'The Boys' Season 4 Primer

Spoilers are my superpower.

The Boys are back in town! The first three episodes are already on Prime, and I’ll get to them next week, but we have a lot of ground to cover first. The Boys haven’t made an appearance in two years and many viewers skipped Gen V. That was a mistake; not only does it contain several important plot points for the upcoming season, but Gen V was strong enough to stand on its own feet. Either way, we could all use a refresher on just what’s going on with everyone’s favorite power-mad genetic experiments.

First up, Homelander (Antony Starr) has gone completely round the bend. I know I’ve said before, but the writers keep finding ways to make him even crazier. His Nazi girlfriend, Stumpfront, is dead. Stan Edgar, CEO of Vought, has lost control of both his company and secret adoptive daughter, Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit). Neuman leads the Supe oversight committee and will probably become Vice-President under Robert “Dakota Bob” Singer (Jim Beaver) after the next national election. She’s also a Supe herself, and secretly allied with Homelander so she could get a dose of Compound V for her normie daughter. Homelander spends the season physically and psychologically torturing his teammates on the Seven. He murders the team’s newest member — and Starlight’s first love — Supersonic. He forces The Deep (Chace Crawford) to eat one of his fishy friends alive and sends out to murder Neuman’s political rival. A-Train (Jesse T. Usher) has a heart condition and he’s under Homelander’s thumb as a result. He’s also out for revenge against Blue Hawk, a racist superhero who crippled A-Train’s brother and several others. Maeve (Dominique McElligott) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) are in a special Hell, thanks to Homelander’s promise to destroy their hometowns first if they continue rebelling against them. He forces Starlight into a public relationship to improve his popularity among the non-Nazi citizens and keep her under his eye.

Annie could use Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) support through all of this, but he’s too busy feeling emasculated by her strength to offer more than a token shoulder to cry on. He’s tired of being saved by his girlfriend, and it’s not long before he asks Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) to hook him up with V24, a new Compound V derivative that can give normal humans superpowers for a day, if it doesn’t make them explode first. It’s also highly toxic, and 3-5 doses are enough to turn your brain to mush. That’s alright with Butcher, who learned at the fists of his abusive father that the ends justify the means. One of those means is the resurrection of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), America’s first superhero. S. B. is the foul-mouthed, weak-willed, and utterly corrupt scion of a wealthy military industrialist who volunteered for Compound V experiments in a vain attempt to win his father’s approval. It made him strong, resilient, and capable of creating an energy blast that depowers nearby Supes. It hits Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) first, and she gets to spend a few days as a normal woman before she’s kidnapped by a vengeful arms merchant and Frenchie is forced to dose her with Compound V to save her life. It works, but it means she’s once again so resilient that she can’t feel Frenchie’s (Tomer Capone) touch, and she’s once again nothing more than a human weapon.

But neither Starlight nor Maeve are the kind of person to lie back and take Homelander’s abuse. Maeve gets her own back by conspiring with Butcher, and provides him with the V24 he’s chugging like Aaron Rodgers with colloidal silver. Starlight publicly breaks with The Seven and livestreams Homelander confessing to a few minor crimes like mass murder.

Because the Boys’ daddy issues run deep, it turns out Soldier Boy is Homelander’s father. When Homelander finds out, he kills BFF Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) for withholding the information and decides it’s time to reconcile with his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), the superpowered product of rape. Once Soldier Boy is done murdering his old teammates for trading him to the Russians back in the 1980s he, Maeve, and Billy come for Homelander, determined to end him once and for all. Ryan’s defense of his bio dad is the breaking point between Butcher and S. B. Butcher wants to save him, as the final connection to Billy’s dead wife Becca. Soldier Boy wants to end them both because they’re weak. Starlight and the rest of the Boys arrive in the nick of time and stop S. B. from murdering his grandson. Maeve is presumed killed in the resulting explosion, which is publicly blamed on terrorism. Soldier Boy is put on ice and now in government custody. The nation mourns while Maeve slips away to regain a normal life. The Boys escape and a nearly bald Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) covers up Homelander’s crimes yet again. It turns out she needn’t have bothered, after Homelander kills a normie in public and is met with cheers. Ryan, watching this, gets a creepy Damienesque smile on his face that hints Soldier Boy had a point. Finally, Butcher learns he only has months to live, thanks to the V24. He’s not sure what happens next, but that’s before a shady man named Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) shows up with a few ideas about where to go from here…

As if that weren’t enough, the campus of Godolkin University is experiencing turmoil of its own. God U is the educational arm of Vought Industries, where budding Supes go to learn control over their powers and get scouted by the various crime-fighting teams. It’s also where Vought experiments on kids, brainwashing them into perfect little soldiers and cutting them open to see what makes them tick. Into this educational environment comes Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), a “hemokinetic.” Marie can manipulate blood, a fact she learns as a child when her first period leads to the death of both her parents. Good luck explaining that during the “birds and bees” talk. After years in the foster system spent blaming herself for their deaths, Marie and the other super teens are still adjusting to the news that they are genetic experiments approved by their parents. Marie’s roommate is Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway), a young YouTube star with the power to shrink like Ant-Man, but only if she forces herself to vomit over and over again. She gets to know several upperclassmen, including Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo, RIP), Luke Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Jordan Li (London Thor and Derek Luh), and Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips). They are the kings and queens of campus, the most powerful students and the pets of the administration. Their overconfidence leads to Andre showing off his powers of magnetism at a party, and he nearly kills a girl when his control slips and sharp metal cuts open a vein. Marie saves the girl and is expelled the next day so the school can protect its rising stars.

That’s forgotten when Luke, aka Golden Boy, murders Professor Brinkerhoff (Clancy Brown) before immolating himself. God U Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn) re-enrolls Marie and she makes the school’s Top 10, a first for a freshman. Andre and Cate, Luke’s best friend and girlfriend respectively, investigate his death and learn the school contains a secret underground facility known as “The Woods.” Luke’s presumed-dead younger brother, Sam (Asa Germann), is only one of the lab’s many victims.

Andre convinces Emma to shrink down and search for Sam. She does, and the pair hit it off. It’s a charming puppy love relationship built on Emma’s empathy, Sam’s schizophrenia, and mass murder. Marie is worried about Emma’s disappearance and goes to psychic student Rufus for help before everything goes dark. She wakes up in Rufus’s room as he’s about to sexually assault her - I just realized he’s named Rufus (Alexander Calvert) because it’s so close to “Roofie” - and in self-defense she uses her powers to over-inflate his penis and it explodes like a balloon dog. It’s well deserved, but I still cringe every time.

Emma and Sam’s romantic interlude is interrupted when Sam leaves to murder Dr. Cardosa (Marco Pigossi), one of the lead researchers in the Woods. Cardosa discovered a virus that affects only Supes and makes the virus more lethal and contagious on behalf of Dean Shetty, whose family was on the plane Homelander and Maeve failed to save all the way back in The Boys’ first season. Marie and the others stop Sam from attacking the doctor but black out and wake up at a party with no memory of how they got there. Marie wakes up in bed with Jordan Li, who can switch gender at will. Cate tells the group Rufus must be behind it, but her story falls apart when Sam realizes Cate was using her powers to make Luke forget he existed. She was also screwing Andre and brainwashing her fellow students whenever Shetty, who’s been emotionally manipulating her since Cate was a little girl, told her to do so. Cate eventually confesses to her friends and restores their memories, but doing so puts her in a coma and locks her friends’ psyches inside her head. After journeying through Cate’s, Andre’s, Jordan’s, and Marie’s memories they all wake, and Marie and Jordan break into the Dean’s office to find proof of what’s happening so they can present it to Victoria Neumann, who’s visiting God U’s campus. Neuman doesn’t help them, but does murder Dr. Cardosa after he gives her a sample of his Supe-killing contagion.

The kids have been pushed to their breaking point. Cate uses her mind control powers to kill Shetty before she and Sam return to the Woods and free the remaining prisoners. Ashley Barrett comes to campus for a trustee meeting right before Cate and Sam begin cleansing the campus of non-powered humans. Cate uses her powers to wipe Sam’s emotions, and tries to brainwash Jordan Li with a touch before Marie blows up her arm like the aforementioned penis. That’s when Homelander arrives to save the day. Marie feels three seconds of relief before Homelander lasers her in the chest. Vought and God U publicly blame Marie, Emma, Andre, and Jordan for the mass murder, and give the title of “Guardians of Godolkin” to Sam and Cate. It’s looking grim for the real heroes, who are locked away in a sealed room. The last thing we see is Billy Butcher showing up to search what remains of the Woods.

It’s a lot, I know. And I didn’t even touch Herogasm! No one should without industrial-strength prophylactics. Season 4 promises more action, more gore, and more jokes at MAGA’s expense. The Supe virus will certainly be one of the main plot points of the season, though we don’t know yet if any of the Gen V kids make an appearance.The first three episodes are available now on Prime.