Attention! Ahead of the spoilers of the 4th season of the 3rd season of “Boys”
Huey’s abilities in the third season of “Boys” brilliantly close the hole in the plot, the victims of which are many other stories about superheroes. The “Compound-V for Boys” division remained unchanged in seasons 1 and 2: superheroes on the one hand, and Billy Butcher’s unsupers occupied the moral superiority opposite. Thanks to Kimiko, Starlight and Queen Maeve, the Butcher learned that not all soups are terrible, but, nevertheless, he retained his “soup is soup” philosophy. The introduction of V-24 is different from what it was in the 3rd season of “Boys”. As the name implies, one dose gives the subject superpowers for 24 hours, after which the action stops. Butcher sees V-24 as an ideal way to equalize the rules of the game without completely falling to their level… and Huey seems to think the same.
Huey secretly injects himself with a V-24 during a mission in Russia in the third season of “Boys.” Walking behind the Butcher, Wee Huey Campbell surprises his friends by teleporting across the room to save MM from an approaching soldier. Although the scope of Huey V-24’s capabilities has yet to be fully explored, Jack Quaid’s character can perform short instant jumps. However, when Huey jumps, he lands completely naked. All the clothes just crumple into a pile, no matter where Huey jumps from, leaving him to swing freely in the middle of the fight.
In the funniest way imaginable, Hugh Campbell’s superpowers Boys solve something that never makes sense in teleporting superheroes: why their clothes go with them. When your usual fictional teleporter jumps, he invariably materializes in exactly the same clothes. This trick is usually explained by the rule defining that any object in skin-to-skin contact with a teleporter is dragged along, but why should a biological superpower automatically include synthetic items such as clothing and mobile phones? Plot holes also appear when shoes, jackets, and other items not in contact with the skin make a jump, and when a teleporter holds another person’s hand to jump together, only for his clothes to arrive safely at the other end too. Number Five from Umbrella Academy is a perfect example of a comic book character who makes short jumps (like Huey in Boys), but brings with him everything he touches, always managing to somehow include shoes, things in his pockets and a school tie.
The rules regarding superhero teleportation are inherently meaningless and deliberately inconsistent. Screenwriters tend to either pretend that the plot hole does not exist, or to go out of their way trying to explain it with the help of technobabble about the space-time continuum, and the convenience of narration is to blame for this. It becomes inconvenient to show a teleporting character if his costume is constantly changing or he cannot use his pockets. The boys mischievously bypass this, literally reducing teleportation to its basic principle — a person instantly jumps from one place to another. There is no good reason why something non-biological should travel with Huey and travel with Huey should not.
The Boys is a wild and ridiculous world of exploding penises and talking sea animals, but both Garth Ennis’ comics and Amazon’s live—action film adaptation are described as ruthlessly realistic. If superheroes really existed, they would probably be closer to the corporate, morally bankrupt Seven than to the heroism of Marvel’s Avengers or DC’s Justice League. The proof of this is that Huey’s power is arguably the most plausible portrayal of teleportation in a superhero series. If this ability really existed in real life, it is quite logical that the mutation of Compound-V would not matter for artificial materials such as clothing. Most superhero stories ignore this because almost always nude characters are hard to sell to studios, but “Boys” is not “most superhero stories” and demonstrates the obvious, often ignored teleportation trap in all its glory with bare cheeks.
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