The fifth episode of The Boys Season 4 was essentially divided into three storylines. The first one was taking place at a Comic Con-like event where Vought was unveiling their upcoming slate of movies and TV shows. A-Train was trying to throw Sister Sage off the scent since she had figured out that he was responsible for the leak about the deaths of the Homelander fans. Homelander was turning Ryan into a villain under the garb of making him a hero. And it all ended with the death of Cameron Coleman after Ashley managed to frame him for the aforementioned leak. The second one was centered around the Campbell family, where Hughie and Daphne dealt with the repercussions of injecting Hugh with Compound V, which eventually led to his death. The third one took place at Neuman’s farmhouse, where a mishap gave superpowers to the animals present there. The last vial of the Supe-killing virus manufactured at Godolkin University was used to kill the animals. Annie, Kimiko, and MM went back home, dejected that they didn’t have the poison that could kill Homelander. Frenchie got himself arrested. Neuman rescued Stan Edgar when he was being taken back to jail. Butcher faked Sameer’s death and abducted him so that he could make more of the Supe-killing virus. The sixth episode largely takes place at a freaky party at Tek Knight’s mansion, and elsewhere, there’s a startling revelation waiting for Butcher. So, let’s get into it.
Spoiler Alert
The Boys Infiltrate Tek Knight’s Party
Episode 6 of The Boys Season 4 opens with Hughie, Daphne, Annie, MM, and Kimiko going on the Maid in Manhattan tourist attraction to remember Hugh (because that was apparently one of his favorite movies of all time). An anti-Starlight heckler tries to harass Annie, but Hughie stands up for her. Kimiko tries to meet Frenchie in jail, but he refuses to meet her. Firecracker replaces Cameron Coleman and does an anti-semitic news spot, which is something that the writers have probably concocted to distract viewers from the fact that there are zionists in the cast. Anyway, A-Train calls MM from Toronto to tell him that Homelander is planning to create a Supe army and take over America. He is going to table this plan at a party that Tek Knight’s throwing, which will be attended by bureaucrats and politicians.
Butcher would usually be the guy getting them into this party, but since he is engaged elsewhere, MM has to get in touch with Webweaver to do the same. Spider-Man fans will either be laughing their heads off or fuming at this parody of the webslinger who shoots webs out of his butt. There’s a moment in Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where America Chavez gets confused after hearing the term Spider-Man and thinks that, like a real spider, Spider-Man shoots webs out of his butt. Coming back to the plot, MM incapacitates Webweaver by injecting Rohypnol into his system, and then steals his costume so that Hughie can wear it and get into the party. The focus then shifts to the party itself, and, in addition to the bureaucrats and politicians, Homelander, Ryan, Neuman, A-Train, Firecracker, Ashley, and Sister Sage are there too as guests.
Hughie Finds Himself in a Tight Spot With Tek Knight
Tek Knight thinks that he is going to team up with Homelander, but Homelander tells him to keep his expectations in check. When Firecracker tries to butter up Tek Knight, he starts talking about his family’s racist past while shamelessly poking at A-Train. Meanwhile, Hughie puts on Webweaver’s smelly costume (apparently it’ll keep Tek Knight from figuring out that it’s actually Hughie in a costume) and walks into the party with the intention of planting bugs all over the mansion. That’ll allow MM to get all the proof that he needs to blame Sister Sage and Homelander for planning a coup.
Additionally, Hughie is tasked with getting Tek Knight to a secluded place so that MM, Annie, and Kimiko can force him to reveal any additional information he has on Sage and Homelander. We briefly see Sage and Homelander urging Neuman to out herself as a Supe so that it strengthens their political position, and then the focus goes back to Hughie finding out that Webweaver actually has sexual relations with Tek Knight. I’m not going to go into the details of what goes down between them, but it seems like the character of Tek Knight is a messed-up parody of Batman because they have hidden lairs, butlers who have taken care of them since they were kids, and both of their superpowers are money and observational skills. We get a cameo from Laddio, Tek Knight’s sidekick, who apparently lives in the Tek Cave as his prisoner because he betrayed Tek Knight.
Is Tek Knight dead or alive?
Annie starts to panic because Hughie is in a bit of a pickle as he is being forced to do the most unimaginable things by Tek Knight and Ashley. So, she urges MM and Kimiko to come with her to rescue Hughie instead of waiting for him to get the jump on Tek Knight. MM and Kimiko realize the gravity of the situation and agree to infiltrate the mansion. But before they can get to him, Tek Knight discovers that it’s actually Hughie who is pretending to be Webweaver, and he intends to present him to Homelander as a trophy kill so that he gets into his good books. MM and Kimiko reach the library through which the Tek Cave can be accessed and find Sister Sage sitting there. She tries to raise an alarm, but MM shoots her in the head, thereby seemingly killing her. This causes MM to suffer a heart attack and he collapses. Kimiko gets a hold of A-Train and asks him to take MM to the hospital. After some initial hesitation, A-Train helps MM out.
Annie reunites with Kimiko and goes to save Hughie. Ironically, the book that opens the entrance to the Tek Cave is The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. There’s a movie based on that book. It’s called Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. It’s a feel-good film, and you should definitely watch it (for all intents and purposes, this is a joke). Anyway, Annie and Kimiko tie up Tek Knight and try to torture the details of his conversations with Sister Sage out of him. Since Tek Knight is a masochist, it doesn’t work on him. Laddio frees himself and shows that the only way to truly torture Tek Knight is by dangling the threat of emptying his bank accounts. Finally, Tek Knight reveals that he has concentration camps built across the country, and Homelander wants to use them to imprison dissenters. By the time everyone can process the information, Tek Knight’s butler, Elijah, appears out of nowhere and promises to strangle Tek Knight to death while making it look like a suicide. Laddio hangs back to help Elijah, and Hughie, Kimiko, and Annie leave with all the information they’ve got on Tek Knight. We get another Spider-Man joke as Elijah reveals Tek Knight’s safeword to be Zendaya, the actress who has starred in all the MCU Spider-Man films.
We don’t see Tek Knight’s death, and the golden rule of television is that if you don’t see someone dying on screen, we can’t assume that they are dead. Off-screen deaths don’t count. However, since Elijah and Laddio have suffered so much from Tek Knight’s debauchery, we can hope that they’ll see to it that Tek Knight doesn’t see the light of day ever again. At the hospital, MM finds out that he has had a panic attack, not a heart attack. That said, the doctor tells him to take some downtime because he is failing to deal with the stress of his job. Kimiko tries to meet Frenchie again, but apparently, Frenchie is still not ready to face Kimiko. At The Boys’ headquarters, Hughie breaks down in front of Annie because the one-two punch of Hugh’s death and everything that he has endured in the Tek Cave have taken a toll on him. By the way, amidst all this chaos, it’s revealed that Sister Sage didn’t die despite getting shot in the head.
Will Firecracker replace Sister Sage?
Neuman seems to be having a hard time listening to the bureaucrats blabber on. So, Sister Sage tells her why she wants to rule over humans. She says that, at a very young age, she could’ve found the cure for cancer and saved his grandmother. But the human doctors refused to listen to her and laughed at her. So, she had to watch her grandmother writhe in pain and then die. From that day onward, Sister Sage decided to rule over the humans instead of helping them, and she wants Neuman to see the world from her perspective. Firecracker tries to enter the conversation going on between Neuman, Homelander, and Sister Sage, but Sister Sage tells her to stay within her limits because she isn’t intellectually developed enough to be among them. Since Firecracker runs into Annie, she gets incapacitated by her.
Sister Sage joins Homelander, Neuman, and the bureaucrats for a meeting, and it’s revealed that since Sage’s brain is regenerating, she isn’t functioning in an intelligent fashion. So, Homelander decides to lead the conversation all by himself. Since Homelander is an idiot and he doesn’t know how a country runs, his argument for turning America into a full-on fascist state crumbles instantly. Neuman steps in to save the day with a speech where she presents the masses as animals who don’t deserve basic rights and should be ruled by the Supes. Thankfully, all this is recorded on the devices planted by Hughie. The scene then shifts to the Vought Tower, where Firecracker reveals that she has been taking galactogogues to produce breast milk without getting pregnant. We all know that Homelander is a huge fan of breast milk, and since Firecracker has gone to such great lengths to satiate his desires, it looks like after Sister Sage’s massive debacle, Firecracker is going to become Homelander’s most trusted aide.
Is Kessler a figment of Butcher’s imagination?
Sameer finds himself chained inside an abandoned warehouse that has been turned into a chemistry lab by Butcher so that he can use his wits and expertise to cook up some more of that Supe-killing virus. And Butcher gives Sameer a week to make it work. That said, he doesn’t let Sameer know that he is suffering from a severe case of “worms in the body.” He goes into a little room upstairs and coughs up some kind of black liquid while talking to the version of Becca that only exists in his mind. Surprisingly enough, the hallucinated version of Becca tells Butcher that he is going down a dark path if he thinks that unleashing a virus is going to solve everything. Butcher justifies his actions by saying that what he is doing is for the greater good. Soon after that, Kessler appears to check up on him and starts talking about how normal life didn’t suit him after he returned from the war. He says that he was pretending to be a good guy, but he actually wanted to torture people and make them scream. He uses this personal anecdote to coax Butcher into unlocking his violent side.
At the end of The Boys, Season 4 episode 6, Butcher delivers the basic stuff that Sameer needs to make a new batch of the Supe-killing virus. Sameer reiterates something that we already heard in Gen V; making the virus stronger means that it’ll become airborne. Becca’s ghost tells Butcher not to go ahead with this plan, while Kessler keeps telling Butcher to stick to the plan because their ultimate goal is to kill all Supes. When the noise gets too loud for Butcher to handle, Kessler tells Becca to shut up. And that’s how it’s revealed that Kessler doesn’t actually exist. It’s a Fight Club-like situation where Butcher has conjured Kessler to keep himself motivated. Yes, Kessler used to be a real person, but he died during the military operation that he keeps referring to. Butcher didn’t save Kessler, and he has been imagining his contribution to the fight against the Supes all this time, when in reality he has been talking to himself and doing all the work that he thinks Kessler has been doing for him. Kessler says that he is the one who killed Ezekiel. So, it’s possible that he is a byproduct of the concoction of Compound V and Temp V that’s coursing through Butcher’s body.
Butcher is understandably shocked by this revelation, but it’s unclear if he is going to embrace this part of his psyche or reject it. We’ll have to wait to see what happens to Butcher. It’s a decent twist, but I guess the section of The Boys fans who also happen to be Supernatural fans will probably be a little disappointed because they won’t get to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan interact with Jensen Ackles, Jim Beaver, or Jared Padalecki (he is supposed to join the franchise in the near future). By the way, Kessler is a real character in the comics and not just a figment of Butcher’s imagination. So, I guess, fans of the comics are going to be taken aback by this plot twist. What are your thoughts on Kessler being an alter-ego of Butcher? Let us know in the comments.
