The season 4 finale of The Boys proved to be the wildest finale any season of the series has ever had. The last season of the hit Amazon series looks like it is going to be an amalgamation of final showdowns between all the many different players who are still in the game. Power is the name of the game and how every side needs to win it.
Those with the most power, especially of superhuman nature, will be the ones whose actions will determine how the story of The Boys will end. In a season that will certainly have many epic fights between the strongest people, having the most potent abilities will be of great use. Here’s who is likely going to dominate in power, going into Season 5.
WARNING! Spoilers for The Boys season 4 and Gen V ahead!
5 Sam Riordan
The Male Guardian Of Godolkin
- First Appearance: Gen V Season 1, Episode 1 “God U”
- Powers: Superhuman Strength, Jumping, Durability, and Hearing
The younger brother of Godolkin University’s Golden Boy, a college athlete of a supe intended to be ‘bigger than Homelander’, Sam first appears in Gen V, where he is seen to have attempted yet another escape from a cell which he is soon brought back to and restrained. He’s part of the underground medical facility secretly run by the university called ‘The Woods’.
Among the reasons Sam is kept there are his superhuman strength combined with his inability to handle the side effects that came when he was given these powers, including schizophrenia. Instead, members of the university’s staff decided to extract his blood and transfer it to his brother Golden Boy in order to put that immense strength to use.
By the time he is seen in The Boys season 4, he has risen higher in life and works alongside The Seven. In the season’s finale, he is seen apprehending Kimiko, a member of The Boys and one of the most powerful supes around. Despite Kimiko possessing enough strength to separate heads from bodies as seen before, her strike at Sam proves ineffective. Sam is barely phased by the hit and able to keep a hold of her, proving he is still one of the strongest young supes in the game in season 5.
4 Cate Dunlap
The Female Guardian Of Godolkin
- First Appearance: Gen V Season 1, Episode 1 “God U”
- Powers: Telepathy, Mind Manipulation
Anyone with the ability to control and influence others has great amounts of power in The Boys universe, as shown by characters like Victoria Neuman and Stan Edgar. But to have control and influence as a superpower is in a different ballpark, making characters like Cate Dunlap one of the universe’s most formidable supes. A former student of Godolkin University, Cate’s specific ability is to both read people’s minds within a close radius and control them through touch and spoken word. The applications of her mind-based abilities are seemingly endless, with her being portrayed as capable of altering memories, trapping people within their own minds, and forcing them to sleep.
Though she lost an arm during the conclusion of Gen V’s first season, when viewers next saw Cate in action, her powers were just as useful as they had always been. At the end of The Boys season 4, she is seen touching Frenchie and whispering something that convinces him to walk away from Kimiko and any escape the two of them had planned, as her companion Sam deals with the superwoman himself.
Though her durability is limited, the many different ways Cate can control the minds of others make her an almost impossibly powerful supe at such a young age.
3 Soldier Boy
The World’s First Superhero
- First Appearance: The Boys Season 3, Episode 1 “Payback”
- Powers: Superhuman Strength, Durability and Reflexes, Longevity, Radiation Generation
He’s the Homelander before there even was a Homelander, the world’s greatest superhero before the 21st century and a self-proclaimed, Nazi-bashing war veteran. Soldier Boy’s relevance to the series started when various people, including Butcher and Maeve, wanted to search for a way to finally kill Homelander. The plan was to steal whatever hidden weapon had been used to destroy Soldier Boy in the ‘80s, and when the truth that he was kept and captured came out, Soldier Boy himself was their official contingency against him.
Soldier Boy proved to be one of the strongest supes around, with enough strength and durability to go toe-to-toe with Homelander for a decent portion of the Herogasm battle. It’s no surprise that the world’s first superhero was also one of its best, but Soldier Boy’s capture by the Russians in the ‘80s gave him another highly useful ability. He can release a radioactive blast that is able to ‘fry the Compound V out of a supe’s blood’.
Soldier Boy is a powerhouse capable of defeating supes on his own, with the radioactive blast only proving that he’s downright unstoppable. He’s been incapacitated since the end of season 3, but the end credits scene of the season 4 finale proves his power will play a part in season 5.
2 Billy Butcher
A Super Illness
- First Appearance: The Boys Season 1, Episode 1 “The Name of the Game”
- Powers: Sentient Tumor, Tendril Manifestation, Superhuman Strength and Durability
As a normal human without any powers to speak of, Billy Butcher was already a force to be reckoned with. From the jump, he was a man in peak human condition with as much strength, durability, and combat expertise as a person could need. Therefore, having gained powers, it was clear Butcher was going to become one of the most powerful individuals the show had to offer.
Viewers saw Butcher receive Homelander-like powers in Season 3 when he took Temp V. The side effects of taking too much Temp V gave Butcher a cancerous tumor, one he tried to cure by injecting himself with Compound V. Whilst Compound V did not cure his tumor, it did give it powers that allowed him to massacre stretchy supe Ezekiel on his own. Butcher is now able to manifest dark slimy tendrils out of his body, that are so strong they were able to tear Victoria Neuman in half. As a reminder: Victoria Neuman was a supe strong enough to take acid to the face, have a bullet bounce off her head, and possess skin strong enough to withstand a blast from Homelander’s laser.
If his new V-tumor powers are capable of defeating a supe of that caliber with such ease, there’s no doubt that Butcher is walking into Season 5 as one of the most dangerous supes around.
1 Homelander
The Villain Of All Villains
- First Appearance: The Boys Season 1, Episode 1 “The Name of the Game”
- Powers: Superhuman Strength, Durability, Speed, Smell and Hearing, Heat Vision, X-Ray Vision, Flight
The world’s strongest hero, whose defeat is what the whole series is based around and the benchmark of ultimate power in The Boys universe. Quips have been made about how Homelander’s veins flow with more Compound V than they do actual blood. Homelander’s power was curated in a lab where he was raised to be the strongest there is, using the genes of Soldier Boy to make him the world’s new greatest. His Superman powers put him a cut above the rest, with unparalleled strength, untouchable durability, scorching heat vision as well as the ability to fly, which is considered to be a rare privilege among supes in their world.
The vast majority of character decisions throughout the show revolve around keeping Homelander in check as if he were to fly too far off the handle, he alone could destroy most of the country in a roaring rampage. During Herogasm, it took Soldier Boy as well as Butcher and Hughie, both on Temp V, to subdue Homelander, and even then he was able to fly away. In season 4, it is stated that making a supe virus that would be strong enough to kill Homelander would be too dangerous, as a virus that strong would be uncontrollable, become airborne, and kill every supe around.
From the beginning and likely to the end of the series, there has not been a single person as strong as the Homelander.
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