The Boys - Season 4 (2024)

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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Invincible - Season 3 (2025)

The third season of Invincible is only eight episodes long. Each episode is roughly 40 minutes each. Taking place a while after the last season, Mark is working for Cecil as a superhero. Although with Cecil being Cecil, he has his plans and backups in case Mark breaks out and does his own thing. Given that Mark’s dad did just that and caused a lot of damage, it’s understandable but can feel unfair and brutal from Mark’s perspective. It explores Cecil’s history, and the early part of the season explores Mark’s response to all this.

Mark and Cecil’s relationship pretty much go as well as expected. You really can’t have a relationship that’s built on distrust and deception. This part of the plot was quickly resolved though but it doesn’t feel rushed. The season them moves onto Mark’s alien half-brother, Oliver. Oliver is growing quickly and rapidly gaining his abilities. He’s just like Mark when he discovers his powers, being eager to use them to help others.

Mark sets about training Oliver but obviously it’s not as easy as they’d assume. It doesn’t help that Oliver is still a kid at heart, despite growing up so fast. His ideals do not perfectly align with Mark’s and it can be horrifying when Oliver explains his reasonings after doing something, and Mark realizes that it just reminds him of their father. It is a distressing moment and hammers home the realisms of such a scenario, even if it might not make for the best story. This is also the point where it gets much more violent and gory. It’s a heavily stylized kind of violent but can still feel over the top and unnecessary.

Another continuing subplot is Mark’s personal life. It isn’t focusing on how he handles being both a superhero and a teenager, but more so being just a typical teenage drama. Rather than deconstructing the genre, we just see Mark as he matures but still gets a bit awkward when he needs to when asking the girl he likes out. It is sweet when it needs to be but the season tends to focus on these moments a bit too long.

There are similar issues with previous seasons, such as the constantly shifting scenes that focus on one subplot in one episode and then another one in the next. It affects the pacing by jumping around all over the place. By doing this, it also has the byproduct of making it easier to forget what happened in that subplot up until now and you need some refresher. A lot of things happen during the season such that it feels it’s both moving too fast, as well as moving too slowly. It’s moving too fast because we are rapidly cycling through the threats. As soon as Mark has managed to subdue one villain, another one pops out and each time, it gets bigger.

On the other hand, it feels too slow because the slow scenes drag the episodes length out without adding much value. They break the pacing and clog up the story. Each subplot can feel disjointed, so that the season doesn’t feel coherent. In eight episodes, it can go through eight different subplots, if not more. If it was all interlinked, or if there was a common thread through all of them, then it would have made much more sense.

While Mark is shown to be powerful and he even has the superhero name of Invincible, given that he is the protagonist, the show goes out of its way to show that this may not be the case. Mark gets hurt all the time and if he wasn’t superpowered, he would have died a long time ago. The other heroes struggle a lot more and Mark encounters threats where you don’t think he might be able to overcome.

Mark being overwhelmed by his enemies, comes to the forefront in the final episode, where yet another ultimate threat comes. The show got gorier as the season went out. There are some genuinely shocking developments, both in terms of the gore as well as what happens. No character is safe, and they do things to characters that you don’t expect.

Overall, the third season of Invincible has its highs and lows. It is interesting to watch and there are some good story developments. Although it can feel muddied and confused at where it wants to go at times. As a result, it can be disjointed in how it tells its story, making it hard to tell how this arc in this episode relates to the next one in another. Characters come and go, and so it can be hard to remember just who is who.

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Upload - Season 4 (2025)

The fourth and final season of Upload contains only four episodes. It’s a short season and they’re not particularly long episodes either, staying at around 30 to 50 minutes long each. This is the final season, and it feels like there is a lot to wrap up. With the cliffhanger of the previous season… it promptly skips over it for the first episode. Life goes on for most of the characters. Ingrid and Nathan progress their relationship, eventually having a wedding and stressing over that.

While Nora is shown to be depressed given the events of the last season. She’s become reclusive and this is the biggest change to the character. Despite being introduced and shown as a strong character, she spends this whole season being useless, with barely a coherent thought and mostly a bubbling mess. She’s best friends with Ingrid and Aleesha now, who both genuinely care for her, but Nora is not a likable character this season.

It takes the first episode to get back to the crux of the cliffhanger and deal with its impact. It seems like a waste of a lot of time to get to this point, especially since the trend is that most of the events thus far feel inconsequential. The plot and character motivations continue to be muddled. The plot feels aimless and you’re not sure what message the series is wanting to show. It only briefly touches upon the ethics of copying someone’s memories and uploading them so that they can continue living, along with their rights and the progress of extreme capitalization, but none of these are actually wielded and portrayed in a way that’s clever or thought provoking.

The season eventually moves at a slightly faster pace and soon clears up the cliffhanger from last season. Not that there was much doubt, but it is nice to see it resolved sooner rather than later. The way the story threads and plot arcs are resolved feels offhanded. The big background arc was mostly already resolved by this point, so it’s more to do with the endings of the characters and what they do afterwards. There is an inclusion of a threat with the digital afterlife but with only four episodes, it’s quickly resolved and is tacked on as a result.

The AI is shown to be developing at a much faster rate but is growing increasingly like a normal person. This was always an issue with the series, there is less focus on the digital part and how it all works and blends with real life, but more on the characters and their relationships. There is a disconnect with how physics works, like when the AI are fighting each other in the digital world, it’s still resolved by punching harder than the other. Or when you wanted to delay the AI getting to a location, you just needed to push it away? The analogy doesn’t quite work.

This is not a show about right or wrong, nor the consequences of it. The bad guys don’t lose, but the good guys still win. Despite the big conspiracy, nothing drastic happens to those important bad people and the inhumane experiments continue to happen. Despite escaping from a powerful organization, they don’t try to track down Nathan ever again. Characters are caricaturized so that they’re dominated by one personality aspect. It makes them one dimension. People from the future act without any empathy or are clueless at everything. It’s supposed to satirical, but it’s not done in a clever way.

Overall, the fourth and final season of Upload is disappointing. It’s an ending at least and provides some closure to the characters. The show started off strong but just couldn’t get a proper grip on what it wanted to be: a romcom or a serious thriller. It tries to do both but leans too heavily on the romcom aspect to the detriment of everything else. Plot arcs are inconsequential, there are plot holes, and the pacing is off. This is the weakest season yet where it feels like a whole bunch of nothing.

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Gen V - Season 1 (2023)

Gen V is a spin-off from The Boys. The first season is eight episodes long. It follows Marie, who can manipulate her own blood (obvious way is as a weapon). In typical The Boys fashion though; she kills her parents in an accident. After her life turns upside down, she was offered the opportunity to attend Godolkin University, an education facility for future superheroes, as that is what she aspires to be. Gen V starts off as this hybrid university life cross The Boys type of show, and shows off the other, lower key, aspects of superhero society.

Before too soon though, Marie finds herself in a situation. The show isn’t shy with the gore and violence, with plenty of bloody explosions, but slightly tamer compared to The Boys. However, the key part is that its plot has that hook that keeps you watching and wanting to learn more. Despite Marie’s social awkwardness, and the potential for people’s cruelty to come to the forefront in university life, Marie finds herself with a band of semi-decent people (granted, they’re kind of forced to be together).

Too bad anything good does not last long in The Boys universe, and it stands true here. The show tends to become too focused on the darker themes, and at times, it can be too much. From the gore and violence that doesn’t add much beyond trying the shock factor, or the fact that most people are terrible human beings, or even how things must be graphically sexual. It can become depressing, and it’s no wonder that the characters have mental issues.

While Marie may seem at first to be the main character, it’s more of an ensemble. There’s her roommate Emma, and then the other top-ranking students at the school, Andre, Cate and Jordan. Each have their own story threads but are all tightly intertwined, so the plot is a lot more focused that way. Despite that, there are still plenty of distractions where little progress is made on the main plot. It tends to deal more with the characters’ teen issues, such as popularity, their romantic interests, and being accepted by others.

So, what is the main plot? Well, as with all things in The Boys universe, nothing is as good as it seems, and you know for sure everything by Vought is probably a front for some more sinister. That holds true for the school, with Marie and the others accidentally being involved in the darker secrets that the Dean was doing. It doesn’t go all out, given that the characters slowly unwind the mystery.

The pacing can’t be described as slow or fast, but the plot plodders along and it creeps up on you. Suddenly, the characters do things where there’s no turning back and it has a high impact on what’s going to happen next. The true purpose of Godolkin University being revealed isn’t a shocking moment by any means, but more so pushes the characters to pick a side. Having now understood what makes the characters tick, it’s more impactful seeing the consequences of their choices.

The connection back to The Boys become stronger towards the season finale. There will be familiar characters that make appearances, and the good thing is that they don’t steal the focus of the show from the characters but rather adds and cement this show in The Boys’s universe. It’s hard to tell how the season is going to end, which makes the typical cliffhanger even more shocking and unexpected, and it really gears you up for the next season.

Overall, Gen V is a solid spin-off, and one that can stand on its own. It has enough of a hook on its premise to make it worth watching. While it’s more personal and smaller scale, it has its own charms, and it’s not as if it is inconsequential either, given that it does cross over with The Boys.

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Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024)

Like a Dragon: Yakuza is a 12 episode series based upon the games. However, its story is only loosely based on its inspiration, as there are a lot of changes made. The first episode jumps between 1995 and 2005, which can make for some issues with pacing when it’s not used as effectively as it could have. It starts off with the orphans Kiryu and Nishiki, who steal from one of the yakuza. Naturally, the yakuza come to take back what’s there and it sparks off the events of the show.

To pay back the yakuza (since there is interest and damage to the amounts that they stole), Kiryu and Nishiki end up joining the clan. We’re then shown that Kiryu for reasons not yet explained, has spent the last ten years in prison. When he is released, it’s a different, yet still familiar world, for the yakuza. The show takes place in the fictional district of Kamurocho, a red-light entertainment district of Tokyo.

There are a lot of characters introduced, which, coupled with the constant shift between the past and present, can make it hard to keep track of who’s who, and what is happening. Basically, in the present, two yakuza clans are locked in battle, with Kazuma caught in the middle. Kazuma meets up with his fellow orphans, but having been in prison for ten years, there is a rift between them. Given that the show basically time skipped, we don’t know what happened, and it’s using the flashbacks to slowly reveal it.

For fans of the game, or at least having played it, there are some nice easter eggs. From Majima’s appearance to the locations. A lot of liberties are taken but still cool to see this take on those characters, and some of the actors used really evoke the characters that they are playing as. While not overly violent, there are certain scenes where it evokes the same kind of stylized and over the top violence as the games.

The plot gets clearer as the season goes along. It’s a little bit more focused, being around the theft of the money that Kiryu managed to get himself entwined in. The way that Nishiki managed to live during the past ten years, as well as how Kiryu got into jail in the first place, is slowly unveiled piece by piece. It’s not the best method, and the plot is still too scattered and unfocused to keep your attention, but it shows that it has potential.

In the final two episodes, everything is effectively revealed. Was the payoff worth all the scatteredness and vagueness early on? It’s hard to say, since it’s not as if it was an amazing secret. The show does a poor job of introducing the characters apart from Kiryu and Nishiki, that it takes nearly the whole season before you realise who is who, and how they relate to each other.

That said, the show perfectly captures the rivalry between Kiryu and Nishiki. The two actors do a great job at playing those characters. The show also touches upon the game’s occasional cheesiness with its own, with characters acting just a bit more exaggerated than in real life in one scene, before becoming extremely serious in the next. The season finale is supposed to be a cliffhanger but is easily guessable by the viewer.

Overall, Like a Dragon: Yakuza is an average show. If you come in without any background from the games, it can be confusing. Even if you have played the games, it’s still confusing, but at least you can have fun recognizing various locations within the show. The plot had potential, but the way it was executed by constantly flipping between different time periods makes for a scattered approach that muddled too much of its storytelling.

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Upload - Season 2 (2022)

The second season of Upload is shorter at only seven episodes long. Despite the previous season ending on a somewhat big cliffhanger that tried to deliver a lot of shock, and this season opening right after, it feels muted and underwhelming. The twist is nearly immediately undone. From the first season, Nathan had died, and his memories uploaded into a digital afterlife, where he ends up falling in love with his “angel”, a staff named Nora. Unfortunately, Nathan was already with Ingrid, who, despite her narcissism, does genuinely loves Nathan, which makes the love triangle all the harder to watch.

Nathan had slowly fallen for Nora over the course of a season, and the feeling is mutual, yet despite this, both end up moving on from each other somewhat easily. Nora, having left her job and gone off grid, quickly develops feelings for another guy. While Nathan, having resisted Ingrid’s advances at first, does look to have started slowly giving in to it. This makes the relationships feel fickle and shallow, undoing what came before.

This season is slow, and for most of it, it meanders around the more interesting subplot of Nathan’s death, in favor of just… other less pressing side plots. It reveals a bit more of the AI world and how it functions. The worldbuilding is appreciated since there are still a lot of unanswered questions. It continues to play into the nickel and diming of the uploads in this digital afterlife, since they are still paying consumers after all. It shows the result of excessive greed from capitalism, such as updates and patches to the digital afterlife. However, some parallels still don’t quite work when it feels too much like the real world in some things (like the physics), but not in others (like… certain physics).

The focus is on the love triangle between Nathan, Nora and Ingrid. Ingrid is struggling to keep Nathan’s attention onto her, which can be kind of sad. While Nathan is only staying with Ingrid through immense guilt. On the other hand, Nora has misunderstood Nathan’s actions and ends up changing her allegiance to work against the system. These are all typical plot points where each decision is not black and white. The “good guys” are doing bad things, and the “bad guys” may not be so bad. However, this means that after the glamor of the unique concept (being able to upload your consciousness and live a digital life) wears off, this is a somewhat generic show.

Some of the side characters get their fair share of limelight, and you might say that it may be too much in certain episodes. These can be funny but a lot of times, these scenes are distractions that are too unrelated to what’s currently going on and are too far removed. It feels like these side characters might have had too much attention placed on them as they do not feel central or necessary to the plot.

After meandering for most of the season, the last two episodes carries some heavier stuff. There is big progress made in the subplot of Nathan’s death. In the earlier episodes, he had been slowly getting his memories back and piecing together what happened. Towards the end of the season, we finally touch on the reasons why. Equally important, we get a resolution with Nathan and Ingrid’s relationship, and of course, the season ends with a cliffhanger, but one that’s expected, and given how last season’s cliffhanger was resolved, we can guess what is probably going to happen.

Overall, the second season of Upload is okay. The initial interest of the unique premise starts to lose its attractiveness, so the gap in the storytelling is more obvious. At its core, this is like a relationship drama, but even then, there are so many distractions that you feel that most of the season was wasted and nothing much of note happened.

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