The fourth season of The Boys is eight episodes long. The season continues with the group, led by M.M. as they continue their quest to tear down the corrupted society dominated by the supes. Even after all that has happened, the supes still holds most of the power, and it feels as if the group is getting more desperate each time. They are backed by the CIA so it’s not as if they don’t have resources, but they are also highly pressured given the urgency.
Homelander controls Vought now and holding so much power, politically and physically, everyone fears him and bows to his will. However, even all that sucking up gets to him, given that he cannot get any proper advice when he needs it. It’s interesting to see that Homelander is more irked with his ageing. While his power hasn’t waned yet, he knows that it is only a matter of time. He will age, get weaker, lose popularity and everything else that makes him what he is now, and it’s an existential crisis. This is an intriguing angle to get towards.
We knew that Homelander was a manufactured “product” of Vought, and we get glimpses of what happened in his childhood. The glimpses that we see makes it no surprise why Homelander is so broken and mentally unstable now and getting worse as time goes on. He has significant flaws, but you also can’t help that it wasn’t completely his fault. The show constantly explores what happens when someone who isn’t perfect gets so much power, and it leads to some very disturbing scenes.
Homelander is trying to gain more political power, and that includes rebuilding The Seven (which has somewhat diminished in its importance as time goes on). Given that most of the original members have departed, it needed fresh blood and these new characters, as expected, can be unlikable. There are several plot threads that are concurrently going on, and this means that characters are constantly plotting against each other. There are constant twists and reveals, and often it does this in the most horrible way possible to those characters, often crossing multiple lines.
The show has always walked headfirst into gore and violence, designed to shock the viewers. At first, this season seems to take a more toned-down approach from the surprise and disgust of the scenes. Then comes the middle of the season and it comes back in full force, seemingly able to constantly find new ways for visual gore that’s repulsive to watch, and even more to think about what it means if you did it in real life. It can be vomit inducing and too much at times.
The pacing is not too slow this season, and it goes by at a decent rate. Each episode is progressing the plot, whether it’s Homelander’s plot to attempt a coup on obtaining total power over America (while also continuing to show how he just cannot handle as much as he thought he could), or the Boys’ plans to stop him. The Boys’ themselves seem scattered, with Butcher coming on and off, giving that he’s running out of time. Every other plan that the Boys are trying to action seems to go awry. Nothing truly seems to go their way and their whole team seems to be imploding.
Even throughout just this season, there are constantly shifting alliances. One episode, these two will work together, in the next, they change allegiances. It leads to a case where you sometimes can’t remember who has made a deal with whom. This all ends at the season finale, where we get unexpected plot developments and it massively shifts the paradigm. It was a good season finale, and it felt like the whole season wasn’t wasted, progress was made, and the plot advanced by a significant margin. It puts all the characters into a tough spot and nicely sets up the final season.
Overall, the fourth season of The Boys helps capture what made the series so good in the first place. While it still has the dark humor, and a lot of gore and violence, to the point where it is uncomfortable to watch, the plot developments manages to capture your attention and interest. You’re keen to see where this will go. The characters manage to straddle the line between being someone you’d love to hate, and someone that is just annoying. Although it does suck where innocent characters die.
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