The Boys: Season Four

"What's a little genocide between friends?"

I often talk about how certain shows make me feel. The Boys makes me feel nauseous.

So why am I writing this review?

The fifth and final season of The Boys is coming April 8, and since I intend to see this series through to what will certainly be an extremely bloody grossout of an ending, I finally got around to watching the first season of Gen V and the fourth season of The Boys. I'm not up to a Gen V review — another of our brave writers might give us one — but I feel obligated to finish out The Boys.

While I'm here, I'd like to thank Logan Cox for his excellent reviews of the first three seasons. I've never read the source material, as he did, and I know I don't track the show as well as he did, but here we go.

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4.1 Department of Dirty Tricks

Robert Singer: "Everyone told me to pick Buttigieg instead."

This season picked up where the previous season left off, with Billy Butcher infected with V and dying but still trying to save his stepson Ryan from Ryan's biological father, Homelander, who is now killing people in public. Homelander is also having an existential crisis because he's realized that he's, OMG, aging. He is actually ordering other members of the Seven to kill for him, and he's made a new member of the Seven, Sister Sage (new cast member Susan Heyward) who is supposedly the smartest person in the world, an offer she can't refuse.

With approaching death a major theme, Hughie is also facing the fact that after a stroke, his father Hugh Sr. is dying.

Robert Singer (Jim Beaver, whose character name is the same as his Supernatural character) has been elected president. He knows that his Veep-elect, Victoria Neuman, has a secret: she's a supe, and that means a supe is one heartbeat away from the presidency. Sadly, I used to find the right wing political satire on The Boys amusing, but it's getting too close to the real thing and is not that funny anymore. Which is not Kripke's fault.

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4.2 Life Among the Septics

Splinter: "It's not what it looks like."

I watch this show mostly because of my deep fondness for Karl Urban and for the Supernatural guest stars and continuing characters. And in that vein, Rob Benedict, how could you? Doing something like that sauna scene with a man who did such a fabulous job playing God was in extremely bad taste. Pun absolutely intended.

For what it's worth, one of the things I enjoyed most about this season was the character arc of A-Train, as he slowly realized that he just couldn't do it anymore. I also enjoyed the new Noir and his acting attempts. Somehow the costume made it funnier.

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4.3 We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

Mother's Milk: "I mean, Sage? Elon Musk has more charm than she does, and he's half-android."

As Homelander is failing as a father, Mother's Milk is failing as leader of the Boys. The Deep is literally keeping his lover octopus in a closet, Annie's Starlighters are "godless nonbinary socialists," and the endless right wing conspiracy theories are making me ill.

Moving right along...

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4.4 Wisdom of the Ages

"Get in the oven, Frank."

I thought this was the first good episode of the season. Homelander, with a celebratory Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake in hand, goes home to the lab where he was raised by scientists and ends up killing them all in a very messy way. The most intriguing revelation was that as a child, Homelander could have left the lab whenever he wanted, but he stayed because he needed even that low level of love and approval. It pretty much explains Homelander, although it certainly doesn't excuse him.

Hughie acquires Compound V to save his dad's life, but decides against using it. His mother gives it to Hugh Sr., anyway. In other news, President-Elect Singer allies with Starlight, and Mother's Milk decides to bring Butcher back into the fold.

And this is a big one: Hughie forgives A-Train for killing his girlfriend in the pilot episode. Wow.

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4.5 Beware the Jabberwock, My Son

Butcher: "Well, you could've warned us your pal Sameer was vee-ing up a Kentucky Fried fucking massacre."

Giancarlo Esposito has a farm with a lab where the animal experimentation has gone from sad and tragic to outright ridiculous. I have to admit that the flying killer sheep made me laugh, although the CGI wasn't what it could have been. The bunnies with tentacles (preview of what is going to happen to Butcher?) were maybe not as amusing.

Hugh Sr. wakes up but is far from okay. He goes on a frantic rampage around the hospital, terrified and not knowing where he is, pulling out a person's heart and vibrating through other patients. Too sad, and honestly, the gore level was dialed up to eleven. It's hard for me to relax and enjoy a show when a body part could explode at any moment. I prefer a higher ratio of story and character to gore.

Veep Neuman has acquired the killer-supe virus, and Cate and Sam from Gen V show up. Homelander continues to pretend he's a good father, while Ryan wants to save people for real, much like A-Train. A-Train recruits/blackmails Ashley; Frenchie turns himself in to the cops for his sins of the past.

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4.6 Dirty Business

Butcher: "I'm trying to save the world here. Claret's gonna get spilt."

So Hughie goes undercover in Webweaver's costume and is bound and traumatized by sexual torture committed by Tek-Knight and Ashley. Firecracker, who brings up Marjorie Taylor Greene's Jewish space lasers, produces breast milk for Homelander, and gag me with a spoon. Butcher finally realizes that he's hallucinating Kessler and Becca.

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4.7 The Insider

Ryan: "We're telling kids to report on their own parents."

I thought this penultimate episode was actually pretty good, even though it ended in frustration.

Ryan rejects the Avenue V/Nazi puppet show because he remembers what his mother taught him. Homelander gets rid of Sister Sage and surrounds himself with sycophants. There is a huge Butcher/Starlight versus Deep/Noir fight in the Flatiron office building. It ends with a shapechanger duplicating Annie.

A-Train tells Mother's Milk, "You know, when I carried your ass to the ER, there was a kid there. His eyes were like... 'Holy shit.' Looking at me like I was a hero. There were no screaming fans, no cameras. Nobody even knew. Except for this one kid. That felt better than anything that I'd ever done at Vought. Because for once, I didn't hate myself." Very nice. And it convinces Mother's Milk to stick around and stay in the fight.

Frenchie cuts off Kimiko's leg to save her from the supe-killer virus. Kimiko has always been a favorite of mine. The actress manages to exhibit an amazing amount of emotion without speaking. I'd have trouble getting past Kimiko dying, to be honest.

On the other side of the see-saw, I was disturbed by the Deep killing Ambrosious, his octopus lover, whom I was shocked to realize was voiced by Tilda Swinton.

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4.8 Season Four Finale

Hughie: "Yep, we did that. That is a thing that we did."

This episode was overloaded with bits and plots. And yes, we all know taking out Homelander and stopping Vought wouldn't happen in the penultimate season anyway, but it just felt like the entire season was spinning their wheels.

Homelander outed Veep Neuman as a supe on live TV, fake Annie was set up to murder Singer who hid in an underground bunker to no avail, as he was arrested for ordering Neuman's assassination (although that killing was actually by the now evil Butcher and his brand new tentacles). Speaker of the House Calhoun becomes president, declares martial law, and deputizes supes. Homelander is now running the country. Again, less funny that it probably was last year.

The Annie versus Annie fight was okay; very Star Trek. But for me, the best part of the season was Kimiko finally speaking, and she and Frenchie finally exchanging a kiss. It echoed Hughie and Annie proposing to each other but sadly, it was the fake Annie so it doesn't count.

Ryan's arc toward good was disappointingly hijacked when Grace Mallory tells him the truth about Homelander and Ryan kills her. Unlike Homelander, Ryan won't be confined. Is Ryan turning into another Homelander? Or is he the anti-Homelander, the answer to taking him out? Tune in next season, huh?

Homelander has a hit list and Ashley is on it, so she shoots up with V in self defense. Sadly, we don't see what she becomes. Sister Sage is back on Homelander's side; to be honest, I was never quite sure what her master plan actually was. The disappointing underuse of Starlight, Kimiko, Sister Sage, and Firecracker suggests that this show really doesn't do well with character arcs for female supes — it's all about the guys. And I guess that's pretty much covered by the title of the series. For that matter, Supernatural is also a guy show, isn't it?

Let's see, what else. I'm sure I missed a lot. I was happy to see Soldier Boy is still alive because I'm still in love with Jensen Ackles. Disappointed that we didn't get more A-Train. I also heard that this episode was originally entitled "Assassination Run," but it was changed after the attempted assassination of Trump. I'll again state that the real world has edged too close to satire.

Guess we'll see what happens in the final season soon. Two out of four flying sheep? What did you all think? What did I miss?

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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