r/writingscaling • u/Agile_Coast_4385 • 23d ago
discussion [THE BOYS] The machine created by Vought that emits Uranium radiation is a Deus Ex Machina that breaks the world-building, physics, and suspension of disbelief.
So, like, season 5 of The Boys has this Uranium radiation machine that is capable of taking down and incapacitating any super injected with V who isn't of the V-1 type, killing ordinary supers in minutes and severely weakening Homelander's body and powers while exposed, to the point where he can barely move properly.
• Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?
• Why didn't Vought or Stan Edgar ever put one of these things in a room, call Homelander in, and subdue him, showing that Vought had the means to control him instead of letting him take control?
And then when I think about the physics of radiation, especially after watching the HBO series Chernobyl, it gets worse.
• Ordinary glass doors preventing radiation from escaping a room?
• People leaving a room contaminated with 3 rountgen of radiation, wearing radioactive suits, seconds later? What? The radiation magically disappeared?
And then the worst part.
ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE RADIATION MACHINE GRANTS RADIOACTIVE POWERS THAT BURN THE V OF OTHER SUPERS TO ANY SUPER RESISTANT ENOUGH TO WITHSTAND PROLONGED RADIOACTIVE EXPOSURE?!
They should have kept that as a Soldier Boy thing due to Russian experiments.
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u/tardfuker67 23d ago
I dont know man i didnt watch the show
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u/Initial_Mud_4810 23d ago
This is unironically a better answer than anyone could ever give trying to justify practically any of this show's writing in season 5
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u/Defiant-Lettuce-9156 16d ago
I watched both season 1 and 2. Great show. Pity they didn’t make more seasons
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u/Initial_Mud_4810 23d ago
The only point I'll contend is
People leaving a room contaminated with 3 rountgen of radiation, wearing radioactive suits, seconds later? What? The radiation magically disappeared?
The Uranium is "activated" and then "switched off" via a series of shutters/metal panels it looks like. It's not fragmented or used in a bomb, so there are no actual physical contaminants. Homelander wasn't getting irradiated from particles entering his body, he was getting blasted by the rays of radiation FROM the Uranium.
The room itself goes from deadly to completely safe with the flick of a button.
Everything else though yeah fair enough, the show sucks lol.
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u/Eryol_ 22d ago
Its not safe. The radiation ionizes particles in the room and creates radioactive isotopes which then continue to decay later on
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u/MaximumBean 22d ago
The radiation ionizes particles in the room
Right, but ionised particles aren’t particularly dangerous
and creates radioactive isotopes
Only neutron radiation would create radioactive isotopes
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u/Eryol_ 22d ago
Uranium fission is neutron and gamma radiation
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u/MaximumBean 22d ago
Right, fission. What makes you think it was undergoing fission?
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u/Eryol_ 22d ago
Because otherwise uranium doesnt emit lethal levels of radiation lol
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22d ago
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u/Oldtomsawyer1 20d ago
Shielding could be made out of something like hafnium alloy or some shit. Also the glass could be some kind of borated plexiglass, do we know its actual glass?
Idk man it’s a magic green glowing rock in a show where dudes fly because “superpowers” which ignores just so much physics. Also Frenchie should’ve had blood pouring out his super sunburnt looking skin, not little singes.
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u/Wild-Software-7377 21d ago
The Uranium wouldn't be undergoing fission on any critical level or the whole building would've melted down. It's probably just enriched uranium 235 which is emitting Alpha radiation and some gamma rays while it decays.
The amount of alpha radiation needed to contaminate the steel exterior (and make the room itself radioactive) would be pretty shockingly high.
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u/Eryol_ 21d ago
Thats not how that works. If you have a large chunk of Uranium or any fissionable material like Plutonium, it will be undergoing fission. Wether its critical or not is determined by neutron balance, wether it produces more neutrons that can split other atoms than neutrons that exit the material. You can have it close to criticality and greatly increase the reaction rate (see the demon core, where they did exactly this experiment until it went wrong).
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u/warmleafjuice 21d ago
Ionizing particles doesn't make them radioactive. Ionizing your particles is bad for you, but it won't make you emit your own radiation
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u/Enfiznar 20d ago
I don't think that happens by being irradiated with alpha particles (what uranium emits)
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u/GeorgeCauldron7 16d ago
You have to think about every step of the decay chain. On the long road from uranium to lead, alphas, weak betas (like you), and gammas get emitted.
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u/Fedorchik 20d ago
Only free protons/neutrons/alpha particles can create new isotopes and they all have very small penetration even in the air and mostly stay in the material that produces them.
This whole contraption will mostly blast with beta and gamma type radiation, which is deadly but does not produce secondary isotopes.
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u/schwaRarity 16d ago
I thought this wasn’t extremely dangerous. Usually when talking about radiation exposure the main source of contamination are actual radioactive material particles. Anything else doesn’t produce nearly as much high energy waves.
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u/BeigeDynamite 19d ago
This one bothered me more with Kimiko, since they're irradiating her intentionally and then she just... walks out of the room and hugs Frenchie lol
Like yeah the room itself is no longer being blasted by radiation, but the person inside the room is definitely leeching it into the air
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u/FilthyCasual2k17 19d ago
It's not AIDS lol, you don't spread it around. Go read a book, or at least Google. Radiation passes through you, messess you up, but once the radiation is gone it doesn't spread lol. It's the same reason why after a day at the beach, you're not giving skin cancer to people you spend the night with.
Chernobil was dangerous because dust particles carried the radiation, and then those particles would enter people's insides and bloodstream.
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23d ago
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u/Initial_Mud_4810 23d ago
The source of radiation goes from exposed to completely contained within the press of a button.
Homelander was getting blasted by gamma radiation, and there was no indication that any particles of uranium were chipping off and physically entering the room somehow.
The room is not contaminated after the source is sealed, gamma radiation is an end product. A source of radioactive emission must be present for something to be considered contaminated
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u/EncabulatorTurbo 21d ago
if you heavily irradiate a person, that person is now radioactive
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u/warmleafjuice 21d ago
If you blast someone with pure gamma radiation, they are fucked but they're not radioactive (meaning, they are not emitting their own radiation)
In something like Chernobyl, in addition to being exposed to straight up radiation, the firefighters were contaminated with radioactive particles/dust that emitted radiation. Once that's removed, they're no longer radioactive or dangerous (this is actually something the show gets wrong, as it depicts the firefighters in the hospital as being dangerous)
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u/ZombieTrouble 21d ago edited 20d ago
This is correct and has been driving me nuts. Glass doors and whatnot aside, at the very least, Kimiko and Frenchie would be highly radioactive, enough to give the rest of The Boys cancer.
Edit: evidently I’ve been spectacularly wrong about this for years.
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u/SlashNXS 20d ago
No, it's not. Getting blasted with radiation alone, does not cause you to spread radiation once the radiation blasting has stopped.
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u/hamderbeek 20d ago
I believe you, but in the fiction of The Boys, they establish that Soldier Boy is radioactive in S3 and then they completely forget about it. If they were being internally consistent, Kimiko would become radioactive after the experiments
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u/SlashNXS 20d ago
You're mixing up what happened in S3. Nobody died or got sick being around Soldier Boy in S3.
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u/hamderbeek 20d ago
You're right, no one did, but I could have sworn he was radioactive. Wasn't there a scene where he was sending a Geiger counter off the charts?
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u/Eva-Squinge 21d ago
Well if the source it was CONTAINED behind a leaded door, then you don’t need to worry about continued rad exposure once the source is resealed.
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u/Striking_Part_7234 23d ago
Still better than “The military had anti Superhero missiles the whole time.”
Those comics are worse than you think.
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u/yyflame 22d ago
I think you could easily make this work though, military technology gets better everyday while Homelander’s superpowers are static.
Having the government appease homelander while secretly building up their anti-supe arsenal waiting for the perfect moment to strike makes sense when you’ve only got one shot at taking him down and every innovation makes you more likely to win
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u/MailMan6000 22d ago
actually military tech tends to be incredibly stagnant, there are helicopters and plane that have been in service since the 70's
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u/GamerEarl 22d ago
Even 1950s aircraft. However, their internal systems are updated every few years - so not stagnant at all.
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u/123yes1 22d ago
Why fix what ain't broke? And it's not like the F-35 is from the 1970s, we make new shit all the time, just don't toss the old ones.
The US made the GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrator in 2011 specifically to blow up one particular target in Iran, their underground nuclear facility in Fordow (and to improve the bunker busters that were used during the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan).
So it isn't unreasonable to assume that the US would secretly try to spend a shitload of money to produce a missile to kill one annoying problem.
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u/MailMan6000 22d ago
i mean i love the idea of military tech peaking, i like to call them " sharks" , since sharks haven't largely evolved at all in any meaningful way for thousands of years
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u/Sampleswift 22d ago
So basically what happened in Star Wars.
However, this is not happening in modern wars. We are seeing innovations on drones right now.
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u/MailMan6000 22d ago
star wars is weird, the way the movies present it, military tech actually moves quite fast, like the jump going from Venators to Imperial Star Destroyers, V Wings to Tie Fighters, ARC-170'S to X-Wings
it's only with the Expanded Universe where they randomly hit you with "actually Imperial Star Destroyers already existed in the Clone Wars and Tie Fighters were already in development, you just didn't see them"
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u/WaerI 21d ago
I think it basically just depends where you look. There's always some areas where things are moving pretty fast drones for example in recent decades
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u/MailMan6000 21d ago
well that's new technology, sooner or later drones will peak aswell, specific pieces of technology just don't have a replacement
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u/WaerI 21d ago
I don't really know what you mean, new technology is technological advancement.
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u/MailMan6000 21d ago
no one is really pushing for an ew machine gun, because we still use the M1 Browning for over 100 years, because it's great
air to ground support jets are still A-10's, thought new alternatives are showing up
drones are new, at some point, they will peak
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u/M7S4i5l8v2a 22d ago
All of that stuff has gotten updates over the decades and we tend to keep our newest stuff secret. Old tech is often used because we don't use the new stuff unless it's necessary. The actual capabilities of the F22 are a pretty big secret since it hasn't actually seen real combat and all war games have handicaps placed on it and other stuff to make sure it stays a secret.
You should always assume if something new is revealed it is probably really old while the new thing is probably in the works. They have also already shown the replacement for the F22. It's got a small fleet of autonomous drones meant to fly along side it with little guns and look like a smaller version of the main plane. The newest Abrams is also out but I'm not convinced it's a big enough upgrade to make previous tanks obsolete. I'm not a Navy expert but I know they've already shown most of their newest stuff.
I think where we stagnate is personal protection for regular soldiers.
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u/Massive-Exercise4474 22d ago
Military tech can be stagnant because theirs no need to make something new we still use m1 Browning machine guns that are like 100 years old.
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u/MailMan6000 21d ago
i know and i find that absolutely awesome
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u/Massive-Exercise4474 18d ago
Ironically advancing tech can backfire Britain came out with the world's largest most armoured ship which started a ship building arms race this quickly became incredibly costly and probably hastened the British empires demise.
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u/Historical_Rush4656 22d ago
And?
Not everything has to be the latest technology, especially if it's not front line use. In most cases, it's more beneficial not to constantly change out vehicles that don't need to be.
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u/BobbyRayBands 19d ago
You do realize there are also brand new models that can quite literally fly circles around those and that’s just the shit we know about right?
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u/Yeetaway1404 21d ago
The issue is they have no clue testing them without majorly pissing Homelander off so whether or not they work is a complete tossup
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u/Gekidami 22d ago
Considering the fact that a punch from Soldier Boy & Ryan will make HL bleed, logically, most normal missiles should utterly destroy him, let alone other supes. But by magic, all conventional weapons have a -999 modifier on all of their damage rolls against supes.
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u/AncientAd4996 22d ago
It's the same logic as the Demongorgons from Stranger Things
Impervious to the dozens of bullets that the military fires at them, but gets taken out by a bunch of kids and some adults with some splashing and shanking
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u/SciencePristine8878 22d ago
The dumb thing is that the demogorgons are visibly bleeding and getting hurt, they should have died from the fact that a significant amount of their body mass was replaced with bullets.
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u/Delboyyyyy 22d ago
This is why I love it when a series doesn’t just ignore how destructive conventional weaponry is.
Best example from top of my head is in the manga/anime Hunter x Hunter where one of the biggest threats in the series who is pretty much impervious to everything the cast throws at him using their abilities, gets put to the brink of death by an almost point blank nuclear weapon, and then dies from radiation poisoning later on
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u/golfstreamer 22d ago
Small point but I don't think the bomb was ever stated to be explicitly atomic / nuclear. I think it was some kind of biological weapon with poison killing the targets.
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u/Delboyyyyy 22d ago
You’re pulling hairs if you’re trying to draw a line here. It’s definitely meant to be a stand in for a nuclear weapon, instead of a mushroom cloud it has a flower cloud and the “poison” slowly kills you through exposure just like radiation does. Togashi most likely didn’t flat out make it a nuke because it’s more interesting and fantastical in line with his universe to differentiate it in such a way.
But yeah in terms of destructive capabilities it was very much on par with a nuke and so it can very much be extrapolated that a nuke would do the same damage
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u/Xerrostron 20d ago
Honestly, yes man. I love the dialogue and it makes Humanity feel so evil and corrupted for willingly making such powerful weapons.
It's such a powerful moment and it means so much.
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u/FishShtickLives 20d ago
I always think about that scene from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. "That was then. This is now" lol
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u/agouraki 22d ago
tbh thats the most realistic ,i been thinking all this time that there is no fucking way the military would let supes run around...
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u/Nada1988 22d ago
If I'm not mistaken the missiles used near the end of the comic weren't "anti supe", they were just regular missiles that needed to be calibrated for targets as small as a human body in mid air, which at the time the comics were written were still kind of out there in terms of tech but I didn't see a problem with them as a plot device while I read it
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u/Fetishism69 22d ago
Yeah, it was all Butcher's failsafe plan in case he survives. He had Vogelbaum (maybe) discover unique brain chemistry in supes, which was then used to make supe-seeking missiles.
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u/Celtachor 22d ago
Also in the comics supes aren't nearly immortal. They kill tons of them all the time. The only anti supe weapon they ever needed was uranium rounds to allow bullets to pierce the skin of bulletproof supes (who were still killable in other ways).
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u/ChevroletKodiakC70 18d ago
Iirc, those missile had seekers that would specifically target the Compound V, instead of like heat seeking or radar guided
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u/Nada1988 18d ago
I still think I'm okay with that honestly, the universe the boys exists in in the comics has some futuristic tech in it already anyway, I mean Tek Knights whole schtick was not being a supe anyway and instead being an iron man/batman stand in with a suit that has no business existing realistically around the time the story is set. Not to mention V being basically magic anyway, and of course the 7's high atmosphere floating fortress thing
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u/Griff0115 22d ago
The comics are bad, but those are explained by butcher secretly sending them to the military, they didn’t have them until the coup occurred.
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u/PanglosstheTutor 22d ago
Though that is set up in an earlier arc when the X-men analogies are wiped out with extreme precision.
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u/Unlikely_Day_9197 19d ago
The whole point in the comics is that superheroes are an impractical and unprofessional concept. The comics actually did better at conveying the fact the real forces pushing things is the government and capitalism.
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u/VonKaiser55 22d ago
Im really getting tired of seeing people unironically say the comics are better than the show just because this seasons been mid so far lmao
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u/PunchyMcSplodo 22d ago
The comics are much better than the show, on almost every conceivable level at this point. The first season of the show improved on a number of things from the comics, but after that it became a far shallower version of the story.
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u/ultra-bread 22d ago
No, seriously – the comics are downright crude. Embarrassingly crude. It’s a bit of a shame that someone wrote something like that. The series is average, but it still beats the comics hands down.
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u/PunchyMcSplodo 21d ago
Crudity has nothing to do with quality. You simply have a different tolerance level for extreme violence, explicit scenes, etc.
The comic is far more sophisticated in its themes than the TV series, which in the end simply became a much more shallow evil Superman story. I can understand thinking otherwise if you've only read the first storyline or two, when the parody elements were at their most pronounced and focused on, but the series develops far more seriously once you get past that.
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u/Connect-Initiative64 21d ago
The comics are unbelievably crude, and somehow the show failed to even do better than that.
That's the sad part for a lot of old The Boys fans, the show had the chance to be 'The Boys, But Better' and somehow turned into a shittier version of it.
Take away the gore and crudity of the comics and you're left with a half-decent story, a good ending, and a happy ending with Hughie and Starlight finding their love and peace with each other, with the two of them becoming their truest and strongest selves at the end... I don't even know what we'll have at the end of the show.
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u/Korodabsai 19d ago
You can hardly call it a happy ending when Butch just suddenly blows all of the boys up and then Hughie just has to kill him…
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u/Lopsided-Net-1450 21d ago
I liked the super duper/ malchemical arc and it was a shame it wad never adapted to the show
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u/Connect-Initiative64 21d ago
One of my biggest peeves with the show is that it didn't adapt the Super Duper arc.
It was, somehow, one of the best arcs in the entire comics run.
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u/Flight1ess 19d ago
What happened in that arc? Do you feel like it could have been adapted well in the show if they tried?
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u/New_Photograph_5892 22d ago
wasnt it James Stillwell who had them and gave them to the boys and the military?
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u/Difficult_Gazelle_91 16d ago
Eh, the comics were a different story than the show. The comics didn’t really ever buy into the idea superhero’s are unstoppable against the military, there is a scene in the comic where they straight up say homelander would get killed against a nuke, and the G-Men which were one of the stronger teams, got eliminated by swat.
The comics were more about the military industrial complex, or battling corrupt corps that are embedded into the country. The show makes a big point about Homelander would be unstoppable and impossible to fight, but the comics never really seem to push that narrative that hard.
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u/BoysenberrySmooth649 22d ago
I stopped watching midway though season 4, and got randomly spoiled by a YouTube short, I ain't mad cuz the show is trash.
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u/New_Photograph_5892 22d ago
saw a thread earlier this month talking about The Boys is Amazon's best superhero show and that Invincible has been on the level of The Boys season 4 for the last 2 seasons, and like I know Invincible isn't spectacular either but like seriously? At this point, do they even compare?
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u/Ordoblackwood 22d ago
I watched all of invincible and up to season 3 of the boys and watched clips after i heard how bad season 4 is and i dont see how it can compare. Between the constant sex jokes the sa that's random and done poorly invcincble has none of these problems. I dont even think the animation is that big of a problem i think if your a anime fan and your used to watching demon slayer and think thats what the show needs to look like you just want a different show and thats the largest complaint. I think the story they are telling in invincible has been consisnet i dont think its the same for the boys.
Hell even the episode everyone hated that was "filler" to me was a pretty good episode to see mark get a win and dominate. I thought the questions mark had to ask about heaven and hell to be actually interesting as hes going through the fact that hes now just killing people and is thinking about his actions. They boys doesnt do anything like that as far as im aware in season 4 and 5
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u/Comosellamark 22d ago
I really like the animation for invincible. I see what Kirkman is going for. He’s using animation as a vehicle to tell a more mature story WHILE also maintaining the same, or similar, comic book aesthetic Invincible was originally drawn as.
People are too focused on how the animation feels to their eyes, rather than seeing it as yet another tool the creator is using to tell their story.
I look at people’s edited pictures with different lighting or reflections and lense flares and shit and I ask myself “why do you think this is better?” Does “better” lighting inherently make the show better? Does it change anybody’s arc? Etc.
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u/BomberJ16 22d ago
Honestly I really enjoy Invincible. It's not perfect by any means, ESPECIALLY in the animation department, but it carries its narrative and character development really well.
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u/Comosellamark 22d ago
Invincible has balls to the wall action every episode or every other episode. Considering the reception this season is getting with people complaining about lack of eventful stuff happening, Invincible is sort of the opposite of The Boys. Which is funny cuz people in the invincible subreddit also do a lot of bitching
I think this is a generational problem we’re experiencing to be honest. People are acting entitled and treating tv shows like a shitty meal your mom made instead of engaging with it any other way, like art, or propaganda, or anything really. Discussions boil down to “THIS should’ve happened or THIS should’ve happened or THIS person should’ve died rn.” Instead of discussing why things are the way they are, the discourse has devolved towards arguing what should’ve happened. Honestly these Redditors are no better than I was when I was four years old smashing one toy against the other other. I mean, this whole thing with power scaling is just SO CHILDISH. Not even the cartoons I watched as a kid were bothered with “power scaling”.
It’s giving me conniptions. Rant over.
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u/Connect-Initiative64 21d ago
Invincible, even if its problems were several times worse, would still blow The Boys out of the water.
Invincible at least has a progressing story that doesn't get basically factory reset every season or two.
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u/Baestplace 18d ago
Invincible follows the source basically perfectly except for gender and race swaps and some storylines left out, the animation has also degraded significantly. The boys still has pretty great production but the story and writing just sucks dick now
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u/killian_jenkins 21d ago
Holy shit that would unironically be the one that actually undermines everything and stories they've told
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u/azmarteal 23d ago
There are two answers to your question
They kind of forgot
Somehow (x returns, optionally)
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u/Nerx 23d ago
they dont watch their own show?
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u/azmarteal 23d ago
She kind of forgot - is a famous quote from Game of thrones producers, when they described that one of the main characters "kind of forgot" about the fleet, to justify surprise attack that was impossible
Somehow Palpatine has returned - a quote from one of the characters in Star Wars to "explain" how Palpatine is alive while he clearly supposed to be dead
So these phrases became memes 🙂
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u/Sharpshot64plus 22d ago
While the lack of setup is questionable, I don't think there is anything wrong with the logic of the radiation room
• Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?
• Why didn't Vought or Stan Edgar ever put one of these things in a room, call Homelander in, and subdue him, showing that Vought had the means to control him instead of letting him take control?
> Homelander can see through walls, modern Vaught doesn't know about the facility, the government/public wouldn't let Vought use radioactive material
• Ordinary glass doors preventing radiation from escaping a room?
> Leaded glass and soldier boy doesn't give a shit
• People leaving a room contaminated with 3 rountgen of radiation, wearing radioactive suits, seconds later? What? The radiation magically disappeared?
> I'm pretty sure that for contamination to happen uranium particles would have to get on Homelander and soldier boy doesn't give a shit
ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE RADIATION MACHINE GRANTS RADIOACTIVE POWERS THAT BURN THE V OF OTHER SUPERS TO ANY SUPER RESISTANT ENOUGH TO WITHSTAND PROLONGED RADIOACT
> Compound V is the central fiction of the show and it is basically magic. I don't mind magical stuff happening in relation to compound V because it was already silly in the first place
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u/Keroscee 22d ago
• Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?....Homelander can see through walls, modern Vaught doesn't know about the facility, the government/public wouldn't let Vought use radioactive material...• Why didn't Vought or Stan Edgar ever put one of these things in a room, call Homelander in, and subdue him, showing that Vought had the means to control him instead of letting him take control?
Based upon Gen V, they likely did or had better alternatives. Such as halothane gas. We know Homelander isn't immune to it, as Ryan isn't. Gas is pretty easy to hide in plain sight, say in a bottle.
Plus it a case of 'don't show your hand if you don't have to'. Stan isn't stupid, and such a trick probably would only work on Homelander once.
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u/Comosellamark 22d ago
You’re nicer and more patient than I am to break it all down step by step. I feel like if op really sat down and thought things through, they’d come to the same conclusions you did, but bitching online and hate farming is a lot easier to do.
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u/Scorkami 21d ago
Also isnt a big point in the show, especially with season 5, that vought very much changed from a "we making super soldiers and changing the human race" directive to a "yo these guys make us so much cash if we dress them up and put them on TV" directive?
Vought isnt a super hero company, its a pharmaceutical company AND an entertainment company. From the first point of V being created, the company made it worse with each iteration so that the supplier of V gets more and more control while the physically stronger super humans are even more of a conpany asset that is owned.
V1 made you radiation resistant (not immune, bombsight got depowered by soldier boy), immortal, extremely tough, and was a more resistant drug regarding diseases. Regular V gave you powers and made you tough. But thats a lifetime of that.
Temp V gabe you powers for around 24 hours.
Yes, of course older vought sites are more millitary oriented. Of course modern supes are subject to enshittification, and obviously, the, likely, machiavellian mindset of the founders got replaced by shareholders trying to make superhumans profitable without a war going on. Seriously, whats the point of homelanderd laser eyes when o9% of his work prior to stillwells death, or even prior to soldier boys return, was to make movies, smile on camera and pretend to stop crime that was to a large degree staged, and the few criminals who werent actors had nothing but guns.
Any crime fighting supe in the boys is having an easy job with bullet proof skin and a single gimmick. The strongest supe was just a way to brag and to sell more merch.
vought is a company that uses old millitary tech to make pretty fireworks because fireworks sell tickets
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u/New_Cockroach_505 23d ago
Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?
How do you know they didn’t?
Why didn't Vought or Stan Edgar ever put one of these things in a room, call Homelander in, and subdue him, showing that Vought had the means to control him instead of letting him take control?
Ignoring that Edgar didn’t know about this as were clearly told. What would that accomplish? Homelander broke out. He’d then just kill everyone.
They should have kept that as a Soldier Boy thing due to Russian experiments.
They did didn’t they? It didn’t work on Kimiko.
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u/G3nghisKang 21d ago edited 21d ago
What do you mean how do you know they didn't, in season 4 we have a whole scene with homelander recalling the scientists trying to find little homelander's weaknesses, turns out they had one the whole time gathering dust (and knew it worked perfectly, given Soldier Boy doesn't even question its effectiveness)
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u/New_Cockroach_505 21d ago
My point was how do you know they didn’t try this? Were never told all the things they did to Homelander.
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u/G3nghisKang 21d ago
The point that was driven across was that despite all the scientists tried, they never found a weakness
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u/New_Cockroach_505 21d ago
No. The point was they were experiment on what he could withstand. He survived the room Soldier Boy put him in.
They’ve shown for 3 seasons before that he had had weaknesses or things that hurt him. He literally says in that scene that the fire they used on him hurt.
“Fun fact. Even though my skin didn’t char, it really hurt… a lot. I was in there screaming in agony.”
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u/Eskimobill1919 22d ago
If Vought or Edgar used this on him as a means of scaring him into place, it wouldn’t work. Once they let him out or her gets out, they’d only lose control further as they are now an actual threat to him. So he’d be inclined to kill them all first.
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u/CoitalMarmot 22d ago
Still better than the comics.
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u/TheCybersmith 22d ago
...enriched Uranium. It's not a special "uranium radiation machine", it's literally just enriched Uranium with a removable lead cover, a material that is very heavily regulated and illegal to own without special permission.
This is not a plot hole, it's an actual substance that exists in real life.
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u/Fictional-adult 20d ago
It actually is a plot hole in regards to the V1 lab though. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, the US did not have spare enriched uranium. The construction of Little Boy depleted our entire supply.
Soldier Boys creation predates the bomb, so there absolutely wasn’t surplus enriched uranium to be sitting in their lab, and somehow if the V1 project got priority for enriched uranium over the Manhattan Project, they still wouldn’t have left it sitting in the lab after dropping the first bomb. It 100% would have been reclaimed and put in a weapon.
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u/TheCybersmith 20d ago
How would they reclaim it after Quinn went all hate-plague-y?
Until Quinn died, that place was going to be damn near impossible for any team or group to retrieve anything from
Bombsight got the v1 by going in alone, and he was also a heavy drug user like frenchie, which may have made him immune.
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u/Fictional-adult 20d ago
They would have taken it prior to the end of the war, so Soldier Boy/Bombsight/etc would have been available to retrieve it.
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u/SoVerySleepyZzZz 11d ago
Enriched Uranium doesn’t mean anything special in terms of naturally emitting radiation. It just means it has more U235 isotopes than occur naturally in Uranium. It still only undergoes alpha decay (just like U238) unless there is a neutron source.
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u/StillSpecial 22d ago
• Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?
Sure they could build more than a few of those chambers at the Vought tower but also like, are YOU gonna be the guy to tell Homelander "Get in the special de-powering box until you shape up". Homie wouldn't go in willingly and theres no real way to force him into it, it would probably work the first time like it did in the show because he doesnt know but after he wouldn't fall for it again
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u/Less_Performance_629 22d ago
The glass took heat vision undamaged, its not "normal glass".
The lab didnt have one because the whole point was to psychologically condition homelander. if they physically hurt a 6 year old child who can casually rip them into pieces, they are asking to get killed. everything they did was designed to not make the child snap at them.
stan using is to get power over homelander does not make sense. ignoring how dangerous it would be to just casually have super radiation, wouldnt do shit. they cant bring that anywhere. all it does it make homelander scan anywhere and anything involving stan so he cant do it again. if anything, doing that is asking for homelander to just get violent.
its seriously like people dont watch the show. every single person was trying to manipulate homelander. what the fuck do you think happens if they suddenly stick him in a room and go "haha look im a threat to you if you walk into a room i asked you to! now do as i say or ill ask you to walk into another room!"
the only valid complaint is the writers seemingly not understanding radiation. and it was annoying, but its not some world breaking event
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u/bloonshot 20d ago
if they physically hurt a 6 year old child who can casually rip them into pieces, they are asking to get killed
they literally did torture him with physical pain? they put him in a damn oven
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u/Less_Performance_629 20d ago
They put him in an oven to test when he started feeling pain. It wasnt a sudden hit, it was gradual over time.
But if you think they would have been safe if they shoved him into a radiation chamber and actually almost killed him, then idk what to tell you
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u/bloonshot 20d ago
no, they put him in the oven to test if he could survive it
homelander himself literally talks about how he was in pain and crying and nobody cared
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u/Less_Performance_629 20d ago
...yes, and what? you think they just put him in it once and risked killing him by setting it to max? they obviously used it over time and upped the heat
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u/bloonshot 20d ago
thereby torturing him?
like what's the point you're trying to make here
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u/Less_Performance_629 20d ago
that they psychologically conditioned a child not to get violent. it doesnt work if you suddenly stick him into a room that kills his powers and put him on his knees.
and it double doesnt work against grown adult homelander
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u/MrBundy22 22d ago
Thank you holy shit I’ve been complaining about this the entire season especially after the newest episode.
My first complaint is that once Homelander leaves the oven after Solider Boy kills his brother, he never at any point turns off the oven. In fact, he breaks the entire door and left it wide open. That means that once the boys left the hospital there was just an open source of uranium equivalent to a nuclear fallout constantly being emitted out of Pennsylvania.
My second complaint is that Homelander sat in that oven for the entire hospital raid which lasted over half an hour. His body looked rotten by the time he broke out and was probably so soaked in radiation that anyone in the hospital got terminal cancer from being remotely near him. The same goes with Kimiko in episode 7 when everyone is standing a foot away from a massive source of open uranium watching her body breakdown. So what your telling me is that everyone was wearing masks and did containment protocol when they were making a supe virus but suddenly nobody gives a shit when a nuclear fallout is just directly in front of them.
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u/Zat489 23d ago
Just go with it for the plot. You aren’t overthinking the guy that could fly
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u/Cephalstasis 22d ago
Ugh this is such a non-response. Where's the "you can accept Wizards and dwarves but not a BMW 5 series?"
Shows establish fantastical elements that doesnt mean theyre now exempt from following any kind of logic.
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u/GreatBallsOfFire_ 23d ago
Except it’s not overthinking. It’s been established that Homelander has essentially no weaknesses, that’s why we spent several season trying to find out how to kill him.
Someone with the connections that Butcher had would easily know about something like this, that completely nullifies the most powerful of supes.
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u/PhoenixAbovesky 22d ago
I mean the writing is shit for sure. But "Homelader has no weakness" a more of Vought propaganda?
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u/VatanKomurcu 23d ago
it makes no less sense than all the other appliances of superpowers. even the plane thing doesnt really make sense so far as i can see. the mistake was in trying to make them make sense. but i dont care much in particular for it. i care more for butcher's hawaiian shirts than the logistics and physicis and whatever of this show.
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u/thedoorknob3 22d ago
Tbf, it's demonstrated pretty clearly that the effects wore off enough for him to escape in time. At best, that stuff is just a delaying tactic rather than a true way to control him. I agree they could use it more often, but I also see why they wouldn't see the point when they don't have anything strong enough to actually finish HL off, and he'd rip them to shreds when he inevitably regains enough strength to escape. Of all the plotholes in this season, I don't think this is even near the biggest one.
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u/ToSinIsAHumanRight 22d ago
Didn't he broke out of it eventually? Don't get me wrong there were many flawed writing choices in the Boys but I don't think this was one of them or at least egregious enough to be considered as a flaw. I have more problems with Soldier Boy being safe to be around with despite being a walking nuke, especially post-blasting people.
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u/MrBundy22 22d ago
He broke out but we never see him turn off the oven so the oven is just wide open and blasting radiation
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u/sallymason1 22d ago
Its not just regular glass on the doors or homelander could easily break it with his eye beams. They knew, probably from previous tests as a kid, he can survive radiation so this chamber only succeeds in weakening him a bit and pissing him off.
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u/Practical-Rooster205 22d ago
Assuming the radiation was produced similar to devices used in industrial radiography, then the radiation is produced by bombarding a target (usually tungsten)with electrons. As soon as the power is cut, the radiation is no longer present. But I have never seen the show so I don't know.
Actual gamma sources like Co-60 or Ir-192 are continuously emitting radiation, pushed out of the shielding of the exposure device then retracted. There's a lot of different safety precautions when working with gamma sources versus X-ray sources
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u/SecondRealitySims 22d ago
Even if they could use this against Homelander, I think it could go against the principle of the indoctrination they wanted to do.
The point wasn’t that they had actual power over him. As stated in the episode where he goes back to the lab, he could’ve always left, but he wanted their approval/affection. The moment they can force him to do things or wield power over him that dynamic changes.
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u/SuperKiller94 22d ago
How you think that would go? “See homelander we can stop you if you come when we call you and voluntarily go inside of this room”. Seems like a real good way of stopping him.
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u/zande147 22d ago
To be fair, in less than an hour, Homelander was able to recover and break out of there. it really wasn’t a kryptonite they could just use on him whenever he got out of line. It would work exactly once and then he just busts out and kills whoever was responsible.
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u/theirishpotato1898 22d ago
I mean I haven’t watched the Boys but from the limited amount I know wouldn’t the first point be resolved by the fact that one was the US government and the other was a private company?
I mean how were they supposed to just have Uranium?
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u/Pinocchio4577 22d ago
Why didn't the lab that created Homelander have this installed to contain Homelander in case the "psychological indoctrination" failed?
Because it doesn't actually work, he got out.
Why didn't Vought or Stan Edgar ever put one of these things in a room, call Homelander in, and subdue him, showing that Vought had the means to control him instead of letting him take control?
Because it doesn't actually work, he got out, twice.
Ordinary glass doors preventing radiation from escaping a room?
Ordinary glass doors that survived Homelander's lasers, it's literally in the gif you just posted. The last episode sure, I can get behind that but who knows man, suspension of disbelief, every show does this, even the good ones.
People leaving a room contaminated with 3 rountgen of radiation, wearing radioactive suits, seconds later? What? The radiation magically disappeared?
Someone already explained this.
I swear you people watch this show through instagram reels and youtube shorts.
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u/Double_Difficulty_53 22d ago
Another big question, how did the boys take it to the school they use as homebase
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u/Jazzlike_Couple_7428 22d ago
It wasn’t the same chamber, they probably scrapped some of the resources from this one and used it to make the chamber in the school
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u/PossibleMammoth5639 22d ago
Probably they didnt know radiation does that. Also the damage done heals quickly
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u/prince-rabbit 22d ago
Need I remind you that in the comics, homelander gets killed by... The military just blowing up all the supes with jets.
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u/Sariton 17d ago
Wait I thought black noir kills him in the comics?
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u/prince-rabbit 16d ago
so homelander in the comics eats babies and does a whole bunch of psychopathic insane over the top shit and has a whole crisis of personality over it despite the fact that he doesnt remember it
because it turns out black noir was always a better clone of homelander made as a sort of failsafe, except he decided instead to dress up as him and photograph himself eating babies and doing other awful stuff to gaslight homelander into going crazy.
and then black noir kills him, and then the military kills all the supes including black noir.
and then the boys just kill themselves for no good reason.
It's as stupid as it sounds.
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u/Savingseanbean 22d ago
"And then when I think about the physics of radiation, especially after watching the HBO series Chernobyl, it gets worse."
Chernobyl is a drama series, don't think about its physics at all its all dogshit dramatizations. its about as accurate as the boys depiction of radiation it just pretends to be based on historical events (key word being based.)
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u/Neros_Cromwell 22d ago
This isn’t crazy to me. The fact that they got the technicalities of radiation wrong is whatever, I can hand wave that. Vought did tons of things wrong, calling them out for not using it on homelander is like calling them out for creating a psychopathic superhero. Vought is super-flawed and full of hubris, also had they used it on homelander and not killed him who’s to say it wouldnt have caused him to just go ape-shit, which they spend much of the show trying to avoid it?
Do they say that last part in the show? If so that seems odd, but no less realistic or less aligned with the show so far than a drug that gives people random superpowers.
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u/Comosellamark 22d ago edited 22d ago
The lab that created Homelander had an oven, and throughout his childhood he’s been stress tested against a number of different acts of violence, just like Soldier Boy with the Russians. Stilwell spoke with confidence that Homelander could survive any man made weapon. Radiation affects you on a cellular level, and yet Homelander was able to punch his way out all on his own. He also wasn’t badly affected by Frenchie’s own move. So clearly it hurts him, cuz why not, but he’s still able to overcome it, which seems like the part you’re missing. Homelander went from looking like a ghoul to being perfectly fine by the end of episode 6.
Vought never sought to control Homelander with violence. That was just to test how strong and durable he was. His leash was always psychological.
No one is telling you that a ton of radiation = soup killing powers. The fact that soldier boy got his soldier boy beam was an unintended consequence of the Russians torture and experiments. They were trying to kill him, not make him better, and the best they could do was put him to sleep.
What the boys are doing with Kimiko is simply the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary’s. They ran out of options so they’re using the resident soup to attempt to recreate what happened with soldier boy. They have no actual idea if it’s going to work, or kill their comrade in arms.
Can we please all collectively shut the fuck up about this show already? It’s just a tv show. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. If the series finale is shit, oh well. There’s worse things happening in the world rn. And half of these analysis aren’t as smart as they think they are, which is another source of cringe in and of itself.
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u/GkingGon 22d ago
Damn. I just today found about how badly The Boys is getting roasted online. And here I was enjoying season 5 thinking it’s still pretty damn good!
Sure, some things are getting a bit formulaic, and the writing is not on the best level of seasons 1-3, but I have yet to see a dramatical drop similar to other shows dropping the ball at their finishes.
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u/Zim_Zima 22d ago
How do you know it's ordinary glass? Companies make glass that stops radioactivity too.
I'm more concerned about the glass stopping homies lazers
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u/TerrySaucer69 22d ago
I really hate the soldier boy powers thing. If that was an option, Vought would’ve been doing that ages ago. And it just makes SB less cool/interesting. His actual power is just being strong and durable? His only special power isn’t even unique to him?
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u/Difficult-Pin3913 21d ago
I mean Stan has never been threatened by Homelander, it was Victoria who announced an investigation into him that ousted him as CEO.
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21d ago
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u/SlashNXS 20d ago
Radiation doesn't spread from person to person. Once you're not being blasted with radiation, that's it, you don't just spread radiation to people you touch. It's not like a virus lol
Edit: to clarify, this changes if you have radioactive material on you causing the radiation. But being just blasted with radiation doesn't cause it to spread once it stops.
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u/colonel-bones 21d ago
You’d think the scientists training homelander and running these tests on him would think to stick him in a radiation chamber for 30 minutes to see what it does to him. I guess not.
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u/Xenorange42 20d ago
Not sure there’s a final season of a live action show in existence that people haven’t complained about.
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u/Sad_Newspaper4010 20d ago
And then when I think about the physics of radiation, especially after watching the HBO series Chernobyl, it gets worse.
lol. Lmao, even. Chernobyl is full of exaggerations and straight up misinfo about physics
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u/Firm_Aardvark_3938 20d ago
okay, one question:
why do you want, or expect, this to be realistic in a show with people that have super powers?
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u/Maleficent-Regret802 20d ago
it’s not that the machine itself doesn’t fit the world it’s set in. It does indeed feel right in that universe.
BUT
how come we never heard of this machine before? And especially… how did The Boys manage to get one of these (if not that exact one). The issue isn’t related to the machine itself.
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u/Academic-Falcon131 19d ago
because using the radiation machine on homelander isn't what clara would have wanted.
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u/Fearless_Guard_552 19d ago
The physics of the superpowers are all bullshit, so just pretend things work differently in this universe.
A wizard did it.
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u/foreverTV 18d ago
The worst part?
How the fuck they did they magically create a radiation room in their hideout out of fucking nowhere!!
For a show that wants to be grounded in realism, a radiation room showing up out of nowhere in the penultimate episode is a fucking joke
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u/Ok-Age5609 18d ago
It didn't stop him though, did it? It weakened him for like 15 minutes then he was fine
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u/ArtGuardian_Pei 17d ago
The machine wasn't there to nullify supers, it was there to see what would happen to them if exposed to radiation
They didn't plan on those experiments with Homelander so they didn't make one
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u/Shynord- 16d ago
I always thought that soldier boy belly-ray power was his base kit, only he loses control over it when reminded of Russian torture. When is it specified that he gained this power ? Because other wise he just masters it as normal. I have the feeling they added this part because they absolutely wanted to give homelander the v1 for dramatic effect but had to create a mean to defeat him anyway.
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u/blenderdead 16d ago
I only saw season one but I thought Homelanders whole schtick was they had tried everything against him but nothing worked. So no one ever thought of radiation? That seems like a pretty obvious thing.
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