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The Boys Season 3 Episode 7 Explains 10 Major Mysteries
The Boys season 3 episode 7 'Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed' finally explains ten of the plot's most important mysteries and questions.

The Boys Season 3 Episode 7 Explains 10 Major Mysteries

Warning! Contains major spoilers for The Boys season 3!

The Boys‘ season 3, episode 7“Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed,” explains ten of the biggest unanswered questions the series has posed to date. The Boys season 3 has not been shy about stirring up various new mysteries, as evidenced by the shocking return of Payback’s Soldier Boy, and episode 7 not only solves many of this season’s mysteries but also answers questions that have been lingering since The Boys season 1. And while The Boys certainly hasn’t wrapped up its tense narrative, ten of its major mysteries have been effectively resolved.

The Boys season 3, episode 7, “Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed,” follows the explosive aftermath of “Herogasm.” Soldier Boy goes after Mindstorm with the help of Hughie and Billy Butcher, but due to Soldier Boy’s volatility and Hughie’s devotion to saving Butcher from Mindstorm’s powers of mental imprisonment, their pact swiftly dissolves. Meanwhile, Black Noir is shown poring over memories of his days in Payback through the prism of cartoon animals, and Starlight faces media scrutiny for her accusations against Homelander. “Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed” ends with Soldier Boy revealing the series’ most daunting plot twist yet: he is Homelander’s biological father.

The penultimate episode of The Boys season 3 finally delves into pertinent mysteries about Homelander’s family, Butcher’s past, and the history of Payback and Soldier Boy’s involvement with them, foreshadowing a climactic finale. The consequences of injecting Temporary V are also explored in this episode – and could play a major part in determining the fate of Hughie and Butcher. This, in turn, sparks more questions about whether Hughie and Butcher may need to take Compound V simply to combat Temporary V, turning themselves into the very thing they hate. Here’s the ten major mysteries finally explained in The Boys season 3, episode 7.

Homelander’s Origin

Soldier Boy placed a call to Homelander in the final scene of The Boys season 3, episode 7, during which he informs Homelander that Vogelbaum collected a semen sample from him – revealing that Soldier Boy is Homelander’s biological father. This season, Homelander’s intense desire to be loved has escalated. From drinking a bucket of Cow’s milk on a whim to threatening to harvest Maeve’s eggs for offspring, it’s evident that his past family issues are distracting him. In this way, Soldier Boy’s huge biological reveal implies that Homelander’s character might change in a big way. He’s malleable when faced with the opportunity for parental love, and Soldier Boy may use that to his advantage in the next episode’s showdown.

Soldier Boy Is Both Versions Of The Comic Character Combined

There are variations of Soldier Boy in the original The Boys comics rather than just one version – as is portrayed by Jensen Ackles in the TV adaptation. The first variation of Soldier Boy in the comics is a boastful but incompetent member of Payback who fights alongside them in World War II and gets himself killed. The second variation of Soldier Boy is depicted in the present day and is shown to be an insecure fraud. Ackles’ Soldier Boy is a near replica of the World War II version, down to the uniform, but The Boys season 3, episode 7 also reveals characteristics of the modernized Soldier Boy were combined in this depiction. This, in turn, could set Ackles’ Soldier Boy on course for a more comic-accurate ending in the Prime Original.

Black Noir’s Scars

When Grace Mallory recounts her experiences with Payback in Nicaragua, it is implied Black Noir’s scars were caused by enemy fire. Yet The Boys season 3, episode 7, reveals, through cartoon-style live-action flashbacks, that a beating from Soldier Boy instead caused them. Black Noir actually jumpstarted the conspiracy to turn Soldier Boy over to the Russians since Soldier Boy was abusive to him and the rest of the team. Payback took down Soldier Boy in Nicaragua – but not before Black Noir was beaten brutally by him, suffering brain damage and severe injuries to his face as a result.

Why Soldier Boy Was Taken By The Russians

Black Noirs’ cartoon recollections of the Nicaragua incident in The Boys season 3 episode 7 reveal why the Russians took Soldier Boy. His capture happened because Black Noir conspired with Payback to get rid of him because he abused his power. Soldier Boy asked Crimson Countess earlier in the season how much she was paid to turn him over to the Russians, and she told him nothing, hinting that this was both planned and personal. The Russians then took Soldier Boy to experiment on and torture him after Payback took him down – turning him into the ultimate supe-destroying weapon.

How The Russians Kept Soldier Boy Controlled

Frenchie comes back into play in The Boys season 3, episode 7, when he reveals that the Russians were using Novichok to subdue Soldier Boy for decades. Novichok is a specialized nerve agent, fatal to non-supes, and capable of keeping him paralyzed. This reveal is crucial as it potentially foreshadows Soldier Boy’s downfall in the finale. If Butcher and Hughie are incapable of taking him out while on Temp V, then Mother’s Milk or Frenchie may need to use this nerve agent on Soldier Boy to knock him out. Whether or not they’ll get the chance to kill him while he’s under, especially with Homelander likely on his side now, is another mystery that The Boys’ finale must answer.

What Happened To Maeve

When Ashley excused Maeve’s disappearance as a trip to a rehabilitation retreat early in The Boys season 3, Starlight voiced her suspicions that Homelander had abducted Maeve or killed her. Queen Maeve’s determination to take Homelander down in The Boys season 3 made it unlikely that she would be erased from the plot without proper closure, and episode 7 finally revealed where she’d been whisked off to. Homelander has her contained in a Vought holding cell to harvest her eggs to make more offspring. His desperation to have a family has been growing since Ryan was put into hiding, and it seems likely this heinous plan is borne from a desire to raise his own child. However, this doesn’t bode well for Maeve’s fate, as Homelander will likely kill her after her eggs are harvested.

Billy Butcher’s Backstory

The Boys has briefly covered Billy Butcher’s backstory with his family before, but Mindstorm’s powers revealed the details of Lenny’s death and the abuse he and Butcher faced from their father as children. Mindstorm’s powers allow him to trap people in their own minds and put their worst memories on loop. When Butcher gets affected by Mindstorm’s powers, he is forced to witness traumatizing moments in his childhood. It is revealed through these flashbacks that he would take beatings for his brother. He protected him until he left to join the military, leaving Lenny alone with their abusive dad. More than just elaborating on why Lenny took his own life, these memories explain Butcher’s personality and reckless actions. He appears to have adopted many of his father’s personality traits, likely as a defense mechanism. Hughie’s relationship with Butcher is also developed more in these scenes – and Butcher’s concern about Hughie’s fate is derived from the residual guilt he feels over Lenny’s death after witnessing it during the Mindstorm-induced nightmare.

Temporary V Side Effects

When Starlight breaks into Vought tower to get Compound V for Kimiko, she finds a scientific journal that covers the side effects and consequences of Temporary V. She tells Butcher over the phone that taking three to five doses will amount to fatal brain damage, and in her desperation, begs him to warn Hughie. Butcher tells her he will, but refuses to after he’s hung up, with Butcher acutely aware that the pair will need the Temp V to defeat Homelander – whether it kills them or not. There has been significant foreshadowing leading up to this reveal, implying that Temporary V will not only make the user consumed with power but affect them physically to the point of death. The new mystery now becomes whether or not Butcher and Hughie can survive the next dosage.

How Black Noir Sees The World

The cartoon-live action mashup is a refreshing new element of The Boys that harks back to Amazon’s playful prequel series The Boys: Diabolical. Black Noir’s character hasn’t been explored in-depth up to this point, meaning the cartoon characters he interacts with in the physical world show that he’s been seeing the world differently since his beating in Nicaragua. His scars are certainly severe enough to imply he suffered irreversible brain damage – and the incorporation of cartoons into Black Noir’s perspective could be a depiction of what he sees and experiences in comparison to other people due to this damage.

Soldier Boy Isn’t Really A War Hero

One of the biggest questions about Soldier Boy’s character is finally solved in The Boys episode 7. The Legend implies that Soldier Boy is no more than a marketable celebrity, while Hughie tries to justify that he earned his war hero status rightfully. He finally discovers from The Legend that Soldier Boy never actually fought in the wars during which he supposedly achieved incredible feats of vigilance and honor, an assertion backed up by the fact he went to take photographs for the press at Omaha Beach rather than arrive earlier to genuinely fight during D-Day. In this way, The Legend confirms that Soldier Boy was never a war hero but just remembered as one thanks to Vought’s apparently generational habit of covering up the darker sides of their poster boys.