by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Another season of the hit series The Boys has come and rocked its audience with its brutal action sequences, hilariously inappropriate dialogue, and twists and turns that leave you waiting impatiently for the next episode! We see the return of our beloved titular team of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and the former Seven member Starlight now using her given name, Annie (Erin Moriarty), squaring up against the formidable Homelander (Antony Starr), surrounded by his posse at Vought and his new political ally, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit).
Season Four picks up shortly after the end of Season Three, with Neuman on the campaign trail with President Singer (Jim Beaver) and the Boys on a CIA mission to assassinate her, but the plan goes off the rails and the team is forced to abort. At a debriefing at the CIA headquarters, Butcher runs into an old CIA friend, Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who tries to recruit Butcher to hunt down and kill supes separate from his commitment to the Boys. At the same time, Butcher is having vivid hallucinations of Becca (Shantel VanSanten) returning, and is coming to terms with the reality that he has mere months left to live after his exposure to the Compound V in Season Three.
Meanwhile, Homelander looks to fill the empty spots on the Seven roster with someone who can help him in his quest for power. To achieve this, he recruits Detroit supe, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), who is purported to be the smartest person on the planet. With her particular skillset in tow, she lays out a plan to get Homelander exactly where he needs to be, and to get the public to turn on The Boys and Starlight so the true believers in Homelander will be further entrenched in the lie they have been fed.
This season brings a lot to the table that needs to be unpacked. Unfortunately, I can’t unpack all of it without spoiling many things, but I will do my best. The biggest factor that plays into this new season is Butcher and his friendship with Kessler. Morgan comes in to play what is basically an American version of Butcher by channeling the leftover energy he had left from playing Negan on The Walking Dead for all those years. His part comes in a little suspiciously and makes you really scratch your head, wondering where his arc is going. But with every passing episode he’s in, you start to sort of figure out where the writers are taking his character, and by the time it’s revealed, you’ve already figured it out long ago.
Another big section of the season focuses on Hughie and his family. As his father suffers from a stroke in the first episode and is hospitalized, Hughie becomes reacquainted with his long lost mother. But Hughie’s story throughout the season doesn’t end there, because he becomes the character in this season who, through several different avenues, you feel more and more sorry for. But Quaid pulls off this performance like a champ and continues to be one of the best written characters on the show.
Which leads me to the best written character on the show: Homelander. This is Antony Starr’s season more than it’s ever been. Right from the start, the show starts peeling back the layers of Homelander’s shell, and we see him struggling with his own mortality, being a good — or as “good” as he can be — father to his son Ryan, and revisiting his past in one of the most messed up episodes of the season that really paints Homelander in a new shade. We get to see how psychopathic and insane this supe can get. But Homelander, Hughie, and Butcher aren’t the only characters who have moments showing their darker sides. Nearly every major character goes down a dark path this season, from Frenchie to Deep (Chace Crawford) to Annie to A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), and to even Ashley, the Vought CEO (Colby Minifie).
Season Four of The Boys definitely has moments that are a little predictable, and episodes where the characters more or less end up right back where they started, but overall, it brings its trademark level of insanity, crude humor, and painfully satirical references to our current political standings. It’s a fantastic continuation of the story which comes down to a finale that left me shocked and begging to see more. I have been a fan of the show since it premiered, and even though it has a few low points, I will absolutely be tuning in and waiting with bated breath for the final season!
Rating: Loved It
The Boys is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
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