Everything You Should Remember About 'The Boys' Before Season 2

There's a lot going on in The Boys, the Amazon Prime show based on the comic book series about a world in which superheroes are real, pledging their services to powerful corporations that run the world, and basically running amok, leaving loads of collateral damage in their wake and scheming behind the scenes. In the first season, we watched as the Vought corporation was nearly exposed for manufacturing people with superpowers and lying about the powers' origins, and the members of the Justice League-esque "The Seven" were revealed to be little better than the supervillains they fought against. In Season 2, the plots get thicker, the crimes get bloodier, and Homelander gets eviller and eviller. Here's a quick refresher to get you up to speed before you dive in to the new episodes.

Compound-V is the mysterious drug used by Vought's supes as a performance-enhancer and it's also something of a recreational drug among people with superpowers. Easily abused, it was the cause of A-Train's heart attack in the Season 1 finale. The Boys also discovered that Compound-V, far from being merely a performance-enhancing drug, is actually used by Vought to create superheroes out of normal people, often by injecting children and paying their families handsomely. Therefore, superpowers are not given by God, as the evangelical side wants the public to believe, nor are they inherited naturally, but created -- and therefore owned -- by a company. Homelander confessed at the end of the first season that he himself created the supervillains by supplying them with Compound-V.

In the last moments of Season 1, we find out that Billy Butcher's wife Becca is not only alive, but the mother to Homelander's son. It's not clear what exactly Homelander's intentions are here -- he could simply be showing this to Butcher to rile him up, or maybe he wants to see whether superpowers can be passed down to supes' offspring. Either way, the fact that he chose his blood-rival's ex-wife for this is pretty sadistic. Hoping nothing terrible befalls that poor kid.

Translucent was a member of The Seven right up until his untimely demise at the hands of The Boys, who, after capturing him and failing to pierce Translucent's bulletproof carbon metamaterial skin (which also gives him his invisibility powers), figure out that the best way to kill him is to… stick a bunch of C4 up his ass. When Homelander nearly busts up their hideout, The Boys decide they have to kill Translucent. He barters with Hughie for his life and tries to escape, but at the last second Hughie detonates the bomb. 

A long time coming, Deep was booted from The Seven after Starlight revealed his pattern of sexual assault. Deep was sent to Sandusky, Ohio for a "sabbatical," and was bored out of his mind, assaulted by a fan abusing his gills, and suffered a breakdown after his plea to be admitted back into The Seven was denied.

Midway through the first season, we learned that Maeve is actually a closeted bisexual, hiding her sexual orientation from the world (and from Homelander). Racked with guilt after Homelander convinced her to allow a plane full of people to die, she visited her former romantic partner Elena, but couldn't fully come clean to her. Her guilt at what she's done allows her to realize that Vought, and The Seven, are corrupt, and subtly protects Starlight against Homelander's suspicion. Homelander, though, is a true psycho, so no one's safe from him for long. 

Following a tip from a blackmailed supe, The Boys found a Triad hideout where Japanese gangsters imprisoned a young woman, whom they later learn is named Kimiko. Kimiko was used as a test subject, given superpowers by the Shining Light Liberation Army terrorist group, and is nonverbal, communicating only with Frenchie in sign language. Distrustful and violent, she escaped numerous times from The Boys until they saved her from a Vought black site in the finale, and she joins up with them. 

A former member of The Seven, Lamplighter, whose powers allow him to harness fire and blast it at people, mysteriously left the group, which opened up the position that was eventually filled by Starlight. Not much is known about Lamplighter's whereabouts, and we never see him in Season 1, but Amazon announced that in Season 2 he's played by former X-Man Shawn Ashmore, so he'll surely have a pivotal role in the new episodes. 

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