The Boys: Season 4 offers the show’s most brutal developments yet, but it buckles under the weight of messy plotlines and a stale formula.
Showrunner: Eric Kripke
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime, Superhero
Number of episodes: 8
Global Release Date: June 13-July 18, 2024
Where to watch: Prime Video
The Boys are back in town, and they’re bigger, bolder, and badder than ever in The Boys: Season 4. Ever since its debut in 2019, The Boys has been one of the few modern shows to hold my attention over the course of this many seasons. I’ve loved it for its takedown of superhero culture, surprisingly immersive storytelling, increasingly brutal political skewering, and – I say this as a compliment, but let’s be honest here – highly gratuitous violence and gross-out gags.
But after seeing the latest batch of eight episodes, I might be facing my own brand of fatigue with this superhero show originally made to counter superhero fatigue. Season 4 isn’t bad, but it’s certainly messy.
We return to find our “heroes” facing a political plot on behalf of the evil Vought International to get one of their own supes, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), in office as the U.S. President. Homelander (Antony Starr, of Cobweb) and his legion of The Seven attempt to sway the war in their favor, while our “heroes” like Hughie (Jack Quaid, of My Adventures with Superman), Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and the unfortunately named Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) try to foil plans on all fronts. Meanwhile, their estranged leader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban, of The Sea Beast) grapples with his anticipated death from a disease caused by the superpowered Compound V.
My thoughts on The Boys: Season 4 are very split. My mind is fractured, much like Homelander’s mind but with 99% less disturbing thoughts … don’t ask about the remaining 1%. The season gets more right than wrong as it aims to hit viewers hard, succeeding largely by making the protagonists and even antagonists feel frailer and more vulnerable than ever before. I really didn’t think that was possible, but through relentless brutality and plotlines meant to dig deeper to everyone’s weakest, most flawed centers, the season generally succeeds as a whole.
My favorite aspect of The Boys: Season 4 is the volatile slew of social and political manipulation that’s been ramped up to the Nth degree (or should I say the Vth degree?) in believable way. Webs upon webs of allegiances and rivalries are entangled as everyone works to satisfy their own agendas, accommodates for others’ agendas, watches their own agendas change, and tries not to have their heads literally explode in the process. Neuman is the star of the season for being the walking embodiment of these conundrums, emboldened by a show-best performance from Doumit.
On the surface, it seems like any of these supes could just kill everyone getting in their way at any point, and a few times they try. But most of the time, there’s a thick understanding in the air that so many people are so mixed up in the strings of their own making. If not that, then it’s their own inner turmoil that’s holding them back. Homelander can’t just up and nuke everyone because he needs something more fulfilling in his conquests. But as all these nuances clash with a world that’s grown outright hostile to nuance, the tightrope walk gets all the more treacherous. In other words, this is a season of The Boys that continues the strengths of previous seasons. That should be a pure positive.
But at the same time, it’s rare that the show goes beyond what it’s already been doing. A lot of the beats in Season 4 are ones we’ve already seen to some degree. Butcher flip-flops between nobility and crookedness. Mother’s Milk juggles his “job” with his family life. Homelander fights off his insecurities and brutally murders people. Hughie gets dumped on. References to celebrities and pop culture are dropped over and over to make the show feel “real,” I guess. What once sucked me in completely is now just more of the same, and it makes the season feel like it’s just spinning its wheels to extend the show’s duration, especially with how many times solid character development is completely unraveled in a single sequence.
I’ve been fully on board with the extreme violence and WTF moments The Boys is famous for. I take genuine joy in ruining people’s day by reminding them of the Ant-Man sexcapades in the Season 3 premiere. But Season 4 wants to constantly one-up itself at every turn and lean so far into the shock value that it’s become numbing to me. Nowhere is this more blatant than in Episode 6, where something happens to Hughie that is absolutely no laughing matter, yet the show maintains its eccentric, morbidly comedic tone. For me, this is the first and only time the show’s shock humor went too far, even making me think the writers didn’t respect Hughie as a character. It’s really not easy for fictional media to outright offend me, but the sequence in question pulled it off, and the foul taste in my mouth persisted through the rest of the season.
A lot of the staleness of the show’s formula would be mitigated if Season 4 had stronger forward momentum, but it constantly buckles under the weight of its many plot threads. Some of them are really warranted and highly effective. I already said how much I love Neuman’s journey this season, and the superhero A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) continues his redemption arc in an organic and even heartfelt way. Annie hasn’t felt this three-dimensional since Season 1, and Butcher’s plot is executed in a way that allows for visually creative, almost horror-like angles and edits. Its big reveal would’ve also surprised me had Twitter not caught onto it weeks in advance. So, thanks a lot, everyone smarter than me.
We also have Hughie dealing with family drama and a hospitalized loved one, or Frenchie confronting some sins from his past and ensuing mental trauma. These are fine on their own, but they have so little bearing on the overall plot and only serve to crowd an already crowded season. Then there’s The Deep (Chace Crawford), and … does anyone even care about him at this point? He really is the Aquaman of The Seven, because he contributes nothing and no one needs him around. There’s a game-changing development in the season finale that’s clearly what the show has been building towards, but it’s somewhat rushed in its execution and even cuts off some other threads that would have made for a more interesting fifth season.
Plus, while I praised the nuanced political intrigue, The Boys: Season 4 is just as often a one-to-one copy of real-world politics, instead of the clever allegory it once was. There’s a new alt-right supe named Firecracker whose only character trait is being an alt-right supe, and she’s one of many sources of buzzwords and easy jabs that I’ve heard in dozens of other satires of right-wing groups already. There’s literally a plotline about a planned political assault on the date of January 6. Gee, I wonder what that’s referencing. My guess is the French national holiday Bastille Day.
However, there’s another new supe whose involvement alone has me looking forward to the next season: Sister Sage, played by Susan Heyward. Her power is being the smartest person in the world, and she joins The Seven to plan and run things on her terms. What makes her such a brilliant inclusion is that every single time something doesn’t go her way, you have no idea if it’s a legitimate problem for her or if it’s exactly what she was banking on. She’s even better when you learn why she’s doing what she’s doing and how her experiences and outlook have shaped her motivations. Like Stormfront and Soldier Boy before her, she’s a newcomer who drives a lot of the narrative, but in a much different way that makes me very curious to see what she’s planning next.
Whatever it is, I really hope it makes the next season an improvement over this one. The Boys: Season 4 is handily my least favorite season of the show for how stale it’s made the show’s general formula. I can’t even say its highest highs are on par with the highs of previous seasons. But not only is its core still solid with plenty to chew on, but it plants the seeds for a phenomenal final season of The Boys. Honestly, I’m glad there’s only one more season left. If the grand finale really hits it out of the park, I think I’ll be able to call Season 4 a necessary hurdle to reach that amazing conclusion. But right now, I have to settle for calling it a decent experience on its own, but a somewhat tired and sloppy part of an otherwise great show.
Season 4 of The Boys is now available to watch on Prime Video.
