S04.E03: We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

[paulvdb]

Quote

This December at VoughtCoin Arena, experience the story of Christmas the way it was meant to be told... on ice! Vought Presents Vought on Ice! Tickets available now at VoughtOnIce.com!

Premiere date: June 13, 2024

[AnimeMania]

[AnimeMania]

What was that metal rod on Sister Sage's table next to her Bloomin' Onion?

[Linderhill]

from what I hear Sister Sage stabbed herself in the brain to help give herself a thinking break.

[Chicago Redshirt]

6 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

What was that metal rod on Sister Sage's table next to her Bloomin' Onion?

I think the Sister Sage we saw in that last scene was supposed to be of lower-than-normal intelligence based on her choice of TV, food, vocabulary and sex partners. (Sorry, Deep, but it seems to me that the only worse possible choice than a dumb-ass rapist with body esteem issues who belonged to a cult and is into banging octopi for a sex partner is Homelander, a narcissistic psychopathic rapist with a superiority/inferiority complex who would just as soon kill you as look at you and who has no senses of remorse or shame ).

So either that's a clue to a) that not being Sister Sage or b) Sister Sage having to do something to bring her intelligence up to "smartest person in the world" status, or like a previous poster suggested, that she did a do-it-yourself lobotomy to get away from the burden of being the world's smartest person.

BTW, I am sort of bummed at the supposed depiction of Sister Sage as the smartest person in the world and the whole plotline. Compare her to the sort of "smartest person in the world" in standard comics (or people who might be in contention for that title) like Reed Richards, Tony Star, T'Challa, Lex Luthor, Batman, Brainiac 5. 

Her plans have (thus far) seemed stupid and easily foilable:

1. Let's beat a bunch of Homelander stans to death and blame it on Starlight stans. Even against the backdrop of chaos, wouldn't she expect some people to notice A-Train whooshing three dead bodies in the crowd? Or couldn't they pick Starlight fans who don't have an obvious alibi? Or kidnap them/drug them/do whatever to make the frame tighter? Why would Vought keep the video footage that provides an obvious alibi instead of leaving it in Crime Analytics? We'll give A-Train the benefit of the doubt that he managed to cover his own tracks. But how did she get fooled into thinking the random woman might have been the leak? Like if she were, wouldn't there be more forensic evidence showing she had the means and opportunity to find the exonerating footage and get it to Starlight in a relatively limited timeframe? I get that Homelander is dumb enough to leap to the conclusion that because she talked to Starlight a month ago she could have been the leak, but she should be clever enough to know better. Why would the world's smartest person interrogate a possible suspect in leaking the footage in Homelander's presence, knowing what a wild card he is? 

2. How/why did she let herself be put front and center as part of the Seven in the sort of costume she didn't want when it doesn't serve her interests? I get that it's to be for laughs but still....

3. Why Homelander, Sage and Neuman meeting anywhere in semi-public when they must have a half-dozen better ways to get together in secret?

4. Why would Vought apparently not even try to profit off of her and her intelligence?

5. Her plan to have Firecracker and Splinter kill the Boys was pretty garbo. 

Another question: the show has established that Homelander is basically all-powerful in this universe and has no remorse, has superspeed, and now has all the resources of Vought behind him, including an army of publicists, a massive surveillance network, a propaganda network, numerous Supe followers, countless fans, much of the government as fans, etc. So as far as I'm concerned, there isn't ever going to be a good reason why the Boys are still alive. He literally could kill them any  time he wants, and has all the info at his disposal to do it whenever he wants. How can he plausibly be outrun by Hughie on Hughie's own? Sure, I'll buy that A-Train got a call from MM, and was able to save the day at that point. But why isn't Homelander able to smell or otherwise detect A-Train? Why can't Homelander figure out how/when to strike at Hughie whenever he wants to? He has to be able to figure out where Hughie's dad is, and how to draw Hughie out.

Why the elaborate schemes within schemes to knock down Starlight? Why not just kill her too?

[baldryanr]

13 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Why the elaborate schemes within schemes to knock down Starlight? Why not just kill her too?

Because part of him wants to be universally loved.  That means he has to turn all of the public against Starlight first - if she dies now she's a martyr.

[Chicago Redshirt]

2 minutes ago, baldryanr said:

Because part of him wants to be universally loved.  That means he has to turn all of the public against Starlight first - if she dies now she's a martyr.

I mean from Sister Sage. I can understand why Homelander might want to humiliate Starlight or have other emotional needs he would be seeking to fill in not just killing/disappearing Starlight or the Boys or whoever. But Sister Sage isn't coming at this from an emotional/revenge driven place.

As the most brilliant person in the world, she thinks it important to dredge up an old pageant circuit rival of Starlight's to take potshots at her with crazy conspiratorial claims that are believed by a fringe group of people and that are frankly never going to persuade anybody inclined to like and believe Starlight in the first place.

Maybe when the season's done it will make sense why Sister Sage has chosen this to be how she is starting off her grand scheme. But right now, it doesn't to me.

[Affogato]

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

 

Maybe when the season's done it will make sense why Sister Sage has chosen this to be how she is starting off her grand scheme. But right now, it doesn't to me.

She wants to control Homelander as the power behind the throne. The stuff she is doing, the manipulation, impresses Homelander and strokes his ego and his is always thinking how smart she is, it is a job interview. 

Edited June 14 by Affogato
Typo

[Affogato]

On 6/13/2024 at 10:33 PM, Linderhill said:

from what I hear Sister Sage stabbed herself in the brain to help give herself a thinking break.

Remind me not to do that. We’ve seem some awful things though, like the interaction of bulimia with compound V.   Maybe she gets smarter every time she has head trauma. 

[iMonrey]

On 6/13/2024 at 10:24 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

So as far as I'm concerned, there isn't ever going to be a good reason why the Boys are still alive. He literally could kill them any  time he wants, and has all the info at his disposal to do it whenever he wants. How can he plausibly be outrun by Hughie on Hughie's own?

This is more or less where I landed at the end of Season 3. The show is stuck. It's fallen into the same trap a lot of other shows have fallen into - when there is a great villain character who really needs to die or otherwise disappear, but is too popular, too fun, too important, etc., to write off the show. So we're stuck in an endless loop. 

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

This is more or less where I landed at the end of Season 3. The show is stuck. It's fallen into the same trap a lot of other shows have fallen into - when there is a great villain character who really needs to die or otherwise disappear, but is too popular, too fun, too important, etc., to write off the show. So we're stuck in an endless loop. 

HL is in a trauma bond with Butcher

[Quickbeam]

Vought on Ice was as deliciously awful as I expected. 

Edited June 15 by Quickbeam
Typo

[shrewd.buddha]

On 6/13/2024 at 11:24 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

I am sort of bummed at the supposed depiction of Sister Sage as the smartest person in the world and the whole plotline.

"Smartest person on Earth" is an easy tagline - but to actually demonstrate that type of ability requires smart writers. 
There is a possibility a person could be very smart but have no ambition to gain wealth or pursue scientific research - - but it is very doubtful.

 

16 hours ago, iMonrey said:

The show is stuck. It's fallen into the same trap a lot of other shows have fallen into - when there is a great villain character who really needs to die or otherwise disappear, but is too popular, too fun, too important, etc., to write off the show. So we're stuck in an endless loop. 

Hughie and Starlight, Frenchie and Kimiko, Butcher and M.Milk: they are all going through rinse-and-repeat story beats. 
After you have braced yourself for gross-out death and sex scenes, there's not a lot left for the show to offer. 

[overtherainbow]

No hate to the young actor but I swear the kid playing Ryan looks like he's 12-13 (I think they mentioned he's supposed to be 12) yet still sounds like a 7 year old. I have no idea if that's intentional or if he still talks like that and is just like Ralph Macchio with the late puberty but it's thrown me for a loop. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

3 hours ago, overtherainbow said:

No hate to the young actor but I swear the kid playing Ryan looks like he's 12-13 (I think they mentioned he's supposed to be 12) yet still sounds like a 7 year old. I have no idea if that's intentional or if he still talks like that and is just like Ralph Macchio with the late puberty but it's thrown me for a loop. 

His voice is really strange. I don't know if it's on purpose or that's just his voice. 

[overtherainbow]

40 minutes ago, Mr. Sparkle said:

His voice is really strange. I don't know if it's on purpose or that's just his voice. 

For real! I wonder if he's going through puberty but has been instructed to deliberately keep his voice really young

[arachne]

On 6/15/2024 at 5:07 PM, Quickbeam said:

Vought on Ice was as deliciously awful as I expected. 

And I was thrilled to hear the whole "Keep Christ in Christmas" song during the closing credits. Every bit as disgustingly, beautifully earnest as I'd imagined! 

[FishyJoe]

So Homelander has super hearing and smell, but can't detect Hughie, A-Train or MM who are all within spitting distance of him? 

Edited June 18 by FishyJoe

[RobertDeSneero]

Part of me wonders if Sage is playing the long con with some sort of anti-Vought or anti-Homelander plot.

[Affogato]

On 6/16/2024 at 6:01 AM, shrewd.buddha said:

"Smartest person on Earth" is an easy tagline - but to actually demonstrate that type of ability requires smart writers. 
There is a possibility a person could be very smart but have no ambition to gain wealth or pursue scientific research - - but it is very doubtful.

 

Hughie and Starlight, Frenchie and Kimiko, Butcher and M.Milk: they are all going through rinse-and-repeat story beats. 
After you have braced yourself for gross-out death and sex scenes, there's not a lot left for the show to offer. 

Sage is really good at manipulation. I’m not sure that means ‘smart’ and it may mean she is naturally a psychopath, because she seems to never pause to consider anyone else before putting her plans in motion.

I don’t think they are ‘rinse and repeat’, I find that the story lines are being enriched and given nuance. As often happens with shows I think, once upon a time this would have been one season (more or less) and this is the beginning of the second season. This season, now that we know the characters, a lot of stress is put on them and we start to see the cracks. Pieces of the paint flake off, we see underneath the surface of the characters. A train, included, we have seen some real, if small, evidence of remorse and self awareness. 

I’m glad that the characters are being developed in this way, myself.

[tennisgurl]

On 6/16/2024 at 11:29 AM, overtherainbow said:

No hate to the young actor but I swear the kid playing Ryan looks like he's 12-13 (I think they mentioned he's supposed to be 12) yet still sounds like a 7 year old.

He might be deliberately playing Ryan as younger than he is because Ryan has been extremely isolated his whole life, really only having his mom (who deliberately kept him away from anything that wasn't super g rated) and sometimes Vaught people, he never really had a chance to meet kids his own age or have real life experiences to help him grow. Its certainly better than how Homelander was raised but its also clearly left a mark on him. 

Homelander blowing up at Ryan did, weirdly, make me feel bad for him. I feel worse for Ryan, but Homelander does seem to actually love Ryan in his own way and he does seem to want to be a good parent, but he has no idea how to have real connections with people. 

Vaught on ice was as brilliantly awful as I hoped it would be. 

[Blue Plastic]

On 6/16/2024 at 3:41 PM, overtherainbow said:

For real! I wonder if he's going through puberty but has been instructed to deliberately keep his voice really young

Maybe that's what it is. At times I've thought his voice sounded lower, but now it sounds like they dubbed in someone else's voice almost!

[rmontro]

On 6/15/2024 at 12:58 PM, iMonrey said:

This is more or less where I landed at the end of Season 3. The show is stuck. It's fallen into the same trap a lot of other shows have fallen into - when there is a great villain character who really needs to die or otherwise disappear, but is too popular, too fun, too important, etc., to write off the show. So we're stuck in an endless loop. 

Yeah, I thought they should have let Soldier Boy depower Homelander at the end of Season Three, and let Soldier Boy become the new threat.  And/or let Homelander slowly regain his powers, or give them back to him at some point down the road, if they wanted to keep him around.  Or go in a completely different direction. But I imagine they're following the comic book story (which I haven't read).

[roamyn]

I pretty much dislike all The Boys except Hughie, MM, and Frenchi.

Butcher's an ass and a bully and he was going to poison Ryan, Kimiko gleefully kills (esp last season when she killed those innocent guards who were just doing their duty), Starlight's a nasty bully who never apologized for spreading disgusting rumors abt a 13 yr old girl yet wants sympathy when she's assaulted.

Poor Ryan looks confused, lost, and depressed.  His father isn't helping when he bullies his son, either.  He would've been so much better off if the group had left SB alone & Ryan's powers were taken away last season.

I think I'm liking A-Train more & more than the rest.  I hope the redemption arc continues.

SS has got to have some hidden agenda, I believe.

And I can't believe how much I felt for Firecracker, even if she is a wack job conspiracy spreader.

Let me also say that I enjoy hearing JDM'S sexy deep voice.  It's mesmerizing.

Edited July 18 by roamyn

[Hanahope]

Well I guess Maria from God U won’t be the first black woman in the 7 for sure.

Edited September 10 by Hanahope