We dug through The Boys Season 2 Episode 6 to find every hidden nugget.
The Boys Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” answered some of the season’s longstanding questions. How old is Stormfront exactly? She was born in 1919, which makes her 101 years old. What is her plan for Homelander? In true Nazi fashion, she plans to prop him up as the pinnacle of the Aryan race and put him in charge of an army of supes created with the newly stabilized Compound V being developed at Sage Grove. What is Lamplighter’s part in it all? He was just there to burn the evidence and keep the patients in line, but he’s feeling regretful over his actions and might be an asset to The Boys going forward.
Lamplighter’s introduction was just one highlight of another great Season 2 episode. This one also fleshed out Frenchie’s backstory, demonstrating just how bad a boy he was before the series’ events. It added dimension to characters who are evil, and showed good characters doing evil things, with more collateral damage than The Boys themselves are used to causing. And it gave Starlight and Butcher the chance to bury the hatchet and reach an understanding, largely thanks to their mutual love of Hughie–and his love of children’s shampoo.
Naturally, we went over Season 2 Episode 6 with a fine-toothed comb to unearth all the comics references and other hidden Easter eggs that we could find. Keep reading to see what we found, and check out GameSpot Universe’s episode-by-episode video breakdowns for more.
1. The Bloody Doors Off
The episode’s title is taken from the 12th and final volume of the comics. It’s apt for the episode, considering all the doors that get blown off at Sage Grove.
2. Casquette A L’envers
The opening song is Casquette A L’envers by the French hip-hop group Sexion D’Assaut. The song’s title translates to “upside-down cap” according to Google. The music video is playing on the TV in the background during the opening scene.
3. Golden Girls
Frenchie opens the episode discussing The Golden Girls, an NBC sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1992. The show starred Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty as four older women who live together. Frenchie refers to his friends as his Blanche and his Dorothy, McClanahan’s and Arthur’s characters respectively.
4. Harold Jaffe
Starlight’s small operation to remove her Vought tracking device–in which Frenchie uses some kind of stone-cutting tool to penetrate her super-skin–takes place at Harold Jaffe Jewelers, a real jewelry store. However, the real location is in Ohio, not New York.
5. The Stranger
Hughie’s t-shirt this week features the cover of Billy Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger. It had four singles: “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “She’s Always a Woman,” and “Only the Good Die Young.”
6. Pokémon with Hep C
Hughie remarks that The Boys’ hideout isn’t so bad–the rats are “like Pokémon with Hep C.” Hep C is Hepatitis C, a viral liver infection that can be spread through needles. Pokémon is–well, if you don’t know what Pokémon is, I’m not sure I can explain it to you. How about I link you to our list of examples of people eating Pokémon from the anime instead?
7. The .50 caliber round
Starlight reprimands Butcher over the .50 caliber round he pumped into her chest. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember it–that was all the way back in Season 1, Episode 7.
8. The Dab
When Deep reunites with A-Train, he greets him with a half-assed “dab.” The dab is a dance move that originated in the Atlanta hip-hop scene in the 2010s.
9. Weaponized Xanax
When Mallory recruits Frenchie, she remarks that he used “weaponized Xanax” against a supe whose powers were fueled by rage. Xanax is a sedative that’s used to treat anxiety. Turns out Frenchie doesn’t just do drugs; he’s a chemist who makes them as well.
10. ADX Florence
Mallory intimidates Frenchie with a description of ADX Florence, or The United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (USP Florence ADMAX), a real prison near Florence, Colorado. Mallory refers to the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist named Ted Kaczynski who was apprehended in 1996, and the head of the Aryan brotherhood, which might refer to a number of people at the prison, including Thomas Silverstein and Barry Mills.
11. Vas and friends
Some of the supes at Sage Grove are references to characters from the comic books on which The Boys is based. The patient who vomits acid is based on Discharge, a member of the G-Wiz division of the G-Men (a parody of the X-Men). The patient with the massive penis is based on Vas “Love Sausage” Vorishikin, a Russian supe ally of The Boys who is a major side character in the books and similarly well-endowed. (Mother’s Milk even references the name “Love Sausage” while observing the patient on the security monitors.)
12. Lamplighter
Lamplighter, who was mentioned throughout Season 1 but never seen, is played by Shawn Ashmore in Season 2. Ashmore appeared in Episode 5, but his identity wasn’t confirmed until now. As this episode portrays, Lamplighter was a member of The Seven until he “retired” before the events of Season 1, at some point following his murder of Grace Mallory’s grandchildren.
13. Sail Away
The song during Alistair, A-Train, and Deep’s lunch is Enya’s “Sail Away.” Just kidding–the song is actually called “Orinoco Flow,” but I bet you’ve spent the last two-decades-plus believing it was called “Sail Away.” Anyway, it’s a goofy new age jam that reached incredible heights of popularity in the ’90s partly due to its inclusion in the music compilation album Pure Moods, and is still instantly recognizable in 2020.
14. Malala Yousafzai’s tweet
Alistair mentions “Malala Yousafzai’s tweet” about The Deep as evidence that he’s becoming more popular with women again. Yousafzai is a Pakistani feminist activist, as well as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history–she co-received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. The idea that she would tweet in support of The Deep is pretty ridiculous.
15. The Documentary
When A-Train says he’s “seen that documentary” about the Church of the Collective, he’s pointing out yet another similarity between The Deep’s cult and the real-life cult Scientology, which was the subject of a 2015 documentary called Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
16. Majorette
A majorette is a baton-twirling dancer who often performs alongside marching bands and during parades. Lamplighter’s pride was no doubt stung by the comparison.
17. The pictures
We don’t see what Mallory showed Lamplighter to blackmail him, but actor Shawn Ashmore, who plays Lamplighter, told us it was the first thing he asked when shooting the scene. “Mallory shows him images of something in the warehouse in a flashback sequence, and it’s alluded that he’s, you know, had sex with a bunch of underage girls or whatever,” Ashmore said. “I know what those images were of, because it was the first question I asked. I was like, ‘Why would Lamplighter turn?’ Like how bad are the pictures that Mallory shows him in that warehouse? Why would he do that? Like, he could burn everybody in this room–if those were to come out, how bad are they? And they’re worse than I could ever imagine.” He wouldn’t say exactly what they were, because he said it’s better left a mystery.
18. Stand Your Ground state
The man who Starlight accidentally kills says they’re in a “stand your ground” state when he pulls the gun on them. Stand your ground laws take on a variety of shapes depending on the location, but they generally encompass use of force when one’s life is in danger. The man is right that Pennsylvania, where Starlight says Sage Grove is located, has such laws.
19. Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night
You can see a poster for the event that Lamplighter enters when Frenchie is tailing him. It’s called “Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night.” I have no idea what it is.
20. Teddy Bear Picnic
“Teddy Bear Picnic” is a 1907 children’s song that’s now in the public domain. There’s nothing violent in the song; it’s simply another antiquated reference from Stormfront to remind us that she’s older than she looks.
21. L’Oreal Kids Strawberry Smoothie
You can smell just like Hughie if you want–L’Oreal Kids Extra Gentle 2-in-1 Shampoo, Strawberry Smoothie scent is a real shampoo you can buy on Amazon. Maybe skip the Axe Body Spray though, unless you’re actually Vin Diesel.
22. Postmates Sugarfish
Elena tells Queen Maeve she’s going to Postmates Sugarfish. Sugarfish is a popular Los Angeles sushi restaurant owned by Japanese sushi chef Kazunori Nozawa.
23. Why isn’t this man restrained?
This scene is an echo of a similar scene in the comics. In the books, after The Boys attempt to blackmail The Seven and Lamplighter kills Mallory’s grandchildren, Homelander delivers Lamplighter to The Boys as a peace offering, and Mallory shoots Lamplighter in the head.
24. Liberty’s costume?
When Stormfront opens her box of precious memories, several things are visible, including an ominous-looking hat, a knife with some sort of insignia on it, and what looks like Stormfront’s original Liberty costume.
25. Literal Nazis
In the photos Stormfront shows Homelander, she’s with literal Nazis Heinrich Himmler (the commander of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo secret police) and Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda.
26. Thank you for being a friend
The song that plays at the end when Homelander and Stormfront kiss is the Golden Girls theme song, “Thank You For Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold. If you stay through the credits, you’ll also hear another version of A-Train’s new theme song.
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