The Boys' Character That Should've Been Killed Off, Like, Yesterday
Look, there are a lot of TV shows and movies with characters who exist just to fill a niche.
The "redshirts" in Star Trek get introduced so that they can die at the hand of the alien-of-the-week. Any number of "sassy best friend" characters have dialogue only to move a rom-com plot forward. And don't get me started on the girlfriends of superheroes who exist just so that their death/torture/kidnapping can inspire the hero.
I can appreciate that Todd, the new boyfriend of Monique Milk, exists to fulfill a purpose in The Boys. From the first moment he appears onscreen, Todd acts as a representation of far-right American "Everymen", demonstrating how easy it is for people to be manipulated by rhetoric and conspiracy theories.
We get it. Can he die now, already?
Maybe it's that Todd is so obviously a stand-in for QAnon believers that makes him obnoxious. At first, he appears like any other mild-mannered white guy in glasses (though he was apparently modeled after Matt Walsh, a very specific mild-mannered white guy in glasses).
But like so many people post-2016, Todd quickly falls down a rabbit hole.
It starts when his hero tells him to distrust the mainstream media, and Todd begins to only believe the word of that single man with power. It doesn't take long for Monique's new boyfriend to fall for The Boys' version of PizzaGate. It's disturbing because it's true – people really do believe this stuff, and it's hard to dissuade them when anything that's been researched and reported must be a lie, and strangers on the internet are the ones to be trusted.
But if The Boys wanted to give us a truly stomach-dropping version of this character, they should have taken a note from real life and made Todd less of a dope. The guy is so clearly delusional, and his ride down the slippery slope of far-right conspiracy theories happens so quickly, that it's hard to connect him to the real-life people who get sucked into QAnon and 4chan.
The people who believe in PizzaGate aren't just nutters. They're mothers, and brothers, and friends, and teachers, and engineers – average, ordinary, sometimes very intelligent people. That's what makes the whole thing so frightening in real life.
Todd, on the other hand, is a bit of a cartoon. He's just a bit too smarmy – just a bit too dumb. Todd cheering when Homelander kills a person right in front of him should have been chilling, but instead we just think, of course he is cheering. He's always been a jackass. Why would Monique ever date this loser?
If The Boys really wants to represent the dangers of mob mentality and conspiracy theorists, they need to nix Todd asap. Having his head exploded by Victoria Neuman would do nicely. Then we can start over with a more interesting version of the character, one who reminds us of the chilling truth – in real life, you can't see these people coming from a mile away. In real life, they're already sitting next to you.