelander forcibly outed her on television, and much of the marketing by Ashley and the rest of Vought's teams are following this at his behest. They also want to get Elena further involved, wanting her in manly clothes because a same-sex couple without clear-cut roles isn't as marketable.
• Tranquil Fury: Kimiko while wiping the floor with the Russian mobsters.
• Twofer Token Minority: This is used In-Universe with the movie Dawn of the Seven. Ruby Cruz, Maeve's love interest, is not only lesbian but (to judge by her last name) also a Latina (no doubt purposefully matching with Elena, Maeve's real former lover, whom they want back together and made butch like Ruby).
• Underestimating Badassery: The Russian mook approaching Kimiko makes sexist slurs and performs a Villainous Face Hold before getting his face ripped off by her.
• Unholy Matrimony: By the end, Homelander and Stormfront, the two most evil members of the Seven, have gotten together, having sex all over his apartment (trashing the place in doing so).
• Unreadably Fast Text: Go ahead and try to read A-Train's revised script◊. You'll find it's full of self-gratification, complete with Homelander verbally fellating him. No wonder the director nixed it without a second thought.
• The Unreveal: Judy is about to reveal what tragedy struck Butcher's kid brother Lenny, when Black Noir sets off a booby trap upstairs.
• Unseen No More: Alistair Adana, the leader of the Church of the Collective, appears in an in-universe advert after being mentioned in passing previously.
• Unusual Euphemism: Ashley makes reference to Tinder dates "eating [her] paella."
• Villainous BSoD: A rare self-caused one, Homelander's imagining killing the protesters disturbs him greatly, followed by him later rewatching the footage and go through a minor Villainous Breakdown where he laughs and cries at himself.
• Waif-Fu: Kimiko is going through the gangsters with a combination of acrobatics and inhuman strength.
• Wall Bang Her: Homelander has sex with Stormfront up against the wall in his apartment.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Elena is furious with Vought's marketing and calls Maeve out for not saying anything about it.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: The Seven each have different reactions to how their movie is going, but it mostly shares this sentiment. Also carries over to their reactions to Vought's planned marketing.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Frenchie tries to talk Kimiko out of what she's doing, saying that she doesn't have to be a monster. He gives up after she rebuffs his advice yet again, and tells her she is a monster.
• You Go, Girl!: One of the themes of the Dawn of the Seven. Like everything else in that script, it's done with a subtlety of a bull in a china store.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Discussed. Billy plans to face Black Noir alone in order to buy time for his teammates to leg it. Hughie calls him out on his "blaze-of-glory jerk-off shit".
• Zero-G Spot: Homelander and Stormfront are last seen while having sex in mid-air via his flying ability.

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