“The Boys” season 4 premiere recap: Homelander’s on trial for murder

The boys are back in town. Here's what happened in the first three episodes of season 4.

Episode 1: "Department of Dirty Tricks"

It’s been almost two years since the blood-soaked finale of The Boys season 3, and the new season picks up with VP candidate (and secretly murderous supe) Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) riling up her supporters on election night. We learned last season that Neuman is allied with Homelander (Antony Starr), so naturally, the Boys have a scheme to take her out.

Their plan is to slip into Neuman’s hotel room and swap her eye drops with poison… but they never get that far. Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) are caught by Neuman’s daughter Zoe (Olivia Morandin), who kills the traitorous Secret Service agents with the nightmare inducing, Lovecraftian tentacles she’s hiding in her throat, a by-product of her mother dosing her with Compound V last season.

With Starlight’s (Erin Moriarty) help, Kimiko and Frenchie barely escape. And just like that, their plan is kaput. Butcher (Karl Urban), to none of the team’s surprise, is no assistance whatsoever, ‘cause he gets distracted when he sees Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) sneak off to the kitchen for some ice cream and decides to ditch his comms and go after his beloved late wife’s son.

Butcher pleads with Ryan to run away with him, far away from his sadistic father Homelander. He even reveals to Ryan that he’s got less than a year to live. Ryan’s clearly affected by this, but before he can react, Homelander enters and takes Ryan away.

Very quickly, we get the sense that Homelander’s story this season is all about legacy. But Homelander’s not just concerned about what comes after him because he’s a father now… it’s because he’s starting to age. And we’re shown this in the most The Boys way humanly possible: by watching Homelander systematically pluck his stray gray pubic hairs and toss them in a jar for… safekeeping?

Hilariously, Homelander’s far more concerned with the contents of that jar than he is with the impending verdict from his murder trial, a consequence (if you could even call it that) of killing a Starlight fan in broad daylight in the season 3 finale. He knows he won’t be found guilty, just as well as the rest of the country does, and the Starlighter movement is ready to riot while the Home Team are ready to celebrate. But more on that later…

Fresh off the Boys’ epic failure in the opening sequence, MM (Laz Alonso) meets with CIA operative Grace (Laila Robins) for a debrief. To our surprise, President-Elect Dakota Bob is there with her, having authorized the mission to assassinate Neuman (which is why Secret Service helped them get inside the building). Bob knows that the moment he’s elected, he’s a dead man, so he’s tasked the Boys with offing his VP before Congress ratifies his election on January 6th.

While MM strategizes with Grace, Butcher is forced to wait outside, having been stripped of his command of the Boys after his shady antics in season 3. But as Butcher stews in the waiting room, he’s approached by an old friend, CIA agent Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Kessler’s agenda isn’t immediately clear, but it’s evident from their brief conversation that he wants Butcher to reclaim his captainship of the Boys and do whatever it takes to stop Neuman from becoming America’s next president and destroying democracy as we know it.

Over at Vought, the search is on for a new member of the Seven. After a run-through of the top candidates – a racist, a zoophiliac, and as Deep (Chace Crawford) puts it, “a butterface” — one candidate emerges as a frontrunner: the smartest woman alive, known as Sister Sage (Susan Heyward).

Fed up with the sycophantic nature of the current roster of the Seven and seeking a team member with the courage to stand up to him, Homelander pays Sage a visit. Sage quickly proves her bonafides, impressing Homelander with her blasé attitude towards the Seven and her pitch for how to help him achieve his goals on a global scale.

Pretty quickly, we see Sage’s genius at work. Jeff (the ex-partner of MM’s wife Janine) along with two other Homelander superfans, is escorted by Sage to meet Homelander himself… but Jeff and his fellow Home Teamers’ enthusiasm is dashed when Homelander orders Deep, A-Train (Reggie Franklin), and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) to beat the fans to death with baseball bats. As usual, they obey, and as we’re left to wonder just what the hell Sage and Homelander are up to.

Homelander jets over to court, where he’s declared innocent of the murder charges. Outside the courthouse, Home Teamers celebrate while Starlighters prepare to riot. Among the Starlighters, we see Sage, disguised in Starlight yellow, move to the front of the crowd – and pelt a coffee at a Home Teamer. Just as she planned, a brawl breaks out between the two sides. Meanwhile, A-Train speeds in and, unseen by the crowd, plants the dead bodies of Jeff and the other Homestaters in the thick of the melee. Now we see Sage’s plan: the media blames the deaths on the Starlighters, distracting Americans with fighting against each other while the supes cement their stronghold on the country.

Butcher’s dead-set on getting Ryan away from Homelander, and to make that happen, he makes a deal with Neuman – she’ll help with Ryan if he gives her the blackmail Hughie has on her (from her time at the Red River foster home).

Hughie (Jack Quaid) is frazzled when he learns that his father (Simon Pegg) has landed in the hospital after suffering stroke. Butcher uses a moment of consolation to steal Hughie’s CIA access key to find Neuman’s blackmail, but when he does, he hallucinates his late wife and she convinces him to do the right thing. Cutting back to Hughie at the hospital, he’s even more frazzled when in walks his mom (Rosemarie DeWitt), who abandoned him and his dad when Hughie was six years old.

Stray Observations

• The reveal that Deep held onto his octopus lover Ambrosius from season 3 was strangely heartwarming. Deep may be a villain, but everyone deserves love… right? And as he tells A-Train, “Sex is just a spectrum, bro.”

• The moment where Homelander shoos Butcher away from Ryan as he tells him: “No means no, William. This isn’t Neverland ranch.” may have been in the trailer, but it still knocked me to the floor laughing.

• Frenchie getting sober and starting up a relationship with Colin, an employee at Starlight’s charity foundation, was as adorable as it is foreboding. There haven’t been many happy endings on the Boys, but this is one I’m really rooting for. How naive of me.

Episode 2: "Life Among The Septics"

Episode 2 opens on A-Train, who’s frustrated that Will Ferrell (who cameos as himself) has been cast as his brother and coach Nathan in his mid-production biopic. As he huffs back to his trailer, Noir approaches him concerned with how often Homelander asks them to murder people — remember, the real Noir was killed by Homelander in season 3, and has been replaced by an actor.

Elsewhere in Vought’s media empire, Homelander’s son Ryan is pitched a take on his public profile as they ready him for his first save. The team wants to shine a bright light on his connection to his father, and everyone seems thrilled with the direction… except Sister Sage. She thinks the pitch “blows harder than Nancy Reagan on the MGM backlot.” 

Sage feels Ryan should stand on his own. He’s the first natural-born superhero, she argues, and thinks they should be presenting him as one “chosen by God” to save the world. The more distance they put between him and Homelander, the better for his image. Homelander’s obviously enraged to have anyone suggest the spotlight shift even an inch away from his beautiful face, but he goes along with Sage’s plan… for now.

Meanwhile, the Boys regroup at their HQ, where Butcher finally tells them about his fatal condition. But instead of being met with sympathy, MM walks Butcher out of the office and tells him to pack up and leave – he’s now more of a liability than ever.

The rest of the team gets back to work, splitting up to track down two leads: Starlight and Hughie trail A-Train to try to prove that the dead men at the Starlighter v Home Front brawl were not killed by two Black Starlight fans, as the media claims, while Butcher, MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko follow Sister Sage to a nauseating right-wing convention called “TruthCon.”

At TruthCon, we’re introduced to two key supe figures in the Hometeam movement: Firecracker (Valerie Curry) who’s essentially the YouTube version of Tucker Carlson, and Splinter (Rob Benedict), her creepy sidekick with the power to endlessly clone himself.

As the newly minted team leader, MM tasks the Boys with finding out what a genius like Sage is doing at a place like TruthCon. He and the team follow her, listen in on her conversations, and learn she’s planning a meet with Firecracker and Splinter “at 9 p.m. in the Deep Blue Sea Room.” After somehow preventing themselves from vomiting while listening to Firecracker rant to a small crowd about Hollywood conspiracy theories, MM, Frenchi,e and Kimiko head over to the location for the secret meeting.

But when they arrive, the Deep Blue Sea Room is empty. They’ve been tricked by Sage, who struts inside with Firecracker, Splinter, and a handful of his armed clones. Sage orders the right-wingers to kill the Boys, but Splinter’s come down with a nasty case of pink eye from… and there’s really no delicate way to put this… using his clones to toss his own salad. The itch of the pink eye distracts Splinter, which gives the Boys an opening to fight back.

In a disgusting, hilarious, and thrilling fight sequence – The Boys’ bread and butter – that spills out into an in-progress bar-mitzvah in the next room, MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko find themselves outnumbered and outmatched. They’re about to be executed when Butcher busts in (of course he followed them to the convention) and saves them.

While the TruthCon mission turned out to be a total bust, Starlight and Hughie try to make some progress with their investigation into A-Train. They watch as he tries to bond with his nephews, only to be admonished by Nathan for his crimes. A-Train dashes off before Starlight and Hughie can make a move, but when they return to their office, Starlight and Hughie find A-Train waiting for them. But he’s not there to hurt them… he’s there to help them.

To their shock, A-Train hands over security camera footage that exonerates two men accused of the Home Front riot murders, and we’re left feeling a strange amount of sympathy for A-Train, the man who began this series as arguably the most hateable character in the entire cast.

The episode ends with Ryan filming his first “save,” for which he’s been rehearsing all episode with Deep and a handful of stuntmen under Homelander’s direction. We watch the staged bank robbery play out on a NYC street, and as Ryan moves in to “save” a little girl being held hostage by the “robber,” Homelander decides to crash the party.

This goes directly against Sage’s plan, but Homelander’s become self-conscious about relinquishing his spotlight. So he steps in and “helps” Ryan handle the situation, encouraging him to, as they rehearsed, throw the “robber” down the street. Ryan does as he’s told, but accidentally throws the stuntman too hard, smashing him against a building like an insect.

Later, we see that Ryan is traumatized by what he did, but Homelander offers no sympathy. “Humans are just playthings” he keeps telling him… but Ryan doesn’t seem to buy it. Frustrated with what he perceives as weakness in his son, Homelander leaves him to his misery.

Stray Observations:

• Poor Frenchie doesn’t get a break. He finally finds a normal relationship and then it’s revealed that he killed Colin’s entire family back when he was an assassin. Is it weird I feel worse for Frenchie than for Colin in this situation? I guess that just speaks to how effective the character work is on this show. Either that or I need therapy.

• Even when Deep doesn’t have a ton of screen time, he always makes a huge impact. His threat to Ashley — “I will drown you in your own toilet. After I’ve used it” — was a highlight of an episode filled with epic one-liners.

Episode 3: "We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here"

Butcher’s making cookies. Special cookies. For a special someone – Ryan. CIA agent Joe Kessler’s managed to get his hands on a powerful drug that’s sure to knock Ryan out. All Butcher has to do is get him to ingest it (hence the laced cookies). Once he’s unconscious, they plan on whisking him away to Grace’s supe-proof safehouse to keep him locked up.

But that’s part two of the plan. First, Butcher needs to get in contact with Ryan and convince him to sneak away from Homelander so they can talk. And the way Butcher does this is an absolute riot. In Vought Tower, we find Ryan playing a supe-themed, Mortal Kombat-inspired video game online. He’s challenged by another player to a duel, and when it begins… Ryan hears Butcher’s voice on the line. As Ryan annihilates Butcher’s player character, Butcher begs him to come by his place to chat. Ryan isn’t convinced, but he’s clearly considering it.

Meanwhile, the other members of the Boys are each on a fairly separate track. Starlight’s growing increasingly frustrated with Firecracker’s (now an official member of the Seven) crusade against her, and wants to shut her up once and for all. MM has recruited Hughie, much to his reluctance, to help him try to flip A-Train. And Frenchie has agreed to help Kimiko track down and wipe out a local cell of Shining Light, the child trafficking group that imprisoned her as a child.

Let’s start with Starlight. Sneaking into Vought, she confronts Firecracker and asks her to explain her vendetta against her – something that’s perplexing Starlight since they’ve never even met. In a surprising turn, Firecracker reminds Starlight that they have met, years ago, on the pageant circuit. Apparently, Starlight, once a real mean girl, started a nasty rumor about Firecracker sleeping with the pageant judges that ruined her career. Starlight reels from the realization that she’s not the hero in everyone’s story.

Kimiko and Frenchie bust into a Shining Light hideout as Frenchie trips balls on hallucinogens, making him no help whatsoever to Kimiko, who single-handedly takes on the entire gang of Shining Light henchmen. Frenchie simply watches, the spray of their blood transforming into bubbles and floating rubber duckies in his drug-addled mind. As Kimiko kills the gangsters one by one, Frenchie wanders off into a room filled with visions of every person he’s ever killed. Colin sits with his arms around his dead family, flanked by dozens of Frenchie’s victims from his time as an assassin.

Frenchie flees the room and runs back to Kimiko, who’s facing off against a young girl with scars on her face. The girl tries to kill Kimiko, but Kimiko won’t retaliate – because she recognizes her. Kimiko tries to talk to the girl, but she quickly runs off. Frenchie asks Kimiko who she was, but Kimiko won’t say.

Elsewhere in the city, MM meets with A-Train, having cloned his brother’s phone and lured him to his running track. MM pulls on whatever’s left of A-Train’s conscience and tries to convince him to turn on Vought. Shockingly, it works. A-Train tells MM the location of a meeting going down that night between Neuman, Homelander, and Sage at a local ice skating rink.

Hughie and MM sneak into the rink – where some kind of Vought sponsored theater/musical company is rehearsing a song/ice-dance number railing against the liberals trying to ruin Christmas – and get to work on finding Neuman.

Hughie crawls through air vents, Mission Impossible-style, finding Neuman and recording her conversation with Homelander and Sage. The supes discuss their plans – once Dakota Bob’s election is ratified, they’ll kill him, elevating Neuman to the presidency… and that’s when they can really get to work: they want to dismantle the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, and put a supe in every county with authority over the police. But that’s not all Sage and Homelander want from Neuman. They want her to come out as a superhero.

Neuman refuses, but before Homelander and Sage can press their point too hard, a bead of sweat from Hughie’s brow drops (again, Mission Impossible-style) onto Homelander’s shoulder. Immediately, Homelander identifies the scent as Hughie’s, and he starts blasting away at the vents above him. Hughie scampers away as Homelander chases him.

Hughie manages to get away unscathed, but not without help – A-Train bolts in, saves him, and speeds him away to safety outside the rink. When Hughie asks A-Train why he saved him, he just runs off without responding.

After the chaos at the rink, Hughie stops by the hospital to visit his dad and finds his mom waiting in the hall. The night’s events took the fight out of Hughie, so he doesn’t come at his mom like he’s done in the last few episodes. Instead, he just asks: “Why’d you leave?”

Hughie’s mom softens his heart with her truth: she gave birth to him when she was only 22, and soon found herself debilitated with postpartum depression. She tried her best to be a good mother, but the weight of her illness was too heavy to bear, and one night, she attempted suicide. After that, she knew she had to go. So she left. She tried calling Hughie, but his dad wouldn’t let her speak to him for fear of confusing him. She doesn’t ask Hughie’s forgiveness, but she does tell him, from the bottom of her heart, that she’s sorry for hurting him.

Off this somber moment between mother and son, we jump over to Butcher, who’s convinced Ryan to stop by his apartment. Butcher tries getting Ryan to eat the drug-laced cookies he’s cooked for him, but Ryan isn’t hungry. To keep him from leaving, Butcher challenges Ryan to a game of foosball. As they play, Ryan confides in Butcher his feelings of guilt over killing the stuntman in the staged save from episode 2.

Butcher, unlike Homelander, validates Ryan’s feelings. And as Ryan opens up, so does Butcher, admitting that he’s terrified of the prospect of dying, but more specifically, dying without doing a damn thing for the people he cares about. It’s perhaps the most vulnerable we’ve ever seen Butcher, and it’s a moment of true bonding between him and Ryan. And so deep is this moment that Butcher decides to throw the cookies out. He doesn’t want to force Ryan into submission; he sees an opportunity to form a true relationship with him and let the boy make his own choice.

Of course, when Butcher tells Joe Kessler what he did, Kessler’s pissed. Butcher knows he did the right thing, but Kessler reminds Butcher of what’s at stake. They either need to train Ryan to fight for them… or they need to figure out how to kill him.

Stray Observations:

• Really hoping Amazon releases a downloadable track of the ice-skating company’s hilarious musical number. The line “Christmas is for everyone, as long as you believe in God’s true son…” pretty much sums up the vibe of the song. It’s an absolute riot.

• A shout-out to the actor playing Noir and his constant overthinking of the role. “I need some intentionality here!” he tells Ashley. “Is there like, a playlist I can use to get inside his head?” Loving this character. More please.

• If you’re reading these recaps and thinking: “Cool cool, but is there any romance in this show?” I’ll just point you to the gripping melodrama between Deep and his octopus lover, whose relationship grows more challenging and complex by the episode. Step aside Bridgerton, this is the true romance of the season.

The Boys season 3 episodes 1-3 are streaming now on Prime Video. Episodes will now be released weekly on Thursdays.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.