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Agreed. Plus Elena hasn't been a part of Maeve's life for several years, so doesn't actually know just how much Homlander has abused and terrorized her. The writers have given Maeve a lot of characteristics of a domestic abuse victim. I know I shouldn't bring science into this, but none of their offspring should inherit unless this universe operates by inheritance of acquired characteristics. I think Ryan having abilities is unique (or very rare), which is why Vought built that Truman Show compound for him.

Quite silly, but my favorite bit was Kimiko polishing her brass knuckles. She got to show an emotion other than anger and sadness. I thought Shawn Ashmore did a great job. It's interesting to show one of the Supes with a conscience. In the flashback, what did Mallory have on Lamplighter? It looked like she was blackmailing him but I'm not sure what it was. Was Maeve being naive? "I'll use this recording to blackmail Homelander" without realizing that Elena would see her as just as monstrous? Don't even know what to think about A-Train drinking the Collectivologist Kool-Aid. That whole plot looks busy work. I don't know why they need that. It's not like Chase Whatshisname is some big famous actor that they have to give more scenes to than the character warrants. Comic relief I guess. (Of course, as I write that, next episode the Church will probably become pivotal).

I really hope that isn't the case. They've already done the "Butcher relative who was thought to be dead is actually alive" thing once. Going to that well again would be lazy.

So dude on the phone with Stormfront (played by Shawn Ashmore) was Lamplighter apparently who is now an orderly at an asylum? Okay. All of Stormfront's emails were addressed to Cedar Grove, which is where he works, and have titles like "latest incident" and "Phase 12 Timetable". I saw a YouTube review video that said the emails were about her meme campaigns but I don't think that's right. It sounded like Stormfront is having Lamplighter do something to a 17 year old resident of that facility. Just speculating, but maybe that's the source of her eternal youth.

Kimiko the hitman was something. I literally yelped when she TORE A GUY'S FUCKING FACE OFF. There's an image that's going to linger. So is the StormLander S&M scene. Katie Couric being involved in a fictitious broadcast was on brand I guess. I still don't get where Deep's story is headed, and he's such a buffoon that I'm losing interest. No Billy Joel song, surprisingly. Or I missed it. Butcher's aunt's accent was horrific. I thought she sounded Australian. Some of the time. When Maeve told her girlfriend that they were going to take down Homelander, I figured she was just saying that in order to mollify Elena. Then Maeve showed up at Deep's book giveaway, and I realized she is both serious and stupid. If I were looking to take down Homelander, he would be one of the last people I'd recruit, unless she's setting him up as cannon fodder. I don't know, maybe she's concocting a scheme and Deep is going to be the fall guy who takes the blame if it goes wrong, but that's not plausible since in a situation like that, the patsy can't be a complete nitwit.

Homelander concluded that he doesn't need anyone, and throughout the episode he was doing a good job of alienating everyone around him. Outed Maeve Fired A-Train Attacked Starlight Threatened Stormfront Questioned Maria Menounos's journalistic integrity It reminded me of the set-up for an Agatha Christie style murder mystery. Asshole victim pisses off multiple people, giving them each motives for wanting him dead. If they actually killed him, it'd be like a variation on the locked-room mystery: instead of "how could a killer get out of the locked room?" it'd be "how could a killer kill the unkillable?"

Yeah, I was clock watching for most of it. I managed to keep from fast forwarding, but it was a close call. I think part of the reason it was so boring was that it was pretty predictable. The only thing that caught me off guard was Liberty = Stormfront. Now I wonder if she had another alias in the 1940s and was a contemporary of Soldier Boy. Hell, compound V is such a deus ex pharmacum, maybe she is Soldier Boy. Not one but two "sex with an ex" scenes I dunno, maybe it's supposed to be symbolic of Hughie and Butcher being more alike that they would admit. Didn't really care because it was obvious where each of them were going. I thought it was hilarious (in a bad writing way) that Annie and Hughie were making NO effort to hide their identities while talking in broad daylight on a busy NYC street.

That'd be an interesting fight. Maybe Stormfront would be able to eventually overload Starlight like an overcharged battery. Then we could see another character's head asplode! [/retch]

Logically Starlight's threat to expose A-Train for Popclaw's murder shouldn't work. However, A-Train is fundamentally a weak person who is easily bullied and manipulated. He never really asserts himself, but just goes along with what people tell him to do. Homelander makes him into a compound V drug runner, he does it. Vaught PR says "say you're single, it's better for your numbers" so he denies being in a relationship with Popclaw, even though he does seem to genuinely care about her. He's weak, so Starlight standing up to him immediately cowed him.

David Goyer is involved? Wonderful, he's managed to fuck up so many other things, why not this. It looks like they're adding action and fighting and splosions because all SF has to have that now. I'm guessing it'll be as faithful to the source material as I Robot was, in that they'll both be in English.

Right now I'm kind of disliking Butcher a LOT. He keeps holding back vital information until it bites them in the ass. He didn't tell the others about his deal with Mallory, so when he took a shot at Kamiko's brother it looked like an asshole move. Later he didn't tell them that he'd stolen the boat until after the cops arrived. Maybe his diversion that kept Homelander from killing Hughie is the start of him being less of an asshole, but I doubt it.

The producers must really like Billy Joel. I imagined Kripke saying "we paid for the rights to Under Pressure so we're going to use the entire fucking song."

Shocked, shocked am I, that someone named Stormfront turned out to be a bigot! Rolled my eyes that the Deep made it from Sandusky to the east coast that quickly,

I think Singing Gills is the new Jingle Cats.

They managed to up the gruesome factor, somehow. I've never watched so much television with my peripheral vision. Really liking Stormfront so far. Her DGAF attitude is enjoyable. She's essentially the writers saying "sure, the PR slick packaging shown in season 1 wouldn't really work, because social media and general cynicism would pull back the curtain."

I agree. When Serac's henchman confronted Caleb and said something along the lines of "I've been waiting for you!" I was very confused. He said it like they've been long time rivals / antagonists, but for the life of me I didn't know who that dude was. So their epic battle in which Caleb almost dies but finally gets the upper hand and vanquishes his foe got about the same reaction as when Dolores gunned down a bunch of literally faceless cops. Meh?

I did like that the government was using a Delos park for training soldiers. That was a nice "oh, yeah, that makes sense". I just wish they'd called it something besides Park 5. Do other guests get to visit that park? Otherwise the general population of guests might wonder "parks 1,2,3,4 and 6... what's 5?" Kind of like when the Cylon models were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. Also, having Dolores in park 5 was just dumb. See, they've met before! Also also, Dolores saying she picked Caleb from the beginning is serious retconning bullshit. After he rescued her in the tunnel, she asked her digital assistant to give her Caleb's file. If she'd chosen him from the beginning she'd already have it. Retconning between seasons is bad enough, but they couldn't maintain continuity in between episodes.

Shit. I didn't know there was an after credits scene. Synopsis?

The old-age makeup on Gina Torres looked pretty good. Usually they overdo it but she looked mid-70s. I enjoyed that scene between her and Bernarnold -- I just wish they'd had it in a different episode. It was a nice character moment that felt startlingly out of place compared to the rest of this shitfest. Was Lawrence the 5th Dolores copy? Other than to give that actor a day's work, why? It felt very fanservicey. The action scenes were ridiculously over the top and stupid and tediously long. And repetitive. I felt like it was directed by Michael Bay. Why would Rehoboam obey an order to destroy itself? It's supposed to be sentient. Okay, maybe Serac built in a self-destruct that Caleb accessed, but that just kicks the can down the road: why would Serac put in a self-destruct in the first place? Most of Dolores's speeches were overwritten and meaningless. I could see that they were going for something profound, but they failed. It certainly wasn't comparable to Dr. Ford discussing Michelangelo's painting of the human brain in Season 1. William seemed superfluous. I mean, he's been pretty unnecessary the entire season, but it really felt tacked on here. Overall, a crap episode to cap off a crap season.

The series finale commentary for BSG had the tell-tale comment of writers who didn't know what they're doing: "We realized that it's about the characters." Which is code for "we don't know how to make a coherent plot out of this mess". So 1/2 of the finale was flashbacks. A year later, Lost did the same shit. Yes, I'm still salty about both of those. I am concerned that Westworld is heading down that path.

I can sort of maybe head-canon this: Maeve is working for Serac, who owns the cold storage facility where his own brother is currently on ice, so he doesn't want her going in there with guns blazing and accidentally damage any of the gear. Except she's using a fucking gatling gun on a helicopter, and Serac wired an EMP to destroy all the electronics in the building which would probably kill all the corpsicles. So yeah, I got nothing besides "we thought it'd look cool." Or maybe Maeve using a katana after having fought Musashi who used to use a katana was symbolic of... yeah, I still don't get symbolism. I give up. The best explanation so far. I guess we can be thankful she didn't come to the fight dressed as Sailor Moon.

Portal 2 song works too: So here we are again It's always such a pleasure Remember when you tried to kill me twice? Oh how we laughed and laughed Except I wasn't laughing. Under the circumstances I've been shockingly nice

Another "freeze frame and compare" bullshit item: apparently Caleb and William have the same patient ID number in the reprogramming center's database. Make of that what you will.

That EMP sure was selective. It took out Maeve and Dolores, Solomon, probably the life support for the rest of the facility, but didn't affect Caleb's drip or the device Solomon gave him with the Final Scenario on it. Some of the dialog is just horrific: Caleb: [looking at the facility from a ways away] "Who are they?" Dolores: [I'm paraphrasing] "They're the people who took your life away from you." Caleb: [stares off towards the facility again. Dude, ask a follow up question! "Yeah, so that was cryptic, can you tell me what the fuck you meant?"

William isn't dead. Bernard was showing him that the "U" category people like him were being disappeared and their records falsified to show they were dead.