The Boys finally went where Supernatural fans have been hoping it’d go. After multiple failed spinoffs, the fandom was finally going to see the original monster-hunting family get back together.
Ever since Jensen Ackles joined the show as Soldier Boy in season 3, it brought to life hopes for a kinda-sorta reunion to put Ackles (who played Dean Winchester) opposite former co-stars Jared Padalecki (who played Sam Winchester) and Misha Collins (who played Castiel).
Well, Wednesday’s episode, titled One Shots, did indeed bring the trio back together. I’m sad to report it wasn’t all demon hunting and rainbows. The gathering was a literal bloody mess — and it’s exactly what we Supernatural fans deserved.
One Shots mostly served as a bottle episode, jumping from one character’s story to another — including a bizarre sequence from the perspective of Billy Butcher’s dog, Terror. It’s possible this season could have gone without the episode altogether, aside from a few key points that will certainly resurface in the last half of the season.
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Billy Butcher’s dog, Terror, gets his own story in season 5 of The Boys.
If you haven’t seen the episode yet and want to avoid spoilers, I suggest you stop reading here, as major story spoilers are revealed below.
The most important plot point in this episode is Homelander’s continued hunt for V-One, the original volatile version of Compound V that, if survived, would make the injected participant immortal. A tip from former Vought CEO Stan Edgar, who is now Homelander’s prisoner, sends the newly anointed god and his curmudgeonly dad Soldier Boy (Ackles) — who already is immortal — to Hollywood to track down a washed-up Supe named Mister Marathon (Padalecki).
Think of Mister Marathon as a parody of The Flash; he was the original speedster in The Seven, who was eventually replaced by A-Train (RIP).
Now, a fixture in Tinsel Town, Mister Marathon is revealed as a smarmy jumpsuit-wearing drug dealer. He hangs with an assortment of celebrity friends — Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Will Forte and Craig Robinson — as the world falls apart around them. Joining the crew at the poker table inside Mister Marathon’s mansion is a tryhard Supe named Malchemical (Collins), whose superpower is the ability to breathe noxious fumes into people’s faces, rendering them unconscious.
For a brief moment, it all felt like an homage to Seth Rogen’s apocalyptic comedy This Is the End, which follows fictional versions of him and his celebrity friends during the apocalypse. But that movie was fun.
As you can probably guess, Homelander and Soldier Boy do not find what they are looking for here. But Mister Marathon does give them an inside look at his collection of Vought memorabilia — which, for some reason, includes a bunch of Diddy-inspired bottles of baby oil. After some pressing, he reveals that Bombsight, a Supe from Soldier Boy’s past (who will appear in the prequel, Vought Rising), is in possession of V-One.
Mister Marathon and Soldier Boy share a private moment doing drugs, which would’ve been a prime moment to throw in some Winchester-style jokes or nods, but things take a turn, thanks to Malchemical breathing his deadly gas into Homelander’s face.
Welp, turns out this was a trap. But only for Homelander.
Malchemical and Mister Marathon wanted Homelander out of the picture, thanks to years of pent-up anger over the man ruining both their lives. But Soldier Boy, in a move that shows he may indeed be warming up to his sociopathic son, doesn’t take the bait. This is the moment where everything goes ballistic.
Soldier Boy kills Malchemical (goodbye forever, Castiel) and then lets Mister Marathon chase him throughout the mansion while positioning each celebrity friend of his in the speedster’s path so he can proceed to run through each of them, making a bloody mess in the process. In terms of comedy, this scene is indeed laugh-inducing. Each kill is ramped up from the one before it, and Padalecki is left slathered in buckets of blood and viscera by the time it’s all said and done.
A callback to the baby oil I mentioned earlier leads to a final face-off between Soldier Boy and Mister Marathon. Watching the two actors in their scene together did make me think back to Ackles’ death scene in Supernatural (sorry, spoiler) and the emotional goodbye he had with his brother.
Could this Bombsight detail have been delivered more quickly, thereby bypassing this whole episode? Probably. But perhaps Kripke and the Supernatural boys were in dire need of some proper closure.
Supernatural was only supposed to last for five seasons. That was Kripke’s plan. Due to its success, The CW ran with the show for an additional decade. That fandom has already endured watching the Winchester brothers die over and over, visit hell, lose their souls, become demons, survive all sorts of otherworldly creatures — all to have their legacy live on at conventions, in fan fiction and some short-lived spinoffs.
Artists make their art and put it out for the world to consume and interpret. I don’t know if SPN fans will be pleased with the outcome of this so-called reunion — but for Kripke, the Winchester brothers and their angel bestie Castiel, One Shots is the final nail in the Supernatural coffin.
To paraphrase the band Kansas, maybe it really is time they lay their weary heads to rest. For better or worse, the family business is dead.