The Boys Season 4 Review: ‘Superhero’ Series Continues Its Wild Ride of OTT Violence, Gross Orgies, and Scathing Anti-Fascist Commentary (LatestLY Exclusive)

The Boys Season 4 Review: Remove the supes and the black humour, and The Boys portrays a terrifying vision of a world consumed by rising fascism and people clamouring for an authoritarian government. Terrifying because some of the themes hit close to home, whether you are in the USA or where I am writing from. You know things are bad when Antony Starr (who continues his brilliant work four seasons in), who plays the psychopathic supe Homelander, has to call out his fans who are rooting for his character. While Homelander is a character you need to detest obsessively, he also remains the character with the most compelling arc, even in season 4 of The Boys. The Boys Season 4 Release Date: Prime Video’s Anti-Superhero Series to Premiere From June 13; Check Poster!

(The review is based on the first three episodes of The Boys Season 4 that have been sent to me.) As the new season begins, Homelander is being charged with the manslaughter of a Starlighter protestor, a charge we know will not hold up despite being committed in public view. He is also trying his best to make a supe out of his son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), who is reluctant to take up the offer after a very bad incident.

Tired of the scared bootlickers around him and with three positions left to fill in The Seven (Black Noir's death has been hidden with a decoy behind his bodysuit), Homelander brings in Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the smartest person in the world, to advise him on tactics to run Vought and control the narrative around him. It remains to be seen how long Homelander can keep up the facade that he hates bootlicking when in reality, that's all he wants, and how Sage manages to subvert that for her own sake.

Watch the Trailer of The Boys Season 4:

The Boys Season 4 Review - The Villains

Homelander's biggest challenge, however, is not the US judiciary, the sycophants, or the group of vigilantes working for his downfall - it's his ageing. How long can he maintain being the 'perfect white American' specimen before the greys catch up?

As for the returning Seven members, The Deep (Chace Crawford) continues to find himself in awkward positions while hiding out a clandestine affair with the same octopus he was intimate with during the Herogasm. A-Train (Jessie T Usher) is still having a moral crisis, while the new 'Black Noir' is quite hilarious, especially considering actor Nathan Mitchell gets to speak more this time and present a new side to the character.

The Boys Season 4 Review - The Heroes

So what about The Boys? They are persistently trying to defeat Homelander and Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), despite the cracks within them. The cracks are not just about the character dynamics but also how their storylines pale in comparison to the interesting arcs of The Seven. The Butcher (Karl Urban) becomes more erratic with his limited mortality. Once the team realises he is becoming more of a liability after his disease is discovered, Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso) ousts him.

MM becomes the team's leader but doesn't get to do much beyond barking stubborn orders. His insistence on collaborating with a 'Seven' member raises eyebrows, more so for the latter's proven record of never sticking to a side. The Butcher, meanwhile, is trying his best to get in touch with Ryan and mend fences with him so that he doesn't follow in his father's footsteps, which also involves a hilariously gory multiplayer video game battle.

Hughie (Jack Quaid) also doesn't get much to do in the first three episodes, so he is saddled with a personal subplot involving the return of someone from his past. However, he does have a nerve-racking moment with Homelander at the end of the third episode.

Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is trying hard to be just Annie January, but she is being pushed forward to be the rallying symbol for her supporters. Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) have their own side plots that feel more like distractions from the more interesting tracks going on elsewhere. Also, I don't remember Frenchie being bisexual in the previous seasons, but his new relationship did kind of hamper what was a fun romantic dynamic he had with Kimiko we had seen till now. Gen V: No Recasting for Late Chance Perdomo's Role in The Boys Spinoff, Makers Issue Statement.

The Boys Season 4 Review - Enough Blood and D*cks!

Yet, like with the previous seasons, The Boys land in some embarrassingly fun sticky situations that bring enough laughs and yucks. The convention sequence, where MM, Kimiko, and Frenchie try to seek out Sage, is perhaps the highlight of the first three episodes. There is one disgusting, weird orgy sequence, and a crazy fight involving some naked fighters whose, err... 'brains' keep showing throughout.

Another gory fight scene involves Kimiko taking out some traffickers where a doped-out Frenchie imagines blood to be rubber ducks. It reminded me of a similar fight scene in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad (replace rubber ducks with confetti).

The Boys Season 4 Review - New Entrants

The new season introduces some new characters, the highlight of which is Sister Sage, whose quippy nature, Machiavelian schemes, and temerity to stand up to her murderous boss make her an instant standout. Another new 'supe' is Firecracker (Valorie Curry), a right-wing, racist Homelander fan who has an axe to grind with Starlighter. The much-hyped casting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as an old associate of The Butcher is yet to see a major payoff in these initial episodes, though his characters do make a couple of appearances.

There are also some celeb cameos, like Tilda Swinton, who has a career of doing bizarre roles, but this still stands out among the weirdest ones.

Final Thoughts on The Boys Season 4

Overall, season 4 of The Boys continues to deliver the same highly enjoyable thrills we have expected from the show without compromising on the scathing political commentary, morbid humour, gore and OTT nudity. While some subplots and character dynamics feel a bit underdeveloped at least in the initial episodes, there are some standout sequences that will both enthral and disgust you, which is exactly what you expect from The Boys. The first three episodes of The Boys Season 4 are streaming on Prime Video from June 13.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 11, 2024 06:51 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).