Highlights
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The Boys
returns for a thrilling fourth season full of irreverent humor, gory violence, and social commentary. - Each episode skillfully weaves together themes of politics, celebrity, and superhero culture to create a unique viewing experience.
- Highlights include Homelander’s vulnerability, Butcher’s complex past, and explosive showdowns that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.
With Eric Kripke’s Amazon Prime series The Boys set to kick off its fourth and penultimate season on June 13th, 2024, the irreverent, foul-mouthed, and gloriously gory superhero satire/critique that has earned high praise from audiences and critics alike will be gracing TV screens once again. The supe-hunting team of Billy Butcher, Hughie, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie, Annie/Starlight, and Kimiko, will once again seek to put an end to Homelander and the seemingly unshakable social influence of the superhero team known as The Seven.
The Boys deftly handles a wide variety of themes, turning a spotlight on real-world political, celebrity, and corporate issues while also lambasting the modern superhero mania that has taken over much of television and movies in the last decade and a half. While not every episode deals with all these topics simultaneously, the best ones do, and these episodes of The Boys perfectly capture what makes the series stand out among the many superhero offerings available to viewers today.
Spoilers Ahead For The First Three Seasons Of The Boys
9 The Name Of The Game
Where It All Began
- Episode: Season 1, Episode 1
- Director: Dan Trachtenberg
- IMDb Rating: 8.7
Many viewers likely walked into “The Name of the Game” feeling unsure about how this new superhero series would differentiate itself from the dozens of superhero offerings available from the MCU. Those questions were quickly answered, as A/V store employee Hughie Campbell sees his girlfriend casually murdered by a member of The Seven, leaving him standing in the middle of the street holding her disembodied arms.
What follows is a crash course for Hughie on everything happening “behind the curtain” of The Seven, all provided by Billy Butcher, a violent fugitive with an obsessive need to kill every evil supe he can get his hands on, with the leader of The Seven, Homelander, being his main target. Meanwhile, Annie January, aka. Starlight, wins her way through a reality show contest and finds herself being named the newest member of The Seven, although things quickly go sour as she has to endure an “orientation” with The Deep.
8 Here Comes A Candle To Light You To Bed
Butcher’s Childhood Nightmare, The Deep’s New Sex Partner, And Homelander’s Hesitancy
- Episode: Season 3, Episode 7
- Director: Sarah Boyd
- IMDb Rating: 8.8
Following the events of Herogasm, Homelander’s confidence is shaken. Butcher and Soldier Boy nearly killed him, and while he escaped, suddenly the leader of The Seven is hyper-aware of the fact that he can be hurt. This causes him to lose hs composure at a political rally for Robert Singer, nearly lasering an audience member who he thought was Soldier Boy.
Meanwhile, the real Soldier Boy, along with Butcher and Hughie, tracks down Mindstorm, one of the last remaining members of Payback. Mindstorm takes over Butcher’s mind, forcing him to relive his relationship with his younger brother, whom Butcher left to be abused by their father, eventually leading to his brother’s suicide. “Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed” brings a lot of things into focus, both regarding Butcher’s past, and about Black Noir’s history with Soldier Boy, and how the latter came to be imprisoned by the Russians.
7 The Bloody Doors Off
Lamplighter’s Fate, And The Histories Of Stormfront, Compound-V, And Frenchie
- Episode: Season 2, Episode 6
- Director: Sarah Boyd
- IMDb Rating: 8.9
Several stories come together in “The Bloody Doors Off”, including those of Stormfront, Mallory, Lamplighter, and most surprisingly, Frenchie. It’s all set in motion by a trip to the Sage Grove research facility, a name that Annie found on Stormfront’s computer. It turns out, Sage Grove is a Compound V testing lab, where psychotic individuals are brought, injected with Compound V, and then examined. Lamplighter is there as well – getting himself sent there after murdering Mallory’s grandchildren – essentially acting as a cleanup crew by using his powers to burn evidence of Sage Grove’s existence.
It just so happens, Frenchie’s actions in choosing to help his friend during an overdose instead of going after Lamplighter directly led to the deaths of Mallory’s grandchildren, which has weighed on him heavily ever since. Meanwhile, The Boys discover that Sage Grove is Stormfront’s pet project, which she’s carried on since World War 2. As it turns out, Stormfront is a Nazi – not just in ideology, she’s a literal member of the Third Reich. In fact, Stormfront was the first person ever injected with Compound V, making her the world’s first “superhero”. This reveal would shape not only the rest of the season, but reshape the audience’s understanding of the origins and uses of Compound V.
6 You Found Me
Hughie Grows Up, A-Train’s Heart Problems, And The Truth About Becca
- Episode: Season 1, Episode 8
- Director: Eric Kripke
- IMDb Rating: 9.0
The Season 1 finale was loaded with twists, the biggest of which being that not only is Becca alive, but she has been raising her and Homelander’s son for the last eight years. It all kicks off with Butcher and Hughie confronting Grace Mallory, the founder of the Boys. She gives Butcher a potential weakness of Homelander’s: his relationship with Stillwell. She also warns Hughie that Butcher’s revenge quest supersedes him and any other member of the Boys. This proves to be true when, after learning that Frenchie, M.M., and Kimiko have been captured by Vought, Butcher chooses to go after Stillwell instead, leaving Hughie alone to rescue them.
While this goes on, Annie confronts her mother about the source of her powers. While she doesn’t know anything about Compound V, Annie’s mother admits to intentionally turning her into a superhero as a way to ensure her daughter’s future success. Following this discovery, Annie heads to rescue the captured Boys’ members (and now Hughie, thanks to his own failed rescue attempt) from Vought with renewed purpose. There she faces off with A-Train, and while the speedster initially wins the fight, doing so causes him to have a heart attack. Hughie, abandoning his need for revenge after seeing the effect it had on Butcher, saves A-Train’s life by giving him CPR.
Everything culminates in the confrontation between Stillwell, Homelander, and Butcher. Stillwell admits to hiding Becca and her son from Homelander (and Butcher), and that she’s afraid of Homelander. His illusion of romance shattered, Homelander kills Stillwell, then knocks Butcher out and brings him to Becca’s doorstep. The season ends with Butcher laying eyes on Becca while Homelander introduces himself to his son, closing out “You Found Me” on a heck of a cliffhanger.
5 Glorious Five Year Plan
Soldier Boy Awakens, Kimiko Goes Down, And Homelander Takes Control
- Episode: Season 3, Episode 4
- Director: Julian Holmes
- IMDb Rating: 8.9
This is a rough episode for Kimiko in particular, although Starlight doesn’t have a great time either. Annie is working to stealthily build an anti-Homelander alliance within Vought, and has already recruited the newest member of The Seven, Supersonic, and Queen Maeve, to her side. Next up is A-Train, and Supersonic finds his opportunity following a tense meeting where A-Train and Homelander butt heads. A-Train seems amenable, at first. However, later in the episode, Homelander takes Annie to show her “the view of a lifetime;” a view that turns out to be Supersonic’s mangled body. A-Train gave them up. Homelander warns Annie that if she doesn’t fall in line, he’ll target Hughie next. If anyone had forgotten how despicable Homelander was during the break between seasons, “Glorious Five Year Plan” was a strong reminder.
The crux of the episode is the Boys’ trip to Russia in search of the weapon rumored to have killed Soldier Boy. This begins with Kimiko reluctantly assassinating a Russian oligarch, which she accomplishes through the use of the man’s extensive sex toy collection. However, when one of her victim’s many courtesans shoots Kimiko in the head, while the bullet doesn’t keep her out for long, the look of fear on the girl’s face cuts her deep. Next, the Boys break into a Russian facility, but are quickly outgunned by the guards on duty. That is, until Butcher and Hughie reveal that they’ve been taking V-24, giving them temporary superpowers. The guards are dispatched, but things quickly take a turn for the worse. It turns out, Soldier Boy isn’t dead after all; he’s been kept alive in this facility for decades. He lets loose a blast of energy that Kimiko steps in front of to save Frenchie. Soldier Boy escapes, and for some reason, Kimiko is not healing like she normally would.
4 Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker
Exploding Heads, Stormfront’s Indoctrination, And Bad Fathers
- Episode: Season 2, Episode 7
- Director: Stefan Schwartz
- IMDb Rating: 9.0
Season 2’s many storylines converge in “Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker”, beginning with Butcher’s father, who has (supposedly) passed away. Butcher and his father clearly have a fraught history, and the appearance of John Noble in the role of the very-much-alive Butcher Sr. adds serious depth and nuance to the character’s scene with his son. Most of the episode’s action takes place in Vought Tower, where Annie – right as she was making a plan to escape The Seven – is captured. Hughie and Lamplighter hatch a rescue plan, although things turn sour when they manage to get into The Seven’s conference room, where Lamplighter immolates himself before the statues of the current Seven. The fire sets off smoke alarms and sprinklers, giving Starlight enough light to engineer an escape.
The most effective moment of this episode, however, was its cold open, which focused on a character that had never been seen before. As he goes about his mostly-unremarkable day, viewers are treated to the effects that Stormfront’s rhetoric has on the man. Xenophobia and fearmongering abound in Stormfront’s speeches, as she insists that immigrants coming to America have the potential to become “super-terrorists.” Eventually, the unnamed man begins to suspect that the POC man working the till at his local market might be a supe. As Stormfront’s indoctrination takes hold, the man takes matters into his own hands, and shoots the cashier point-blank. Stormfront and Homelander’s “thoughts and prayers” following the incident just add insult to injury, showcasing how intentional their messaging is.
3 Over The Hill With The Swords Of A Thousand Men
Stormfront’s Motivations, Ryan’s Powers, And The Death Of Lucy The Whale
- Episode: Season 2, Episode 3
- Director: Steve Boyum
- IMDb Rating: 9.0
More than anything else, “Over the Hill With the Swords of a Thousand Men” discloses the true villain of Season 2, as Stormfront sheds the mask of her “cool girl” image and reveals herself to be an angry, violent racist. This all comes out during her hunt for Kenji, a supposed “super-terrorist”, and Kimiko’s brother. Kenji doesn’t survive the encounter, putting Stormfront squarely in Kimiko’s crosshairs. At the same time, Homelander, frustrated by his son Ryan’s lack of superpowers, throws the boy off the roof of his house to try and force him to fly. It’s only when Ryan awakes after the fall, and expresses his fury towards his father, that his laser eyes kick into gear.
The most memorable scene from this episode – and arguably its claim to fame – involves The Deep. He is told that, if he can kill Butcher and the Boys, he’ll be welcomed back into The Seven. The Deep recruits a pod of whales to help him in this task, and Butcher, in one of the show’s most hilariously-violent moments, rams a speedboat right through one of them, emerging from the other side covered in whale viscera. It’s always fun to see The Deep fail, but a failure this spectacular instantly became iconic.
2 Herogasm
A Homelander Beatdown, A-Train’s Revenge, And A Superhero Orgy
- Episode: Season 3, Episode 6
- Director: Nelson Cragg
- IMDb Rating: 9.6
So much happens in this episode that it is very hard to do justice via a recap. There’s also a lot of unspeakable content contained within this episode, given the main context of all the events is that they take place at an annual “superhero orgy” that shares a title with the episode itself: “Herogasm”. Considered by many fans to be the best episode of the entire series, “Herogasm” showcases every single aspect of The Boys, from the grotesqueries, to the absurd sexually-explicit content, to the extreme violence, to the high-stakes narrative twists.
Victornia Newman reveals her head-bursting ways to Starlight, A-Train gets his revenge on Blue Hawk for the injury to his brother by dragging the lesser supe across pavement at high-speed, and Homelander freaks out about the return of Soldier Boy, but all of these pale in comparison to the main event. All these characters – and more – converge at Herogasm. Butcher and Hughie – freshly dosed-up on V-24 – show their true motivations. Hughie just wants to save Annie for once, and Butcher couldn’t care less about Soldier Boy’s involvement in the deaths of M.M.’s parents if it gets in the way of killing Homelander. This causes significant rifts among the show’s main characters that ripple through the rest of the season. They get pushed aside in this episode, however, by the arrival of Homelander.
In every fight prior to this moment, Homelander has been by far the most powerful person in the brawl, which has led to his dominant reign of terror over Vought. However, between Soldier Boy and a drugged-up Butcher, the leader of The Seven is finally in a fair fight, and it doesn’t go well for him. In short, while Homelander gets his hits in, the two-on-one fight quickly shifts in favor of Butcher and Soldier Boy, and it results in Homelander getting a brutal and embarrassing beating. He only barely escapes, but now, not only are his fears about Soldier Boy justified, Homelander can no longer rely on the certainty that no one in the world can harm him.
1 What I Know
Stormfront’s Last Stand, And Rescuing Ryan From Homelander’s Clutches
- Episode: Season 2, Episode 8
- Director: Alex Graves
- IMDb Rating: 9.4
The rescue of Ryan and Becca from Homelander in “What I Know” is likely the deepest and broadest look viewers have ever gotten at Billy Butcher’s character. From his willingness to lie to Becca about his plans after rescuing Ryan, to his callousness in giving Ryan over to Vought, Butcher – who is, for better or worse, the most pivotal character in the show – shows a lot of nuance, self-sacrifice, and cunning in the Season 2 finale.
Speaking of character moments, Homelander has a big one of his own. After he and Stormfront take Ryan to Vought Planet, the two members of The Seven are instantly mobbed by fans. Ryan quickly gets anxious, and his powers start to flare up uncontrollably, and Homelander, in a moment of fatherly wisdom, pulls his son away to somewhere quiet. It’s a small scene, but gives a fascinating glimpse of Homelander potentially being…a good dad? It seems unlikely, but there it is.
Stormfront is pulled away when her Nazi history is made public. She encounters Annie and Kimiko, and the three engage in an all-star showdown. It appears that Kimiko and Annie have been beaten, but Queen Maeve shows up just in time. Kimiko and Annie pick themselves up, and the three heroes gang up on Stormfront in one of the show’s most impressive fight scenes, forcing the Nazi to flee. Instead, Stormfront tracks down Butcher, Becca, and Ryan, and confronts them in the woods. While Stormfront is distracted by Butcher, Becca stabs her in the eye, though Stormfront quickly turns the tables and begins choking Becca against a tree. While Butcher tries shooting and smashing Stormfront to no avail, it’s Ryan who, in a state of anger, finally lets loose with his laser eyes and burns Stormfront to a crisp. However, in doing so, he nicks Becca’s neck. She bleeds out in Butcher’s arms, giving viewers the final major character moment of the episode: Billy Butcher weeping. Billy turns on Ryan, seemingly ready to kill him just like he would any other supe, but Homelander shows up and, in a moment of clear-headedness, Ryan runs to Butcher for protection. Viewers see Butcher melt (as much as he can) and give in to his role as Ryan’s protector…at least for the moment. All in all, “What I Know” features the series’ best action, most satisfying kills, and most significant character moments, making it the best episode of The Boys…so far.
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