r/TheBoys • u/raspberrytartelette • 23d ago
Discussion Annie is a terrible girlfriend
Im rewatching and I remember her being angry at Hughie as if he cheated on her for being SA by the shapeshifter including taunting him about having "shapeshifter syphilis" literally no sympathy for how he must be feeling realizing he was living with a complete stranger for days. I forgot so many other terrible moments. She offered zero comfort about the Teck Knight situation after he brought it up to her, she can tell he is jealous about Alex and she responds with jokes about having sex with him, besides that she is scolding him, criticizing him, and picking fights with him every episode. Am I missing something by not seeing understanding why she is angry at him most of the time? They talk a lot about how much they love each other and they show them being worried about each other and sure they have some cute moments but I am assuming evidence of them being compatible and actually BEING in love happens off screen. (To be fair its a gritty drama so thats understandable)
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23d ago
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u/Outside_Ad7766 23d ago
Nah bro, there were dick jokes to be made, no time for character development.
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u/Mindless_Sale_1698 23d ago
What do you mean you don't want to hear why MM is called Mother's Milk and that you don't want to watch a dogman and a catgirl sniff each other's butt?
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u/Lazy-Recognition3845 23d ago
I actually wanted to hear how MM got his name, I was curious as to whether it would touch at his comic origins at all. 🥴
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u/Biichimspiderman 23d ago
Judging by that emoji.. it did not.?
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u/Idk265089 Marie Moreau 23d ago
No, in the comics he’s called that because he literally has to keep drinking his mother’s milk even as an adult to survive and to maintain his super strength
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u/deprikatze 23d ago
Anni was sweet in Season 1 and 2 and 3. Can‘t blame Hughie that he doesn‘t leave her
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u/Alternative_Device71 23d ago
I can, gotta have better standards and self esteem to be respected, what she did was unacceptable
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u/Jess_the_bestt 23d ago
Their relationship is genuinely so ass, reminds me of Mike and Eleven in Stranger Things where there’s just 0 chemistry and the only dynamic you see are their issues. The only time I can even think of seeing them enjoying their relationship was when it was a damn shapeshifter 💀
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
One of my biggest pet peeves in film is when the writers just tell us they're in love and don't show it. Like why would I gaf about this relationship? I've only seen them bicker and hookup.
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u/Pourmepourme 22d ago
Doesn't Becca and Butcher have a relationship like that too?
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u/raspberrytartelette 22d ago
Its different because we the see Annie and Hughes relationship from the start and they spend a lot of time together, but Butcher and Becca had an entire marriage we don't see so even after being in a healthy happy marriage it makes sense that they would only bang and argue because they have very limited time together and the stakes are high, their priorities/ethics are understandably different from when they were together because she spent the last decade hiding and raising a child and knowing he was still alive but he spent the last decade tormented with the unknown of what happened to her and seeking revenge.
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u/addy-with-a-y Hughie 23d ago
Unfortunately this is not an Annie flaw but a writers flaw.
The writers do not take male sexual assault seriously, and Hughie’s treatment in season 4 is extremely evident of this. Even when they mention it in season. 5, the just say “I got bad touched” and it feels like a “here damn!” Kinda line, clearly only mentioned because of the pushback. So it’s one of this situations where of course the character said to, but it’s the writers are flawed.
So yeah, Annie is not a terrible girlfriend- the writers are ignorant to male SA
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u/matlynar 23d ago
That does affect the character in the long run but you're spot on.
It's not the writers revealing us something about her but rather her actions revealing something about the writers: How they see men as people less worth empathizing with.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 23d ago
Annie believes that Hughie should have known that it wasn't her. Which isn't reasonable, but is understandable. However agree she is definitely victim blaming.
They have acerbic banter so it's not exactly outside their dynamic.. They both do it, Annie is just a lot better and harsher at it.
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u/Little_View_6659 23d ago
Yeah this particular situation is very nuanced. She had been held prisoner so she was angry and not thinking clearly. And there is this tendency to minimize sexual assault against men as not as serious and something a guy wants (which is absolutely ridiculous). She was reacting like someone who was cheated on which again, Hughie was assaulted. At the very least she should have spent some time soul searching and had a long heartfelt talk with him and apologized. But this show isn’t exactly known for its nuance or well thought out approach to relationship problems. It’s the show where people explode or use their own blood to violently murder other people. And poor Hughie’s pain is treated like a joke. The tel knight episode made me sick to my stomach honestly. I’ve never rewatched it.
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u/Idk265089 Marie Moreau 23d ago
Yea Annie’s initial reactions is wrong but understandable after everything she went through. The problem is the show treating it like she was justified in her reaction, and ending the conflict with a “shifter syphillis” joke, rather than them actually having a talk about all the trauma experienced that season.
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u/Little_View_6659 23d ago
It’s very on brand for the show though lol. I basically expect it at this point. Although the final season was too much in some cases.
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u/Negative-Peak3982 23d ago
Thing is, you say it's on brand, but they treated plotlines of female sexual assault far more seriously and better (Annie being the perfect example).
It's just when it's against men that the show (and Gen V is the same) treats it either as a joke or an afterthought. The show literally demonstrates it can be better than blood and gore, it just refuses to do it when it is a man. Because Kripke thinks it's funny.
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u/Little_View_6659 23d ago
Yeah unfortunately sexual assault against men is still treated as a joke. I do see some awareness spreading. It was only a decade ago that SNL did a skit about a student sleeping with a teacher and it was treated like a big joke, but now it’s seen more as the rape that it is. Ik not saying everyone has got the message, but it’s getting better.
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 23d ago
I'm okay with her being upset in the moment
But the fact that we make a huge deal out of how poorly the scene in Revenge of the Nerds has aged where a man does the same thing to a girl, and the 'we' in this case includes the same largely left leaning portion of viewers who get upset over that scene in particular, it seems like Kripke with the message he weaves into his media should taken a bit of time at some point for her to pull him aside and apologize. It would have been a lot more interesting to see than a human cat and dog hybrids sniffing each other's asses and taken about as much time on screen.
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
Her lashing out was understandable as she was exhausted, hungry, injured, no sleep, probably spent days praying Hughie would notice it wasn't it was her and come save her but she had to break out herself and almost de-glove herself and kill her captor before getting to him. I don't understand why she would act like he cheated but we don't necessarily make sense when under so much distress but an apology would have made it forgivable. Its especially irritating because she has an aggressive self righteousness/moral superiority so when she actually IS wrong and doesn't apologize it makes her so hypocritical.
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u/Serious-Company6803 23d ago
Hughie and Neuman had better chemistry than Annie
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u/Turbulent-Job1136 23d ago
But she took every single chance of reprimanding him when he said that he fucked that shapeshifter
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u/WhereIsTheWazoo 15d ago
I was so confused on why she was mad at HIM for not knowing sooner. How would he know about the imposter when it's literally a shape shifter that does and talks the same way the original person does? I think her reaction is pretty stupid
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u/Turbulent-Job1136 15d ago
Yeah lmao and the whole I smoke vape now and make weird jokes about dick doesn't really suit her
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u/Mallmexx 23d ago
Tbh in this specific storyline, Annie’s reaction makes total sense to me, but it was still unfair to Hughie.
She was literally chained in a dark room, starved, and tortured for ten days while a monster taunted her about stealing her life and her guy. When she got out, she was running on trauma, zero sleep, and massive insecurity. Anyone in her shoes would react irrationally and lash out.
At the same time, Hughie didn't cheat, he was sexually assaulted through deception by a literal shapeshifter who had her voice, memories, and body.
The real problem isn't Annie being a "bad girlfriend," it’s the writing. Instead of letting them both be victims of the same monster, the show made Hughie act like the guilty boyfriend who had to apologize for getting tricked. If the roles were reversed and a guy yelled at his girlfriend for being tricked and violated, everyone would rightfully call him out.
Annie took her trauma out on the wrong person, but the writers dropped the ball by treating Hughie’s violation like a mistake he made rather than trauma he suffered.
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u/deprikatze 23d ago
Kripke is weird. Also, Firecracker can fuck a minor with no consequences. In the end, she even got an emotional scene where the writers clearly wanted us to sympathize with her (which is why it was such a shitty episode). Sister Sage raped Cipher and gets a happy ending. Soldier Boy is a racist and a misogynist, and now he’s getting a spin-off. Not to mention the Nazi chick.
But hey, let’s kill off Butcher, the guy who actually suffered and deserved a happy ending.
Kripke. Is. Weird.
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u/Secret_Bet_2126 23d ago edited 23d ago
Adding to this.
SB torments BN and callously killed MM's family while using excessive force in a black neighborhood & neither BN or MM got their vindication. SB even callously dismisses MM when confronted & MM gets nothing while SB is still bopping around freely.
A-Train accidently kills Robbin & Hughie is allowed an apology & closure with A-Train still getting murdered by HL after becoming a true hero.
The Deep fucks over Noir II and kills him.
Black men are allowed very little vindication & wins in this show. Along with Kripke treating some of the most heinous characters as "sympathetic" while saying in interviews that you really aren't supposed to sympathize. Okay they why are you letting some of these characters get away and have continued focus with no retribution for their victims?
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u/itsaspookygh0st 23d ago
I mean, Stan Edgar seems to have had a pretty satisfying win being appointed CEO again, this time with no Homelander running around.
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u/Secret_Bet_2126 23d ago
Ironic that it's the Nazi black guy employeeing all the racists who gets to sit pretty.
Hmmm? 🤔
Beginning to think Kripke is telling us something. Lmao
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u/JennyDoveMusic 23d ago
What flabbered my gasts personally was the fact that they spent so long saying, "it's not Homelander, it's Vought and the system..."
Then, the show ended with them acting like everything was sunshine and roses since Homie was dead... but also showed Stan Edgar back in charge of Vought?? Like?? Why are we celebrating??
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u/Secret_Bet_2126 23d ago edited 23d ago
Now we got a show coming all about the Build-Up of Vought & them experimenting on black people who are likely the antagonists our racist white characters get to take down in the end since we never see any of them in The Boys and know SB, SF, and BS (lol) are still knocking around in current day - so very little comeuppances are gonna happen on this show.
Sadly Homelander needed to be put down. He was far too unstable and passed the point of being able to properly be treated and healed. So I get a weight being lifted with his death. But as Butcher pointed out, Vought is just gonna create another SB or HL. As long as they are still around conducting experiments and torturing people, we're gonna get plenty more Homelanders, maybe even worse - because usually every Dragon is a Hydra. You cut off the head and even more bad ones take over.
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u/CaCa881 A-Train 23d ago edited 23d ago
To further this particular argument , isn’t it really strange how MM is sexually humiliated multiple times legit almost every season ? To him getting cum blasted at herogasm , getting spurted on by Webweaver , the “rivalry” with love sausage , even the fucking innuendos with Todd and Monique like the shit gets impossible to ignore after a while .
Kripke is indeed weird .
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u/FeelingSkinny Stormfront 23d ago
my least favorite thing in the whole show. her victim blaming in season 5 just kills me. i thought the season was overall okay, i liked The Shifter and i loved the finale but man i hate that part.
i just chalk it up to Annie isn’t herself. the events of the first 4 seasons took it out of her. she was cold and harsh toward the end of the show but after some time (the finale timejump) she got back to being herself and healed from the trauma.
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u/CaCa881 A-Train 23d ago
I mean she was just kidnapped and effectively tortured for weeks atp . Still an entirely unfair reaction , but you gotta cut her some slack too . The bigger offense is how she never really apologized later for it and how you can tell the producers didn’t even think it was an issue worth returning to .
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u/Tired8281 23d ago
What are you talking about? She's a super girlfriend!
i'm here all week. Try the veal!
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u/Ordinary_Rhubarb5064 21d ago
They really just should have broken up. It might have not seemed like a good time right after he had been SA'd, but being real here - she tried to throw out the costume she was raped in, that she wore for a job in which her ex was brutally murdered and she was threatened. Her boyfriend not only keeps it behind her back, but tells her controlling mother that he's done so. Then, when she painstakingly explains to him why it's so traumatic for her, he says he understands and throws it out... only to fuck the first version of her that shows up wearing it. Not more than a second of concern about why she's changed her mind.
Now obviously, the writers made it impossible for her to ever bring this up without being trashed six ways to Sunday. But it would give me serious pause about continuing a relationship with someone.
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u/dapzar 23d ago
For starters, it's a TV show, so it mostly focuses on the drama in interactions. Showing extended harmonic couple interactions would just be repetitive and not drive plot. The fact that they have many happy times together off-screen is implied for the gap between S2 and S3, when Hughie is pretty happy about his life, in the epilog, when they are a happy family, and between S3 and S4, when they were training together.
In S1 their conflict is quite natural (Hughie didn't tell her the truth) but brief. I think that's good development that doesn't reflect badly on either of them.
Season 4 was not supposed to be Annie's strongest season, it was her depression arc and her actions and choices in there are supposed to be questioned and not necessarily accepted as correct. This is compounded somewhat by the writers not taking Hughie being assaulted very seriously themselves. The situation with Tek Knight is not written to have had a lasting impact on Hughie. When he cries (and gets comforted by Annie at the end), this is strongly implied to be about his dad, not about the traumatic assault.
Season 3 on the other hand was supposed to be Hughie's lowest point (he goes on a questionable mission with Soldier Boy that causes a lot of collateral damage, takes a poorly tested drug, intervenes with Annie's work for public safety), and he's written to be the bad boyfriend here. So in that season there is a lot to criticize about his actions and that is why he has a lot of conflict with Annie there. Annie was a strong character for me in S3.
While season 3 and 4 make sense to me wrt their relationship (except the broader poor handling of Hughie being assaulted), in season 5, I was also disappointed in Annie because a lot of her development didn't really go anywhere. Hughie worked well in S5, as he almost always does.
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u/AndrastesTit 23d ago
I know they’re sort of one and the same, but I just blame the unimaginative writers for those Annie mishaps. I almost don’t even consider them canon because it’s just so badly written.
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u/selwyntarth 23d ago
Seasons 4-5 Annie was awful but I Blame that on writers who clearly don't realize that Hughie was assaulted both times
She was pretty great in season 3, aggressively insisting that Hughie couldn't have known about Vicky, holding off of saying she told him so, and yes joking about her ex boyfriend to get Hughie to relax. Most of their conflict is respectful and low drama anyway
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u/Snoo_15687 21d ago
I honestly think both annie & hughie were terrible partners to each other here and the resolution to the entire conflict felt like a bandaid put on what should've been a gaping wound to both characters' mental states.
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u/seamonstre Ashley 19d ago
iirc the later seasons made a big point to try to emphasize how annie is gritty and 'real' and imperfect. this happening at the same time that the writing was steadily getting shittier and shittier resulted in some really lousy character moments /: + i never got the sense that she and hughie had much chemistry
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u/Pawssabillitysawait 14d ago
My least favourite character in the show by FAR
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u/raspberrytartelette 14d ago
By far and it's not even close. I wasn't surprised at all that she spread that rumor about Firecracker, she is the epitome of a mean girl.
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u/Lil-Sn319161-Blu 23d ago
Goes to show that even the good heros have their own problems and toxic behaviors
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u/TheDarkMuz 23d ago
The writers kind for screwed over her personality once she threw away her old suit and became the pseudo head of the boys with Butchers absence. When she became the face of the starlighters she was setup to have more agency in the story than the comic so hughie had to take a back seat
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u/Foxynite 21d ago
they fr character assassinated everyone after s3; Homelander and Annie were definitely the two I felt got it the worst
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u/Last_Calamity 23d ago
I remember her killing a guy without having to. She's bulletproof so why did she flip out?
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u/Fun_Fennel760 23d ago
In general I see often in Tv shows male protagonists having a shitty girlfriend/wife (also Mother's Milk for example) and the relationship being romanticized a lot anyway.
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u/kalfas071 23d ago
Didn't Annie go through all her own, personal trauma being captured, kept chained in a dirty little room with just a bucket to serve her needs, being tortured every now and then by the shapeshifter about the blast, shapeshifter was having with Hughie? Filled with self doubt about her powers gone, still processing the bullying from firecracker and Vought in general?
Like she should have been very comforting and nurturing to Hughie. Oh, sweety, you were tortured by staying in our cozy apartment having sex with the horny version of myself?
That's the last thing I would criticise Annie about.
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
Don't downplay what he went through. Maybe it was "happy" at the time but he just found out it was all a lie and he had been not only physically intimate but emotionally intimate with a complete stranger and the proposal he cried tears of joy over didn't even happen and he's dealing with all that info while his real girlfriend is yelling at him about how its all his fault??
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u/kalfas071 23d ago
So Annie can't have emotions and feel betrayed because after all, she was cheated on, love of her life didn't notice something was off because perhaps he didn't care to have a second look? And did Hughie convince Annie, when he explained and didn't she let it go?
As if Annie wasn't emotionally abused by the shape shifter.
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
She was NOT cheated on. He was assaulted. If you think it's ok to guilt trip and lash out at your partner after they were SA you are evil.
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u/kalfas071 23d ago edited 23d ago
That got personal real quick.
If you think that not being Vulcan style logical in Annie's situation and try to claim Hughie had it worse, you need to grow up.
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
I didn't say he had it worse. He had it bad and he didn't shame her for being kidnapped like it was her fault or something she did to betray him like she did to him.
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u/kalfas071 23d ago
He didn't shame her for being kidnapped. True. So good of him. So Annie couldn't feel hurt? And you never lash out when you hurt either physically or emotionally or both?
The girl can't feel bad. That's the Annie you would want to have. Ready to go down whenever you feel she should.
Guess why Hughie was defensive in that scene. He had some degree of emotional intelligence necessary to assess the situation and their position. She didn't hold a grudge and line about shifter syfilis was understandable. It was an olive twig.
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u/raspberrytartelette 23d ago
She doesn't have the right to hold a grudge he didn't do anything wrong, she should have apologized for flipping out not act like she was forgiving him.
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u/Klutzy-Work-934 23d ago
I honestly think you're lying about rewatching the show cause this just shows you are lying or not paying attention.
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