The Boys Season 4 was about two things: Homelander’s efforts to replace a human president with a Supe president (Victoria Neuman) and Butcher’s mission to concoct a virus that’ll kill Homelander. And while characters like Hughie, Annie, MM, Kimiko, Frenchie, A-Train, Ashley, The Deep, Firecracker, and Ryan have gone in a variety of directions, Homelander (along with Sister Sage) and Butcher (with the voices of Becca and Kessler) have not deviated from the path to their respective ultimate objective. In the penultimate episode of this season of the show, we saw Homelander parting ways with Sister Sage because he thought she was detrimental to the task at hand. Frenchie was tasked with developing the Supe-killing virus after Sameer escaped from Butcher’s makeshift lab after almost killing Kimiko. And it was revealed that a shapeshifting Supe had imprisoned Annie and taken her place with the aim of erasing all the evidence that Hughie had collected regarding Homelander’s to turn the USA into a fascist state. Did Homelander’s plan succeed or did Butcher succeed in stopping the maniac? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Annie Kills Her Doppelganger
Episode 8 of The Boys Season 4 opens with the cancellation of A-Train’s “biopic” and a #AllLivesMatter message from Vought, and then the focus shifts to Hughie’s apartment where the fake Annie is trying to keep him from looking into the shapeshifting assassin. Then the fake Annie goes to the real Annie “for a recharge” because the shapeshifter needs to keep extracting energy and data from the original person to maintain the fake identity. Then the shapeshifter goes on a long rant about Annie’s hypocrisy and exposes the fact that constantly changing identities has caused the shapeshifter to become quite unstable because the memories and characteristics of the people they’ve impersonated are sloshing around in that brain of theirs. When the shapeshifted Annie returns back to Hughie’s apartment, they find him losing his mind because all of the data that he had collected are gone. On top of that, since Homelander and Firecracker out Neuman as a Supe and announce that she is going to be the president of USA instead of Robert Singer, MM decides to take Singer to the bunker, in case there is a premature attack on his life. This gives the shapeshifted assassin the opportunity to go with Hughie, MM, and Kimiko to the bunker and get close enough to Singer to kill him. Hughie figures out that the Annie that’s in front of him is the shapeshifter, thereby prompting everyone to take Singer to another secure place. In the meantime, Annie (the real one) manages to free herself and magically reaches the bunker. And, yes, she kills the shapeshifter.
Ryan Goes Evil
Butcher collapsed at the end of the last episode of The Boys Season 4 and it turns out that he probably has only a few hours on his hands. Kessler tells him that if Butcher lets him into the driver’s seat, then he’ll be able to defeat the cancer that’s spreading over his body. Since Butcher doesn’t want to do that, when Mallory visits him, he asks him to set up a meeting with Ryan and he says his last goodbye to Hughie. Homelander finds out that Ryan is still in touch with Butcher and he lashes out, thereby causing Ryan to run away. For some reason, Homelander doesn’t go after Ryan and the kid reaches the “hospital” that Butcher is in. I say “hospital” because the place that Butcher is in is not actually a hospital, it’s a containment unit that’s meant to imprison super powered individuals like Ryan. The plan is to capture Ryan, train him to be Homelander’s nemesis, and then use Ryan to kill Homelander. When Ryan expresses uncertainty regarding his allegiance to Homelander and his willingness to run away with Mallory, Butcher decides to reason with him and get him to understand what’s at stake. But with time running out, Mallory jumps the gun and tells the truth about Homelander and Becca, in the hopes that it’ll anger Ryan enough to turn against Homelander. However, the kid panics when he realizes that he doesn’t really have a choice because he can either come away with Mallory willingly or he’ll be forced to do the same. So, Ryan kills Mallory and then walks out of the safe houses, thereby finally severing his ties with Butcher.
Ashley Turns Into A Supe
After outing Neuman as a Supe, Homelander takes some drastic steps to ensure that there’s no one who can oppose him and his friends as they begin taking over the country. He tells Ashley to make a list of the people at Vought who have any kind of dirt on him and the rest of the Seven. Homelander reveals that he has ordered every Supe associated with Vought to surround every Government office so that “President” Neuman’s ascension to the throne goes smoothly. And he orders Black Noir and The Deep to kill every Vought employee on the list that has been delivered by Ashley. Hilariously but unsurprisingly, Deep suggests they should kill Ashley too because nobody in the Vought Tower knows more about the Supes than Ashley. Homelander greenlights the massacre and Firecracker (who is extremely sick because of the meds she is taking to keep lactating as that’s the only keeping her in Homelander’s good books), Noir, and Deep go to town on all the Vought employees. Ashley panics and rushes to Homelander’s room and injects herself with the Compound V. She begins to turn into a Supe but that’s the last we see of her in this season of The Boys. We don’t see the final result of her transformation process and we don’t learn if she has survived the culling at Vought. But I can surely say that if Ashley successfully turns into a powerful Supe, the first person she is going to kill is Neuman.
Butcher Kills Neuman
After the failed assassination attempt on Singer, Neuman begins to freak out and she expresses her doubts about Homelander’s plan. To keep Neuman on his team, Homelander threatens to kill Zoe if Neuman decides to defect. The masterstroke by Homelander causes Neuman to realize that she is doing the wrong thing by supporting the maniac. She remembers Hughie’s last conversation with her and asks him to help her and her daughter to get to safety. Hughie doesn’t want to trust Neuman, but he has a hunch that Neuman is being honest. So, he tries to convince The Boys to allow her to meet them and come up with a new plan to defeat Homelander. MM wants to tread cautiously and he tells Frenchie to make sure that the Supe-killing virus is ready to be shot out of a sniper if he thinks that Neuman is setting up a trap to kill all of them. While waiting for Neuman to arrive, Frenchie and Kimiko officially become a couple, and Annie and Hughie deal with the complicated feelings in Annie’s heart because of everything that Hughie has done with her doppelganger. Neuman’s meeting with The Boys starts pretty normally, but it goes sideways very quickly when Butcher enters the scene. It’s revealed that Butcher has allowed Kessler to take over his body. The combination of Compound V and Temp V has turned him into a Supe who can shoot tentacles out of his chest, and he uses these newfound powers to tear Neuman in half. Zoe is incapacitated but not dead. Butcher takes the dart filled with Supe-killing virus and walks out of there with the intention of killing Homelander all by himself.
Homelander Goes Into Fascist Mode
Sister Sage returns to Homelander and reveals that everything that has happened so far is a part of her carefully constructed plan. The video of Robert Singer talking about sanctioning a hit on Neuman is leaked and he is arrested. With Neuman dead, Homelander essentially becomes the President of the United States of America, with Calhoun acting as his puppet. And as his first step towards turning the country into a fascist state, he gives out the order to detain The Boys. Annie manages to escape but Hughie, MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko are captured. In this montage, we get cameos from Cate (Gen V), Sam (Gen V), Love Sausage, and Cindy. Kimiko gets her voice back. She had explained that she can’t speak because of the trauma that she had endured at the Shining Light Liberation Army, and it seems like the fear of losing Frenchie has prompted her to talk again. Zoe is sent to the Red River Group Home, which is the orphanage Neuman grew up in. At the end of The Boys Season 4, we get a brief glimpse of Butcher probably heading in Homelander’s general direction to kill him. It seems like Kessler has completely taken over Butcher’s psyche. There’s no trace of Becca left in him and that’s why it’s quite likely that he is willing to do a Supe genocide, if it means that Homelander will be dead. So, now Hughie and his friends not only have to worry about Homelander, they also have to prevent Butcher from doing something drastic.
In a mid-credits scene, we see Calhoun and Homelander arriving at the secret facility where Soldier Boy is being kept. It’s obvious that Homelander wants to resurrect Soldier Boy because the latter is his dad, but at the end of The Boys Season 3, they didn’t part on good terms. If Soldier Boy remembers even half of the stuff that he said about Homelander, he’ll probably try to kill his son. Well, we’ll have to wait till the final and fifth season of The Boys arrives to see how things pan out for the heroes and villains of this universe.
