I would rate this episode a 7 out of 10.
I honestly didn’t understand why Billy Butcher and Ryan Butcher fell out. Zoe Neuman and Sameer Shah escaped, and there won’t be a new virus anytime soon—it takes time to develop. Is that really so hard to grasp? Of course, in typical teenage fashion, Ryan flies off to fight his father and gets beaten. What surprised me was that Homelander, after beating his son, just left him there. I expected him to either take him along or put him in that capsule where Soldier Boy was kept.
We were introduced to Translucent’s son only to have him immediately written off. Basically, a one-episode character. I had honestly forgotten that Translucent even existed. I didn’t want to see a dragged-out “you killed my father” storyline, so I was actually glad he was killed. Still, he was killed by Cindy, and I didn’t understand her motivation at all.
At the very same moment Cindy kills Translucent’s son, she is killed by Starlight. That death really didn’t sit well with me. It came out of nowhere. I really liked her character and all her scenes, and such a pointless death just doesn’t work for me. But that’s just my personal opinion. I do understand that she’s a secondary character.
At the end, Starlight flies away because she’s worried about Hughie Campbell, which feels very strange. Instead of staying and trying to protect him from all the supes, she leaves him. Their team is already small, and among the supes they only have Billy Butcher and Kimiko Miyashiro—so she makes up a third of their combat strength. On top of that, she’s one of the few who can fly, which is extremely useful. I can understand her feelings, but the decision still comes across as foolish.