Since the beginning of my watch of Amazon’s The Boys, the character of Queen Maeve has been both interesting and frustrating—interesting because I love the morally grey bisexual Wonder Woman vibe she gives off, but frustrating due to the lack of screentime she’s had. Season three brought all this together.
Spoilers for Season Three of The Boys.
This season, Maeve spent most of the season in the background, something that people have speculated is due to COVID restrictions, since Dominique McElligott is Irish and the show is largely shot in Toronto. We saw her have sex with Butcher, provide some compound V, get imprisoned for seasons, kick a little bit of ass against Homelander, and then help defeat Soldier Boy. In doing the latter, she pushed him off a building and seemed to die in an explosion.
Thankfully, while she will be faking her death with her ex-girlfriend and is now seemingly depowered, Maeve is alive and has fully passed the torch to Starlight/Annie. “The first time your prissy ass showed up at the tower, crying in the bathroom, you saved me,” Maeve says to Annie. “The truth is you don’t need me anymore. I could jump. You can fucking fly.”
Showrunner Eric Kripke told TV Line that killing Maeve was never on the table and that he wanted to give her and Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude) a happy ending.
“At no point did I ever consider killing Maeve, from the very, very beginning [of the series]. We were intentionally building to a happy ending for her, always, for a lot of reasons,” Kripke explained. “One, she deserved it. Believe it or not, ‘The Boys’ is a moral universe, and when you make the right choices, you get rewarded, and she deserved a happy ending with Elena.”
The writers’ room was also aware of the problems of killing off gay characters, and bisexual Maeve is one of the few recurring queer characters on the show.
“I am not going to fall into the trope of killing off gay characters. I’m aware of it, [and] I agree with the criticism of it. I’m not going to do that as well,” he said. “And I’ll admit that I think we’re playing around a little with that trope by letting people think she’s dead, and they’re going to shout at their TV and be really upset by it, but then [we] reveal she’s actually going to go have a nice, power-free life with her girlfriend. So hopefully that will take the sting off it.”
At the same time, they wanted Maeve to be able to move on and set the stage for Annie. “A lot of the big story is Annie finally stepping up and emerging as the hero she needs to be, and in classic [story] structure, it’s time for her mentor and protector to go and let her stand on her own two feet,” Kripke explained.
I love Annie’s character, and I’m glad she is getting to be a full hero, but I hate that now we only have two major female recurring characters on this show, with powers and plot. No offense to Ashley on her girlboss catch-22 journey, but I enjoyed the dynamic between Starlight, Kimiko, and Maeve all together. Plus, it sucks that Maeve’s entire storyline this season was so passive. She got an epic conclusion, but I wish there was more.
Kripke promised that “[Maeve and Dominique are] going to definitely take a break… but the series will definitely not end without seeing Maeve again.” Hopefully, then they will finally have it in their budget to give her new wig.
(featured image: Amazon Studios)
