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Salon
Salon
Lifestyle
Melanie McFarland

"The Boys" and TV's full frontal assault

Antony Starr as Homelander in "The Boys." Courtesy of Prime Video / Amazon Studios

Before the third season's title card appears, "The Boys" thrusts to the center of what its conflict between men and Übermensch is really all about, via an allegory about size and strength starring a villain known as Termite. Most of the series' supers parody famous heroes from the Marvel and DC Universes, and Termite, as the moniker suggests, is the show's perverse answer to Ant-Man, minus the goodness and charm.

What Termite lacks in those virtues he compensates for by overcompensating, as it were. In this case, he makes himself small enough to sprint between rails of coke as tall as he is before leaping inside of his lover's urethra and gently walking toward the prostate as he strokes its walls.

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