The Boys Fixes Season 2’s Compound-V Problem | Screen Rant
After The Boys season 2 revealed Vought's Compound-V secret to the world, The Boys Presents: Diabolical shows the public reaction to the revelation.
The Boys Presents: Diabolical finally shows the real impact of Compound-V going public in The Boys season 2. Compound-V is the biological blue building block of The Boys' universe - the stuff that gives superheroes their super-ness. Since Vought's formation in the 1940s right up until The Boys' present day timeline, Compound-V remained a closely-guarded secret, known only to major supes and Vought higher-ups, and leaving the rest of the world believing heroes were naturally blessed. That all changed in The Boys season 2 when Hughie and Starlight (helped by an assist from Gecko) exposed Compound-V to the entire world.
With so much else going on, The Boys could only show a snapshot of how Hughie and Starlight's Compound-V exposé affected the world. Season 2's overarching V narrative centered upon Stormfront and Homelander convincing crowds of extremists that a Compound-V army was necessary to protect against an influx of "super-terrorists" coming to invade Uncle Sam's homeland. Of course, that's just one (fairly radical) consequence The Boys' Compound-V revelation had, and the wider ramifications of Vought's secret going public would've been much bigger and more far-reaching than just the mob we saw chanting support for Stormfront.
The Boys Presents: Diabolical fills in the gaps, showing the effects of everyone knowing about Compound-V on an everyday level. Many of the anthology's stories take place during the interim between The Boys seasons 2 and 3, meaning characters are still adjusting to the idea of supes being created chemically. "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents" explores kids with useless or debilitating powers realizing their parents were actually responsible, then embarking on a bloody rampage of revenge. The Boys season 2 touched upon the parent-child issue via Starlight, but surely most Compound-V subjects were less forgiving than Annie and took matters into their own hands (if not quite as violently as Ghost and the gang). "Boyd In 3D" introduces Compound-V as a vanity product, suggesting Vought could - once the immediate backlash blows over - try to start profiting off Compound-V in a way that was impossible before the secret came out. It's a depressingly realistic outcome from Hughie and Starlight's investigative work.
Awkwafina's "BFFs" episode highlights another problem with Compound-V going public - drug dealers. Back in The Boys season 1, Homelander had A-Train trafficking Compound-V to keep everything hushed up. In The Boys Presents: Diabolical, common drug dealers are selling Compound-V on the streets, giving Vought a headache trying to reclaim lost samples. Finally, "John and Sun-Hee" depicts a more well-meaning outcome of V being widely-known, as a Vought janitor tries to heal his dying wife by stealing one of his company's precious blue vials. Again, this must've become a common occurrence since the world discovered supes were made, not born.
This is where spinoffs show their true value. The world learning about Compound-V was a huge moment in The Boys' history, but because season 2 only had time to show the aftermath from a single perspective, the full gravity never hit home. The Boys Presents: Diabolical fixes that by focusing on the smaller ways everyday folks were impacted by Voughtgate. Super-kids killed their parents for forcing Compound-V upon them, while the desperate sought it out to save loved ones. Drug dealers began making cash from smuggled vials of Vought's wonder-drug, while Vought sought to concoct a cosmetic wonder-drug of its own, proving even the worst PR disaster has a silver lining. Though we didn't necessarily see so in The Boys season 2, Hughie and Starlight fundamentally changed the world when they brought Compound-V's existences into the public consciousness.