A scene from ‘The Boys’ Season 4 | Photo credit: Amazon Prime Video
In his penultimate season, Boys It seems to have transcended its unabashed satirical cleverness to become creative nonfiction, even documentary. As Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher and the titular team of anti-super rebels head into their final season, the show feels less like a parody and more like a disturbingly accurate play-by-play of current events, only enhanced by lobotomized sex and pubic lasering.
This season’s climax, in which a super being crowned president, raises the stakes to new heights. Superheroes as political figures? Strange, yet disturbingly close to a reality where fist-pumping, super-charged charisma often trumps competence.
The Boys Season 4 (English)
the creator: Eric Kripke
Mould: Anthony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Erin Moriarty
Episodes: 8
Runtime: 1 Hour
Plot: With Victoria Newman under Homelander’s control, closer than ever to the Oval Office and only a few months left to live, Billy Butcher must find a way to work with The Boys to save the world
The season finale opens with the new face of primetime fascism, Firecracker (Valorie Curry), telling us to wake up: “Good morning patriots, it’s January 6th.” Eric Kripke’s mocking of populist demagoguery feels worryingly prescient. Rather than simply poking fun at the absurdities of MAGA politics, Boys Now it’s getting an incisive autopsy. And this season, they’ve really upped the ante, giving us everything from politically charged amputations to flesh-eating sheep.
Homelander in a scene from ‘The Boys’ Season 4 | Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video
In this election year, the creators have opened the bottle of caustic nitroglycerin, and focused their narrative crosshairs perhaps a little too far. Anthony Starr’s Homelander, the autocratic poster boy of superhuman arrogance, with a fan base that’s more cult than constituency, is front and center for this season’s political allegory. His rhetoric, while pompous and hollow, has reached its narrative climax. In a brief but amusing meeting with his origins – which involves a cute, whale-shaped cake, scientists baked with charcoal, and a donut-hole through his waist – the failed lab experiment with a god-complex has finally overcome the foibles of his humanity.
Meanwhile, the fictional megacorporation that makes Amazon look like a thrift store (ironically… Boys Being a Prime Video Original is nothing new for me) has been garnering plenty of buzz for taking aim at its contemporaries. In its latest jab at pop culture giants, the series manages to take a dig at Marvel’s recent mistakes, including a stinging dig at the beloved D23 Expo tradition and the excesses of its cinematic phases in the franchise.
Superhero fatigue has become more real than ever, and, Boys An invigorating breath of sulfur remains. The show’s relevance has only sharpened its edge, giving a certain web-slinging icon a new look (quite literally), diving deep into the sinister, lascivious sex dungeon of a super-corrupt billionaire, and Firecracker’s cunning lactic power play that turns the world’s greatest super into a suckling baby. It’s also worth mentioning Sister Sage’s (Susan Hayward) manipulative debutante dance, which is a joy to watch and ultimately proves that even star-spangled puppets are mere pawns in a darker, more cunning chess game.
Sister Sage and Firecracker in a scene from ‘The Boys’ Season 4 | Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Video
Barring a few hasty mishaps and patch-ups between the traumatized Frenchie and Kimiko, Butcher’s evolving relationship with Ryan provides the emotional anchor to this season’s chaos. While a much-anticipated reveal from Jeffrey Dean Morgan at the end of the season gave a hint of things to come, it looks like our Cockney maverick might be gearing up for an Eren Jaeger-esque metamorphosis in the series’ next chapter.
In an unexpected and disturbingly prescient convergence between fact and fiction, the finale took place amid a week dominated by shocking real-world events, namely, failed political assassinations. While one emerged with the political tide turning, fists raised, the other ushered in a new dawn of American superhero mythology, setting the stage for its grand finale and quest to “make America super again.”
All episodes of ‘The Boys’ Season 4 are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
