Did you pick up on The Boys' early clue that Victoria Neuman was season 2's phantom head-popper? The sophomore season of Amazon's The Boys intrigued viewers with the secret Nazi past of Stormfront, and fascinated them with the cult-like Church of the Collective - a clear riff on real-world scientology. However, the longest running mystery of The Boys season 2 was the ongoing issue of randomly exploding heads. During a secret meeting between The Boys and the CIA's Susan Raynor, the agent was prevented from sharing the fruits of her investigation when her head spontaneously burst, mostly onto Hughie. Later, during Vought's congress hearing, all manner of court officials and bystanders suffered the same fate, and while the attack was obviously the work of a supe, no one seemed to know who was responsible.
In The Boys season 2's finale, Victoria Neuman is spotted lurking outside of Alistair Adana's office. Her eyes glaze over, and she watches from afar while the Church of the Collective's head honcho becomes merely a honcho. Neuman's backstory, motivations and goals won't be revealed until The Boys season 3, but the twist itself was highly effective, and many fans were caught off-guard by the revelation. Due to her similar powers and grudge against Vought, Cindy was actually the prime head-popper suspect, but ultimately proved a well-placed red herring to distract from the true popper.
The Boys season 2 deliberately draws suspicion away from Victoria Neuman, both with Cindy, and by having her caught up in the congress incident, but a major clue is dropped almost immediately following Raynor's death. After witnessing the CIA agent's demise, the bloody quartet of Boys pile into their van and get out of dodge before their noggins pop. The action then cuts abruptly from a hysterical Hughie to a TV news segment featuring Victoria Neuman.
At the time, this connection went unnoticed. Still reeling from Raynor's shocking death, viewers naturally wouldn't connect these subtle dots straight away - especially since The Boys gives no suggestion that Neuman will become a major character by the season's end. In fact, the scene almost serves to exonerate Neuman as a potential suspect, tacitly suggesting that the politician couldn't be responsible because she was on TV. In truth, the two events could've happened hours apart, or the interview might've been pre-recorded. With the benefit of hindsight, the sudden jump from head-bursting to Neuman's interview is the clearest possible signal of the murderer's identity, hidden in plain sight.
The transition potentially also hints toward events to come in The Boys season 3. The Neuman TV segment is shown on a screen in Stan Edgar's office, who watches on with his trademark blank-faced, give-nothing-away expression. If anyone at Vought is aware of Neuman's abilities, it's Edgar, so there may be deeper significance to him watching the political firebrand speak publicly in the aftermath of Raynor's murder. Edgar probably knows more than he's letting on in this scene, but the audience is none the wiser.
Another potentially significant detail is how the episode's dialogue blends from the Raynor sequence to Neuman's TV bit. The former ends with Hughie screaming "ARE OUR HEADS GOING TO EXPLODE?!" and his question is answered, in a fashion, by Neuman, who says in her interview "I have a daughter... I'm worried about super-terrorists too." Although the two conversations are entirely separate, having Neuman "answer" Hughie teases a future conflict between them. Jack Quaid's squeamish supe-kicker ends The Boys season 2 by joining Victoria Neuman's campaign team, but after her true intentions are revealed, he may, once again, find himself wondering whether his strawberry-scented head is safe.