Payback

Seeing as we're jumping forward a year and facing down the barrel of a massive status quo shift, this episode had some heavy lifting to do. However, it passed the test with flying colours. Not only did it provide us a well-paced catch-up to where everyone stands as-is, the episode provides some very fun and interesting new relationships to be explored over the season.

The ending of the episode provides some great tension, gore and sets up a solid plot thread and character building for a main cast member while also adding depth to a previously slightly two-dimensional character.

Overall, very, VERY good opening to the season. At this moment in time, my favourite in the series.

I'm just gonna say, that 11:42 is the best and most amazing scene in TV history.

Since the review needs more characters, I gotta say Homelander is as terrifying as ever and is becoming more of a bratty child with each episode.

The plots are progression naturally and other than the first scene, mostly nothing was surprising or a twist and it was obvious the ending scene is gonna happen from the beginning. And I'm not saying that as if it's a bad thing in this episode, no, I'm just saying that it's the first episode and it's ok. They have to set up new plots and storylines, so I don't mind if the first episode is slower, even though I didn't feel like it was slow or boring at any point, enjoyed all of it.

The only thing that I think needed a little more work was the dialogue especially in the beginning and between Hughie and Starlight in the trailer. Kinda didn't feel like natural dialogue.

Other than that, they did a good job of reestablishing every character and setting up new plot lines for the upcoming episodes.

I am praying Starlight's storyline doesn't descend into girl power nonsense. I hate how shows are so on-the-nose these days whenever they put anything having to do with "the message", whatever happened to subtlety? Starlight being promoted to co-captain feels organic but then the show has to outright explain the moment to us... we get it.

Every other scene was amazing and I just hope they can at least keep anything related to social justice to a minimum.

Great opening scene. The movie within a series. Looked nicely done. And I loved the female cameo - I wont spoil it here, but this is her 2nd cameo this year.

Amazon Prime should actually consider a real spin off movie of 'The Seven'. Not the 'behind the scenes' real personalities we see in this series, but their public personas. With a budget, that would definitely be watched.

As you'd expect, the rest of the ep is mostly set up for the season. But its still entertaining.

Highlights were the various Homelander, A-Train & The Deep scenes, plus the reality tv show casting with Supersonic (hopefully we see more of him).

The Hughie home & office scenes got a little boring. I mean, we got 2 separate scenes of him having lunch with his boss. I was like, come on, lets move it along. But apart from that it was good.

I'm always afraid when a show becomes too big, the studio (in this case Amazon) will tone down the adult themes in order to appeal to a more general audience. This is definitely not the case.

Not to get into too much detail but there is one scene that left my jaw open in surprise that they were able to show. Great display of hedonistic insanity.

Everything else was great and well paced. The way this show deals with tension leaves me glued to what happens next.