The Boys Makes Major Change From Comics & It’s Brilliant for 1 Reason

Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video

After five seasons, the main plot of The Boys bears little resemblance to the comic series that inspired it. This is unsurprising since the Prime Video series diverted from the source material at the start. However, a major change from the comics revealed in the superhero satire’s penultimate episode brilliantly strengthens the show’s core theme.

The Boys Season 5 episode “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk” largely focuses upon the three titular vigilantes. One of the subplots finds Marvin “Mother’s Milk” Milk teaming with Starlight to investigate a Vought Studios soundstage. In the midst of this, MM tells a demoralized Starlight the source of his nickname.

Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video

When he was a boy, Marvin Milk was bullied following the death of his grandfather at the hands of Soldier Boy. Despite their making fun of him, Marvin tried to care for a bird with a broken wing he found. The bullies turned this into a new focus for their mockery, calling him “Mother’s Milk” for “mothering” the injured animal. However, when the bird “flew out of my house and right over their heads, good as new,” Marvin adopted the name as a point of pride.

This is a major change from The Boys comics. There, Mother’s Milk’s nickname came from the fact that he was dependent on his mother’s breast milk to survive. This was a side effect of her exposure to Compound V while pregnant. This aspect of the comics was revamped and applied to Homelander, becoming an obsession with breast-feeding for the television series.

How Mother’s Milk’s name change reflects The Boys’ core ideal

Beyond avoiding having to recreate one of the most disturbing moments of the comics, changing Mother’s Milk’s name delivers one of the penultimate episode’s strongest scenes. Most of The Boys have been disheartened by Homelander’s acquiring the V1 formula, but none moreso than Starlight. She asks MM, after observing a Vought focus group of people literally worshipping Homelander, if there is any point in saving people who don’t want to be saved. This prompts MM ro reveal how he got his nickname. It also leads to him affirming his belief that “Giving a sh*t in a world where nobody gives a sh*t? It ain’t soft. It’s hard as hell.”

Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video

The purity of doing good in a world where empathy is seen as weakness was a core ideal of The Boys comics. Indeed, it is a frequent theme in most of the writing of Garth Ennis. While famed and derided for depicting some truly perverse and twisted things in his stories, Ennis’ core ethos is a hopeful one. From his Hellblazer run, through Hitman and Preacher, and into The Boys, Ennis showcases broken people trying to do good. They may screw up. They may die in the process. But that idealism burns brightly, even in the darkest night.

Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video

This dark idealism is reflected elsewhere in “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk.” Butcher offers his version of an inspirational speech to Hughie, saying that they will win “even if I have to drag your broken f*cking carcasses over the finish line.” Hughie replies that “as menacing and truly f*cked as that sounded? I got to say, it was kind of hopeful.” That in itself is perhaps the best summation of The Boys and Garth Ennis’ writing ever made.

Originally reported by Matt Morrison for SuperHeroHype.

The post The Boys Makes Major Change From Comics & It’s Brilliant for 1 Reason appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.