‘The Boys’ Season 4 Premiere Is More Political Than Ever
The Boys is a bizarre mashup of true absurdity and uncanny real-world parallels. Sure, it’s silly that a Trumpian Superman is the main antagonist of the popular superhero parody series. But! It’s tough to say that the concept is any more or less moronic than what our actual former president is up to on any given day. Earlier this week, Trump warned a crowd in the Las Vegas desert about shark attacks after he was found guilty of more than thirty counts in a hush-money scheme with a porn actor. If that’s not The Boys coded, then I don’t know what is.
So the fact that Homelander (Antony Starr) kicks off season 4 with his own Trump-esque trial is no less surprising. Mirroring Trump’s infamous quote that he could “shoot somebody and not lose voters,” Homelander ended season 3 by killing a man in broad daylight with his laser vision. Instead of fearing his power, his right-wing supporters absolutely loved it. Now Homelander finds himself more unencumbered than ever before.
Meanwhile, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie Cambell (Jack Quaid) continue their operations as “The Boys.” They’re working for the CIA to assassinate Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), an anti-supe congresswoman running for higher office. In the spin-off series, Gen V, she revealed that she secretly has superpowers herself. She also got hold of a deadly virus developed at Godolkin that can allegedly kill supes.
This virus sounds incredibly powerful, but as Billy quickly reminds us, it’s not strong enough to kill Homelander yet. Damn! I guess that’s why creator Eric Kripke announced that he’s ending The Boys after season 5—and not season 4, episode 1. Sorry! Whoops! The virus isn’t strong enough.
Marvin (Laz Alonso) also informs his fellow Boys, “We might have to accept the possibility that Neuman’s invulnerable.” After fighting off the congresswoman’s daughter and her nasty mouth tentacles, Hughie throws acid on Neuman while Billy attempts to shoot her in the head. Both attacks fail. So it’s back to the drawing board.
Homelander Takes a Meditative Piss
Feeling secure that Butcher is incapable of killing him, Homelander searches for what to do with his life. He’s having something of a midlife crisis—as always—spurred by the white pubic hairs he picks off his testicles while taking a piss. He openly believes that humans are toys for his amusement, but he’s run out of ways to make humanity dance for his pleasure. At a meeting to recruit more supes to the Seven, his only options are a border-patrol officer named the Warden and a man named Dogknott who reportedly “ate out a dog.”
Homelander cries that he’s “surrounded by imbeciles.” Everyone around him simply does whatever he says without any objections. When he orders the Deep (Chace Crawford) to perform fellatio on A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), he stops them both right before the act to prove that “not one of you has the stomach to challenge anything I say.” He seeks out Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), a woman who claims to be the “smartest person in the world."
“I need advice,” Homelander tells her. “I save people. They cheer. I kill people. They cheer. It’s meaningless.” He wants to leave behind a legacy, but he has no idea what would make him happy. Knowing that he won’t kill her in retaliation because he needs her help, she challenges his platform thus far. If he crushes the masses with an army of Nazi supermen, who will build his statues? You’ve just got to nudge ’em a little, then swoop in and save them. “Like Caesar,” Homelander responds. He offers Sage a spot on the Seven.
The New Boys
Several characters join the party for season 4. In this episode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead) makes his series debut as Joe Kessler, an old Army buddy of Butcher’s. It’s not quite clear what his role is moving forward, but maybe it has to do with the fact that prolonged usage of Compound V is destroying Billy’s brain. He’s seeing ghosts and vomiting, with just a couple more months to live. Desperate to find a way to free Homelander’s son from his grasp, Butcher almost betrays Hughie to work with Neuman. At the last second, a vision of his dead ex-wife convinces him to find another way.
Speaking of characters that we thought were dead, Hughie’s mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) shows up after his father is hospitalized from a stroke. I guess we won’t see much of Simon Pegg this season, but he has another Mission: Impossible to film, so I can’t blame him. There’s also a new Black Noir, who is cheekily played by the same actor (Nathan Mitchell), since he never showed his face before he died.
Chaos at the Courthouse
At a private fan meeting, Homelander orders the Deep, Black Noir, and A-Train to beat three men to death with baseball bats. They comply, still afraid to defy their leader. “That was so fucked up, you guys,” the new Black Noir says. It’s a pretty big deal, as the last Black Noir never spoke.
That same day, Homelander is found not guilty at his trial for murdering a guy in public. Outside the courthouse, his supporters yell obscenities across the picket line. Annie’s (Erin Moriarty) Starlighter campaign is growing on the left, but it’s about to hit a major snag. Sage attends the rally dressed in Starlighter gear and incites a riot. The Boys arrive and try to stop the violence, but there are too many agitators. A-Train then runs over the dead fans from earlier at super speed so that it looks like the Starlighters were just as violent as Homelander’s supporters. As Sage advised, Homelander is creating chaos in order to swoop in and be the savior once again. I have only one major question: What does Sage get out of this?
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