The writers are no doubt contemplating your same thoughts in the think tank right now. I’m with you: there are holes. I think perhaps they use exploding heads with her power in homage to the comic version, which has a lot of exploding head scenes. Perhaps there will be more detailed explanations to them next season. Or, they’ll kill in her the opening scene of the premiere so explanations won’t be possible. Question: in the final scene is Hughie infiltrating her outfit by accident, or intentionally? He’s not a brave fighter, but he’s also shrewd and devious in his work when he needs to be. I can’t imagine he’d want to be anywhere near her if he knew she was the Scanner.
I haven't watched this series yet, just read a bunch of the comic series. But your guys' discussion reminds me of this comic series, Rising Stars. In it, there's this character who had low grade telekinetic powers and worked as a government assassin. Basically, she would just get very close to the target and use her low grade telekinetic powers to pinch off blood vessels/arteries/whatever in and around a person's brain. Easy kill and would basically get written off as an aneurysm/stroke/whatever. I'm wondering if the person doing it basically has telekinetic powers, but is using them in the most Garth Ennis way imaginable - Make it as gory, messy, and over-the-top as possible. Or maybe a Scanners homage - Loads of psychic feedback makes heads go boom. Either way, I need to start into this series at some point. I was enjoying the comic book series, but I read a bit of this other series Garth Ennis did called Crossed, where Garth Ennis basically out Garth Ennis'd himself (which is really saying something) and then kinda backed off his work a bit.
If you overthink comic book powers, things start to get weird. Iceman started as just a basic "dude controls ice, superhero!" and then they overthought it and realized that controlling ice really means controlling the transfer of heat, which really means controlling the flow of energy, and holy shit Iceman is an Omega-level mutant. Sometimes you gotta just handwave the powers and accept arbitrary limitations for the sake of the narrative.
This is exactly what I thought it was from the beginning. The entire plot of Scanners has a direct parallel to The Boys in that a drug induces telepathy/telekinesis in children.
Sure, and that's fine. Sometimes, though, it seems like show writers make arbitrary narrative decisions that really don't make sense. If The Boys is a dark mirror of the DC/Marvel universe, then there are already well-established rules to work within, and most of them at least make sense on the surface. Analyzing the physics of super powers is always bad, but some basic ground rules like "psychics have limited influence over the physical world" are reasonable and I don't think that's over-thinking it. Here they just decided that psychic was actually telekinetic from the neck up, and it seemed odd for the writers to just disregard rules that were already established for them, all for the aesthetic of exploding heads. Anyway, it's trivial, just something to role eyes over. One thing I did like this season was to watch how totally dominated Homelander is by his need to be worshipped. The most powerful person on the planet, and he can't cope with a market survey saying the 18-24 demographic is down 10% or whatever. They've done a really good job at building up that aspect of his personality, and reinforcing just how shaky that cage is.
One of the things the superheroes in The Boys don’t have is physical weaknesses. There is no kryptonite, yellow lantern rings or magic swords that can strike them down. The only thing that can defeat the most powerful ones is something even stronger than they are. Their emotions, and the lack of control they have over them are what get in their way. Homelander’s ticking time bomb persona has to go off sooner or later. Because.... Spoiler: Comic Spolier Something has to make him eventually detach and start acting on every impulse he has. I hope this show has at least some variation of the Washington Coup.
Whew. Finally finished Season 2. So good. I stayed out of this thread until now, and enjoyed reading back over everyone's comments. I think I said "oh damn!" out loud when Homelander laser-eyed the whole crowd, because it was just as likely that he really did it. Definitely I high moment of the season. Watching Hughie use a broken bottle to hack off Lamplighter's hand was great - it was simultaneously gross, and useful to show Hughie's growth. Allastair's head blowing up totally caught me off guard in the last Ep. And, Juice, you're right, he does look like Hugh Jackman. (You're probably too young to remember, but he played Luka on ER back in the day.) And, yeah, I totally thought Homelander was going to be fucking Stormfront's corpse or half-body instead of jerking it in the moonlight. (The fact that it was shot for season 1 would explain why his hair was so much blonder in that scene than in the final press conference scene.) Also, I was bummed that Becca got killed off. I really like Shantel VanSanten, but she got booted off The Flash and killed off in Shooter, as well. Alas. Good stuff. Disturbing, but extremely entertaining.
She's still alive in For All Mankind. To be fair "astronaut's wife" generally isn't among the victims of NASA's fuck ups.