The Boys are back in town, and with them being back, their outrageous humour, outlandish but also realistic takes on society, and the vulgar language and extreme gore of the show also return. Now, while the humour of this show tends to make everyone laugh, mainly because of its shock factor, does it still hold up after four seasons? With the introduction of two new characters, is there enough room to still tell the story of the characters we’ve been following for years? Is Gen V necessary to watch the latest season of The Boys, or can you ignore it? The most important question is: does The Boys hold up well to its previous seasons? Do we need more of this show, or has it run its course?
The Boys Season 4 takes place six months after the third season, where we follow Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), who is in the midst of her presidential run, with Homelander having to go through a trial after the sudden murder of a citizen. During that, Homelander (Antony Starr) has to learn how to be a good father to Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) while also trying to deal with his mortality. Meanwhile, Butcher (Karl Urban) is also dealing with his mortality, trying not only to get The Boys to side with him but also earn the trust of his son.
Similar to how Season 2 introduced us to Stormfront and how Season 3 introduced us to Soldier Boy, Season 4 also introduces two new supes and this time, they’re members of The Seven. Arguably, they’re not only the best part of this season, but they’re some of the best newly introduced characters out of the whole show. What’s so great about Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valorie Curry) is that they feel like complete solar opposites, but I guess that can be said for anyone if you compare them to Sister Sage. Sister Sage is not just the smartest woman on the planet, but she’s the smartest person on the planet; she’s an asset that Homelander needs as everyone else is too scared to face up against him, but even with Sister Sage now in the picture, he still fails not to have his ego crushed by someone who is leagues above him when it comes to their brain. Sister Sage offers a whole new dynamic to The Boys, and it made experiencing a lot of the scenes where she was involved tense, not knowing if she already knew the plans of Hughie and the rest of the gang. It felt great to genuinely have someone that they could compete against and was always more than two steps ahead of them.
Firecracker, on the other hand, is quite the opposite; she isn’t the smartest person in the world and is far from it. Instead, she’s an alt-right extremist who streams all her views to her loyal fans while attacking Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who now perpetually goes by Annie. The two have a history that explains why Firecracker has fallen down this path, but unfortunately, it’s not a feud that gets touched on all too much except for a few small moments in several of the episodes. This goes into one of The Boys Season 4’s strongest factors, and that’s that they manage to develop these characters with well-thought-out story arcs, but the only downside to this is that some end up being more interesting than others. A good example of this is the mirroring of both Homelander and Butcher’s stories. Homelander is dealing with his mortality, starting to show signs of ageing, and realising that he isn’t as invincible as he thought he was. This storyline leads into some of the best work I’ve seen from Antony Starr yet and gives the sense that you’re watching a horror film.
How this mirrors Butcher’s story is that he’s also dealing with the same thing. Though he isn’t a supe like Homelander and is just a human, he has to deal with the fact that he’s dying straight on, and there’s not much he can do about it. It’s something that, unlike Homelander, has to be accepted sooner rather than later, and while Temp V can be a temporary answer, it isn’t a permanent one. To accompany Butcher throughout his story arc is Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a CIA case officer and also a veteran of the War on Terror in which he accompanied Butcher. He’s a great addition to the cast with some memorable one-liners, but that’s to be expected of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who just makes any role his own. Joe is an interesting character that holds secrets, and the show does a good job of not providing any hints to them; it keeps you on your toes, which this season of The Boys manages to do very well.
That is a perfect example of two storylines working perfectly against each other, especially with Ryan as a middle ground between the two; it’s some of the best writing that’s been offered this season. An example of a character’s storyline being sidelined due to another character’s storyline being interesting is Kimiko and Frenchie. This season gets to delve more into Kimiko’s background, where she came from, people who are part of her history, and the real truth of why she’s the woman we all know and love. It’s an emotional story that pulls through to the very last minute of the season with Kimiko, but unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Frenchie.
While we’re finally getting to touch on Frenchie’s bisexuality, the story has the least effort put into it, making it hard for you to truly care about what’s happening with Frenchie. There are scenes where I felt bad for not feeling bad due to some of the circumstances that Frenchie was put through, but it became tiring having to push through his scenes just to get to the real meat of the show. Almost every character has a touching story—Mother Milk, Hughie, and even Starlight—but unfortunately, some just ended up being more captivating and emotionally touching than others, leaving not much to be desired from them.
Two characters that feel drastically different from previous seasons are A-Train and Victoria Neuman. A-Train has a more predominant role as the show takes its time to also dive into what makes a hero a hero. We get to see how a lot of saves from the heroes are just staged to make them look good, and this is a factor that weighs heavily on A-Train and affects his choices throughout the season. Some actual depth is provided for the character, but for some unknown reason, it doesn’t end up leading anywhere substantial and has you wondering if the writing team forgot about some of their storylines by the time they reached the finale. Victoria Neuman doesn’t suffer from this issue, but for a character that had so many strong scenes in previous seasons and the spin-off of Gen V, it doesn’t feel like she’s utilised to the best of her capabilities this season. From being a character that should be central to this season, and you can argue that she still is, but she doesn’t feel like the same powerful character that we once knew and is just simply used to move the story along from point A to point B.
The Boys still ends up being pretty hilarious, but sometimes the humour can get a bit tiring. With a general election on the way and Trump having just gone through a trial reflecting Homelander on trial, The Boys doesn’t go too hard on the jokes related to those two situations. Some jokes just feel hard to laugh at, and that’s simply because either it feels like they’re trying too hard, they keep catering to the audience that they continuously make fun of, or they focus too long on certain jokes. In one episode, there seemed to be several anti-black jokes. As a black person myself, I wasn’t quick to be offended, as it’s to be expected from a show like this, but it became too consistent in the episode to the point where you begin to question it. I can admit that some of them got a laugh out of me, but some of them were also just a bit too awkward to laugh at. It makes you question how long The Boys universe overall can go on by just focusing on jokes that are meta and super offensive. South Park is a show known for doing this, yet somehow The Boys seems more extreme; maybe it’s time they toned it down a bit or simply just had fewer of those jokes in a singular episode.
The huge question that is on everyone’s head is: has Eric Kripke turned The Boys into what Marvel Studios is? Making it essential to view a television series to proceed onwards with a future project. Personally, this is not an issue I’ve had previously with other cinematic universes, and I can confidently say that it’s also not an issue here. While some plot points from Gen V are mentioned and quite vital to the story being told, it never overcomplicates the story, and for the audience who hasn’t seen Gen V, it just makes it seem like Butcher went off to do something during the time between Seasons 3 and 4, which is exactly as it is.
The Boys Season 4 does a great job of introducing new characters that provide a lot of depth for the story being told and individual characters such as Butcher and Homelander. The story arcs provided for the characters hold great emotional weight, but unfortunately, not all character arcs are provided with the same love and effort, leaving some unwanted or forgotten. The season stays strong during its first half but starts to grow thin towards the end, leaving us with a season finale that is the worst one yet amongst its previous seasons, including Gen V itself. This doesn’t mean that the season finale doesn’t have some good moments, but it fails to stand on its own and ends up feeling rather unsatisfying.
The Boys has one last final season, and I can only say that after watching Season 4, I’m glad it’s coming to an end.
The Boys Season 4 is streaming now on Prime Video. New episodes every Thursday.
