Who Is Liberty From The Boys Season 2 And Why Is She Important?
The Boys season 2 landed on Amazon Prime Video with a crash, bang, pow, and just about every other comic book sound effect you can imagine. The first three episodes, which began streaming on September 4, contained a smorgasbord of plot information, character details, Easter eggs and opaque allusions that all add up to a pretty jam-packed three hours of content. For those eager to speculate about what the new season might have in store across its remaining five episodes, there was certainly plenty of food for thought.
While the overarching mysteries established by the first season continue to deepen, we've had to endure the addition of even more cryptic elements and passing references that will likely come to impact the season 2 story in important ways as we move into Acts Two and Three. One of the most baffling is the addition of a new Supe known only as "Liberty," and though she's yet to reveal herself, we're pretty certain she's going to have a major role to play.
The Boys is not a show that wastes space, and showrunner Eric Kripke is a gifted enough raconteur to know that a superhero in a poster planted on the wall in Act One has to blow somebody's head off in Act Three. Call it, "Chekhov's Supe." So who is Liberty, why is she important, and where is all this headed as we move deeper into season 2?
Liberty who?
Even if you've watched the first three episodes of season 2 on repeat since the drop, you'd be forgiven for missing the two quick references to Liberty. The first is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visual cue in episode 2, and the second is in a cryptic message from Mallory (Laila Robins) to Butcher (Karl Urban). Kripke and his writing team definitely aren't trying to rub this one in our faces just yet, but the double tap on this story element definitely has our plot detectors tingling.
There's a moment in episode 2 where Hughie (Jack Quaid) walks into a pawnshop and we see a couple collected posters depicting characters and iconography that we all now recognize as trademark Vaught. One of the posters advertises an old movie called Terminal Beauty 3, which starred the now-deceased Popclaw, may she rest in peace. The other advertises a feminine hygiene product called Autumn Breeze, and who has been tapped to market this fine toiletry? A mysterious Supe known only as Liberty.
While the poster plants the Liberty seed, the phone call between Butcher and Mallory provides us with a little more to go on. We hear Mallory warn Butcher that this Liberty may be involved with the whole set of super terrorist shenanigans. As she mentions Liberty, she glances down at a retro ad for Budweiser beer — yet another product bearing the mysterious Supe spokeswoman's image.
As far as explicit clues in the show, that's all we have to go on so far. If it doesn't seem like much, that's because it's not — though, there's still quite a bit we can glean.
Everything we know about Liberty on The Boys season 2
Normally, when trying to work out the identity of a mysterious character on The Boys, we'd cheat a little and dive back into the source material. Unfortunately, the character Liberty does not appear in Garth Ennis' comics, so that particular avenue of investigation is a definitive dead end.
Since Mallory seems to suspect Liberty's involvement in all the season 2 madness, it's a fair bet The Boys are going to end up toe-to-toe with this shadowy Supe, so the topic merits closer examination. The small hints we've received so far suggest two things for certain: First, Liberty is a Supe who at least used to work for Vought; second, Liberty once attained a level of fame equal to The Seven. This places her in the category of old guard Supes who used to reign over the industry during the first generation of Vought's massive commercial con. If she's involved in the current conflict, she's either still working for Vought in secret, or else she's gone rogue.
Either possibility sets up an interesting reveal for later in the season.