The Boys – Season 4 (2024)

💥 When satire picks up a sledgehammer and forgets subtlety exists. 💥


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⚠️ Content Warning ⚠️

Alright, before we start, this season needs a serious warning.

The Boys has always been violent, crude, and politically charged. That’s nothing new. If you’ve watched the first three seasons, you already know the show isn’t exactly subtle.

But Season 4 goes way past what the earlier seasons were doing.

Expect:

Extreme gore

Gross-out humor turned up to eleven

Very uncomfortable sexual situations

And a level of political commentary that stops feeling like satire and starts feeling like cable news with superpowers


And I’m gonna say this clearly before anyone gets the wrong idea.

I don’t mind that the show has politics.

It always had politics.

The problem is that the earlier seasons had nuance. They had layers. You could see the satire without the show smashing you over the head with it.

Season 4?

It feels like the writers think the audience is stupid and need the message hammered into their skull with an actual sledgehammer.

And that’s just one of the problems this season has.


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🎥 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

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Non-Spoiler Thoughts

I’m gonna be blunt.

I hated this season.

And I don’t say that lightly because I used to love this show.

Season 1 was a masterpiece.

Season 2 was still very strong.

Season 3 had some cracks but was still fun.

Season 4 is where the wheels fall off the bus.

And it’s not just one issue.

It’s a pile-up of problems happening all at the same time.

The satire becomes blunt and heavy-handed.

The writing starts mistaking shock value for good storytelling.

The main characters feel like they’re stuck in endless loops instead of evolving.

And Homelander — the scariest character the show ever had — somehow stops feeling intimidating.

Which is wild considering how terrifying he used to be.

Season 4 doesn’t just feel weaker.

It feels like the show lost the thing that made it special in the first place.


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Character & Actor Rundown

Homelander (Antony Starr)

Let me make something very clear right away.

Antony Starr is still fantastic.

This is not an acting problem.

This is a writing problem.

In the earlier seasons, Homelander was terrifying because nobody knew how far he could go. He had to keep up appearances. He had to pretend to be the perfect hero.

Behind closed doors he was a monster.

That contrast made him terrifying.

But by Season 4, the dynamic has completely changed.

People openly support him even when he does horrible things. The mask is basically gone. The tension of “what if he snaps?” isn’t really there anymore.

Instead of feeling like a quiet ticking time bomb, he just feels like a loud bully with superpowers.

Still dangerous.

Still mean.

But not nearly as chilling as he used to be.


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Billy Butcher (Karl Urban)

Butcher is another character who unfortunately starts feeling stuck.

His whole storyline still revolves around one thing:

“I want Homelander dead.”

And by this point the show has gone through that cycle so many times that it starts feeling repetitive.

He makes a reckless decision.

He regrets it.

Then he doubles down again.

Then regrets it again.

At some point the arc just starts spinning in circles.


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Hughie (Jack Quaid)

This might be controversial but Hughie feels like he barely evolves anymore.

He keeps going through the same emotional beats season after season.

Self doubt.

Moment of confidence.

Back to self doubt.

And by Season 4 it’s hard to feel invested in that cycle anymore.


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Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso)

MM actually takes on a leadership role this season because the team starts realizing Butcher is becoming unstable.

And in theory that should be an interesting change.

But oddly enough… it just isn’t that compelling.

Part of that is because the show seems unsure what to actually do with him once he takes that role.


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The Rest of the Team

Frenchie and Kimiko are still around… but honestly by this point their storylines feel like they’re just spinning their wheels.

If I’m being brutally honest, I found myself caring less and less about what was happening to the team as the season went on.

And that’s a huge problem for a show like this.

Sister Sage (Susan Heyward)

The “smartest person in the world.”

Though if you ask me, thats not really a super power.

Homelander recruits Sister Sage because for once he realizes something: raw power isn’t always enough. Sometimes you need someone who can actually think ten steps ahead.

That’s Sage.
Her whole thing is intelligence. Not super strength. Not lasers. Just an absurd level of brainpower.

And for a while, she actually becomes one of the most interesting additions to the show because she’s one of the only people who can sit in the same room as Homelander and not completely lose her composure.
But the weird thing about her character is the show keeps telling us she’s the smartest person alive… while some of her plans don’t exactly scream “genius.”

So she’s an interesting idea of a character, but the execution doesn’t always live up to the concept.

Firecracker (Valorie Curry)
The loudest conspiracy theorist in the room.
Firecracker is basically the supe version of those internet personalities who run livestreams screaming about conspiracies all day.

She’s loud. She’s aggressive. And she absolutely loves stirring the pot.
Homelander brings her into The Seven because she’s useful. She knows how to rally people, control narratives, and rile up a crowd.

Her biggest rivalry is with Starlight, which goes all the way back to their pageant days. And once she gets a platform inside Vought, she wastes no time using it to attack her.
She’s not subtle. At all.
But that’s kind of the point.


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👍 The One Major Positive

There is one episode this season that I genuinely liked.

The episode where Homelander returns to the lab where he was raised.

The scientists who experimented on him are still there.

And Homelander finally confronts them.

That episode works because it taps into something the show hasn’t explored enough:

Homelander’s trauma.

For once the violence actually feels like it has emotional weight behind it.

You understand why he’s angry.

You understand why he hates these people.

And for a brief moment you almost find yourself rooting for him.

It’s the one time this season where the writing actually feels sharp again.

To summarize this up because I got a few more compliments to give.


Homelander still proves hes a douchbag.

The second compliment? There’s a episode where he finally gets revenge on the scientists who did experiments on him as a kid, that episode proved to me the show can still be written good.

And as for the last compliment, one scene throw me for a back, when he goes ans recruits Sister Sage. Homelander is dressed in Steve Roger’s attire, a baseball cap and coat, that threw me back because never thought would see Homelander out of his suit.



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👎 Cons

Oh boy.

Where do I start.

The Show Mistakes Gross-Out Humor for Writing

The Boys has always had crude humor.

But Season 4 pushes it into territory where it just feels childish.

There’s literally a character parodying Spider-Man whose whole gimmick is shooting webs out of his rear end.

And the show treats it like it’s the funniest thing ever.

Meanwhile I’m sitting there thinking:

“…this is what passes for clever writing now?”

Shock humor works when it supports the story.

When it is the joke, it just becomes stupid.


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The Political Satire Loses All Subtlety

Again, I’m not complaining that the show has politics.

It always did.

But the earlier seasons handled it like satire.

Season 4 stops feeling like satire and starts feeling like cable news commentary.

Everything becomes blunt.

Obvious.

Heavy-handed.

Instead of letting the audience interpret the themes, the show practically shouts them at you.

And that completely kills the cleverness the show used to have.


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The Jeffrey Dean Morgan Plot Twist

This one frustrated me because the show clearly thinks it’s being clever.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan shows up as a mysterious figure interacting with Butcher.

The show plays it like some big mystery.

But the second he appeared on screen I figured out what was happening.

Because there’s a very obvious rule in storytelling:

If only one character interacts with someone… they’re probably not real.

And sure enough, the big reveal is that the character is just a hallucination.

Except the show takes it one step further.

It reveals that the hallucination is basically Butcher’s cancer taking the form of a person.

Yes.

You heard that correctly.

His cancer.

Is talking to him.

And encouraging him to do terrible things.

Now I understand what the writers were trying to do metaphorically.

But the execution raises some ridiculous questions.

Why would a deteriorating brain hallucinate a figure that can perfectly articulate conversations?

Why would the hallucination specifically embody his worst impulses?

It ends up feeling less like clever symbolism and more like lazy writing.


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The Show Thinks It’s Being Clever… But It Isn’t

This season constantly feels like the writers think they’re ten steps ahead of the audience.

But most of the twists are extremely predictable.

The Jeffrey Dean Morgan reveal was obvious.

Several story beats are telegraphed way too early.

And when a show constantly thinks it’s outsmarting you but actually isn’t, it starts getting frustrating to watch.

That Hughie Scene, yes that scene.

There’s also one moment this season that genuinely made me uncomfortable for the wrong reasons.

There’s a scene where Hughie is basically almost sexually assaulted, and the show plays the whole situation like it’s some kind of joke.

And I’m sitting there watching it thinking:

“Uh… this isn’t funny.”

This isn’t edgy satire.

This is just disturbing.

The Boys has always been crude, but there’s a difference between dark humor and making a sexual assault scenario feel like a punchline.

That moment didn’t land for me at all.

If anything it just reinforced the bigger problem Season 4 has where the writers seem to think the more shocking something is, the better it must be.

And sometimes it just comes across as gross for the sake of being gross.


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That criticism actually fits perfectly with your other issues about:

gross-out humor

shock replacing writing

the show trying too hard to top itself


Final Thoughts

Season 4 honestly feels like the point where this show lost its balance.

The earlier seasons were shocking, violent, and political — but they were also smart.

There was nuance.

There was restraint.

Season 4 throws that restraint out the window.

It leans harder into gross-out humor.

It hammers the satire so bluntly that it stops feeling clever.

And several characters start feeling stuck in narrative loops instead of evolving.

There are still flashes of good writing here and there.

But overall?

This season was a huge disappointment.


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⭐ Rating: 3 / 10

(And honestly… that’s me being generous.)


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🚨 Spoiler Section 🚨

The Jeffrey Dean Morgan Reveal

So the big twist of the season is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character isn’t real.

He’s a hallucination.

More specifically, he’s the manifestation of Butcher’s cancer pushing him toward his worst impulses.

Again — I get the metaphor.

But the execution is so on-the-nose that it just ends up feeling ridiculous.


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Homelander’s Lab Episode

This is easily the best episode of the season.

Homelander returning to the lab where he grew up and confronting the scientists responsible for his childhood trauma is genuinely compelling.

For once the violence actually feels like it means something.

Instead of random shock value, it’s tied directly to his character.

And that’s why the episode works.

I bought the only thing I liked from the final episode was at the end. Homelander declares martial law on the boys, and then we see the boys having to split up, which isn’t gonna set up for season five.

Yeah, pretty sad.When that’s my only favorite scene in the last episode, ohh, didn’t I forget to mention that A-Train is finally joining the good side? Yeah toke him long enough.


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Season 4 had the potential to build on everything that made the earlier seasons great.

Instead it mostly just doubled down on the show’s worst instincts.

And that’s why this season was such a disappointment.

Btw if y’all think this show has way to many Supernatural actors? Oh dont worry, because next season were getting the full gang together. Thats right, next season is giving us

Jared Padalecki

And

Misha Collins

Oh boy, so now Dean, and Sam, and Castiel and Bobby are all gonns share screen time together again, are y’all excited? Im sure as hell am not.

Anyways hope y’all enjoy today’s review.

Why am I reviewing the four seasons now? Because that’s the show is about to come to an end with season five, here’s the official trailer to get y’all hyped.

See y’all all eventually for the season five review. Once this all airs and I can binge it.