Warning: SPOILERS for The Boys season 3.
While The Boys has no problem with killing off plenty of characters, the choice to bring back Stormfront in season 3 is a pretty pointed satire of the MCU’s treatment of death in superhero media. It is infamously hard to make death matter in superhero movies, comics, and television shows. While there have been some moving, poignant, and shocking deaths in superhero stories over the years, by and large, the fact that many superheroes are nigh-on invulnerable (combined with the fact that viewers want to see them succeed) makes the permanent deaths of characters the exception rather than the rule.
However, the MCU has spent the last few years working out a way around this issue. As a result, the MCU satire of The Boys season 3 has changed its approach to death, too. As proven by one shocking return early on in The Boys season 3, the show has managed to make a character not dying as effective and unexpected as a character being killed off.
The MCU has learned how to make death matter in a superhero franchise, a hard trick to pull off when many of its characters have varying degrees of plot armor. In contrast, The Boys has always had a much more cavalier, blackly comic approach to character deaths. For example, the events of the series are set in motion by The Boys’ parody of the Flash, A-Train, obliterating an innocent civilian by running clean through her while high on Compound V. Now, however, to effectively parody the MCU, The Boys season 3 needs to change its approach to major character deaths. The show pulls this off with Stormfront’s return, which refuses to give season 2’s biggest villain the dignity of a meaningful death. Instead, she’s a raving shadow of her former self, and an embodiment of the show’s ethos— that superpowers (along with fame and riches) insulate these characters from the consequences of real life, leaving them in a gilded cage.
What makes the death scenes of the MCU so unusual within superhero media is their ability to make viewers mourn characters who are usually nigh-on indestructible. Whether it is because of their immense wealth and near-superhuman intelligence (in Iron Man’s case) or their world-class survival skills (in Black Widow’s case), the MCU’s most meaningful deaths occur to characters who viewers implicitly assume can’t be killed. In contrast, The Boys season 3 bringing back Stormfront shows that the series refuses to kill off the characters who viewers wish would die for good.
A rabid white nationalist and monstrous Nazi, Stormfront is arguably the most reprehensible villain in the rogues’ gallery of atrocious characters who appear on The Boys. Showing that her immense wealth, privilege, and literal superpowers ensured her survival in the face of certain death allows The Boys season 3 to underline the idea that nothing ever really hurts the super-rich, successful celebrities, and other elites that the show’s supes represent. Despite how disempowered they may appear in temporary defeat, the amoral MCU parodies of The Boys can survive almost anything and still never learn a thing, as proven by Stormfront’s shocking return.
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Read More About The Boys Season 3
- The Boys’ Soldier Boy Is the Only Hero Considered Homelander’s Equal
- Butcher’s Last Words to Homelander Reveal He’s The Boys’ True Villain
- Butcher’s New Season 3 Powers Will End In Disaster
- The Boys Version Of Thor Uses The Infinity Gauntlet In The Grossest Way
- How The Boys Fixes Season 2’s Compound-V Problem
- Why Vought Desperately Needs Soldier Boy In The Boys Season 3
- The Boys Season 3: Vought’s Zombie Army Theory Explained
- Every The Boys Season 3 Plot Theory Explained
- How Many Episodes Are In The Boys Season 3 (& When Is The Finale)?
