The Boys: Every Episode Ranked Worst To Best
7. The Self-Preservation Society (Season 1, Episode 7)
The Boys' first season spends a lot of time building up the characters, introducing new faces, dropping names, putting all the pieces in play and promising some major revelations. The Self-Preservation Society is really the episode where everything comes to a head, as Starlight ends up in the crosshairs of an enraged Homelander and Butcher pushes his role as the show's anti-hero to its breaking point.
The Society introduces Grace Mallory, the original leader of The Boys, and in some striking flashbacks we learn more than ever about Butcher and his vendetta against Homelander. It also comes complete with a perfect twist, in which Homelander finds out The Boys' identities and accuses Starlight of being their accomplice.
As a whole, the episode is sometimes disjointed by the flashbacks and the present-day story, shifting between tones with each subplot, but with Butcher's brutal murder of Mesmer and Hughie's confession to Annie about who he is, there really is more than enough to love with season one's penultimate affair. Plus, Homelander threatening Starlight? Chills.