The episode follows Billy Butcher visiting his aunt Judy intending to retire after his wife Becca refused to escape with him, but the consequences of finding her make presence when Black Noir is ordered to kill him, forcing the latter with the aid of Hughie Campbell and Mother's Milk to fight him.
The episode received positive reviews from critics with praise for the performances, action sequences, and social commentary of the LGBT community.
During the filming of Dawn of the Seven, Ashley Barret approaches Homelander to show him footage where he accidentally kills an innocent boy after confronting a Supe terrorist at a village, which results in protests against him.
During a rally led by congresswoman Victoria Neuman, Homelander shows up attempting to justify his actions by stating that innocents always get killed in wars, only for the crowd to start criticizing him.
A-Train, who can't accept his impending expulsion from the Seven, attempts to have the Dawn of the Seven script ending changed but is rebuffed by the producers, resulting in Ashley threatening to get him fired unless he complies.
Black Noir starts to strangle Butcher, but the latter blackmails him with sending photos of Becca and Ryan to Ronan Farrow unless he spares them, leading the former to call his boss Stan Edgar to negotiate.
[3] In June 2020, it was announced that the episodes for the second season would be released in a weekly basis instead of dropping all of them in one day in order to make people discuss about the topics for a longer time.
[9][10] The episode main cast includes Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr as John Gillman / Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight, Dominique McElligott as Maggie Shaw / Queen Maeve, Jessie T. Usher as Reggie Franklin / A-Train, Laz Alonso as Marvin T. Milk / Mother's Milk (M.M.
), Chace Crawford as Kevin Moskowitz / The Deep, Tomer Capone as Serge / Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko Miyashiro / The Female, Nathan Mitchell as Earving / Black Noir, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, and Aya Cash as Klara Risinger / Stormfront.
[11] Also starring are Giancarlo Esposito as Stan Edgar, Shawn Ashmore as Man in Scrubs, Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman, Ann Cusack as Donna January, Greg Grunberg as Agent Bill Pearson, Malcolm Barrett as Seth Reed, P.J.
[13] An scene that involves Kimiko meeting with Cherie before being confronted by Frenchie took place at a church located in St. Paul's Bloor Street.
[17] The episode features the following songs which are "Punks at the Gym" by Dead Tired, "Show Star" by Ashot Philipp, and "Dream On" by Aerosmith.
She also praised the scenes that take place at the Vought's filming set, comparing them over how in real life the writers handle the portrayal of LGBTQ characters once their respective actors sexuality are revealed to the world.
Club, lauded the episode's writing, noting over how the show makes a critic towards the way the Marvel made their own films and controls the celebrities.
However, he also criticized the way Queen Maeve's storyline was handled as he considered it didn't carry much weight to the main narrative by stating that "her plot in Season 2 involving her forceful "coming out" as a lesbian and subsequent drama with her girlfriend is a bit lackluster.
"[24] With a rating of 3 stars out of 5 for his review at Vulture, Brian Tallerico criticized the decision of suddenly making Homelander and Stormfront, when the former hated the latter so much in the previous episodes to which he deemed very predictable.
"[25] Nich Schager from Entertainment Weekly, praised the decision to make both characters Billy Butcher and Homelander to suffer a downfall as it shows the importance of having a friend to help us out in the moments of danger.