The Boys S4, EP4 Recap & Thoughts

Unlike in the case of the past seasons, the fourth season of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, met with lukewarm reception from both the fans and general audience alike. A lot of the criticism were pointed towards the repetitive storyline and retardation. The latest fourth episode from this season titled ‘Wisdom of the Ages’ can be described as a certain improvement over the previous three episodes. But sadly, The Boys still hasn’t got to the level of reaching its former glorious form.

One of the distinctive features of this season of The Boys is that Homelander, one of the flagbearers of the show as well as its central antagonist, has a story arc where he is totally enclosed in a room full of Vought International’s staff. In fact, he never shares screen with any other central characters of the show here (quite similar to how Ross & Rachel got a couple of story arc dedicated to their own adventure alone in FRIENDS). As teased in the end of the previous episode, Homelander has reached this room to confront his past horrors. He is there to meet a couple of older staffs who tried to test his power levels each day (thereby tormenting his own life). Homelander does describe the amount of sadness he had to endure because of the staff’s actions, which were indeed by Vought. He orders Frank, an old staff, to enter the oven, in exchange for the latter’s family’s life, where Homelander (who initially goes by John, his original name prior to becoming the public hero) viciously incinerated him because of the pain John endured inside the same place, as a part of his testing (Superman fans could take this one moment as a bid to win in the long running ‘Superman vs Homelander’ duel xD). After Frank’s death, Marty, another one of the old staff has to suffer an even horrible fate filled with public humiliation and misery. Finally Homelander meets Barbara a prominent old staff and a more enigmatic character who tries to talk the former to his sanity level by claiming that they had to do all those ‘ill-treatment’ to him because of Vought’s orders and not because they found solace in their actions. She also reminds him that he is in constant seek of love and approval. In fact, her words along with the psychotic nature of Homelander gets reiterated in the ghastly finale of his arc.

Kimiko once again faces the foe she faced in the previous episode and she attacks both Kimiko and Hughie when they just had met A-Train. In fact, Hughie has to make one of his biggest and most gruesome kills ever during this time, in the name of self-defense. During the final rendezvous, that girl reminds Kimiko about their history together after which Hughie and Kimiko walks out. This arc might get explored further in the future episodes.

Sister Sage finally arranges a revenge program for Firecracker titled ‘the TRUTH with FIRECRACKER’, in which she arranged an entire PR strategy to slander the goodwill of Annie January aka Starfire. Her relationship with The Deep is perplexing since at one place, she is critical of the latter while at another, she wants to have some intimate moments with her. The nature of this new ‘power couple’ as to whether it’s a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with an ulterior motive or whether something genuine in gonna sprung up in the future, isn’t hinted or revealed yet. Anyway, Ambrosius isn’t shown in this episode and the doubts about what will happen to her in the coming episodes, is also something to be looked after.

The history between Frenchie and Colin is explored further in this episode. Apparently, Colin’s mother was a federal judge and she along with her family were brutally massacred under the orders of a Russian mafia head lady. After experiencing several guilt, Frenchie finally admits to him that he was the assassin sent by Nina, his employer, sent to assassinate Colin’s family. Colin in retaliation attacks Frenchie viciously and orders him not to come across his life. However, Colin is still a supporter of Starlight and her non-profit organization. There will be times during which both have to bump each other and maybe one such juncture will provide the ultimate resolution to their tussle.

Billy Butcher is once again appointed back to ‘The Boys’ despite the opposition from Annie January. However, he is still affected by the presence of Becca especially when he loses his conscious. He finally admits to Hughie that he took the Compound V sample with the hopes of curing his cancer but from his opinion, it does nothing but brings him forth towards his anticipated death. However, there are some weird side effects also hinted especially after an evil supe as well as an ally of Firecracker gets killed with blood splashed around, while he blacked out. In fact, Butcher himself isn’t much sure of what actual transformation his body is going through.

One of the most important story arcs in this season was that of Annie January (formerly Starlight). Firecracker during her live event revealed to the public a few things to the public including the fact about her performing an abortion. While Annie tried to stay calm during the initial period, Firecracker’s final revelation enraged her to the point of her savagely crushing the former’s face in front of the live audience. This caused massive outrage on the media world and people including Victoria Neuman criticizing her on live television. To add more fuel to the flame, politician Bob Singer informed Annie about cutting ties with her in political matters since the whole fiasco caused him lose his chances of winning his ‘Anti-Superhero Legislation’ bill. The arc with Bob Singer is also similar to the story of Robert Kelly from the X-Men universe where he himself a politician trying to present ‘Anti-Mutant’ while at the same time he is running for the post of the President himself. This arc is also crucial since Bob Singer’s failure at passing and winning this bill could in one way make things easier for Neuman as the former himself is the President-in elect and such a failure could even jeopardize his winning and with him out of the way, Victoria could become the ‘Head of State’ within a jiff (not to mention that the present title of the finale episode of this season is ‘Assassination Run’).

All being said, perhaps the most important arc in this season could be that of Hughie’s. The medical examiners announced in front of him that his father is ‘brain-dead’. After an initial disheartenment, Hughie decides to get a portion of ‘Compound V’ for curing his father. Probably he was mentally damaged because of the whole scenario as he never showed any sort of qualms while killing the thug during the encounter with Kimiko’s foe and her team. However, he gets confused after discussing with Billy about Compound V and decides not to feed his father. But things turn an altogether different turn in the end and provides the biggest punch in the whole episode. Perhaps it’s the later arc of Hughie and his father that fans are most excited for in the next episode.

Now from a perspective, we can all admit that the episode did fix a few issues of last episodes as the bloodsheds became more reasonable unlike in the previous episodes where it was observed by many as being gratuitous on occasions. Unlike in the last few episodes, this time we have proper punches which could provide all the flair for excitement. However, still the episode isn’t truly satisfactory as it still lags in a few aspects.

While the previous episodes were altogether branded as lackluster, each and every character had equally important roles and arcs but this time, that balance got lost. While Homelander had a unique episode which could showcase his psychotic sense once again, characters like A-Train and The Deep got reduced to mere side characters. However, let’s not forget that we still have 4 more episodes to draw a proper conclusion within which things could still resolve well. Let’s hope that they will also bring something with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as they promised in the coming episodes.

The Boys season four is currently running on Amazon Prime.

Compiled By Amal John