For most shows, a three-episode season premiere would be too much to take in at one time.
For The Boys? It’s hardly enough.
A lot can happen in two years, but this season picked up right where it left off in 2022, and the continuity was kind of comforting, in a way.
There’s more to the story, of course. Between seasons 3 and 4, the creator of The Boys brought us a spinoff in Gen V, which focused on a younger generation of supes.
But don’t worry — if you haven’t had a chance to get caught up on Gen V yet, it’s okay. The Boys Season 4 has enough going on to keep you busy.
This premiere was one for the books. It had everything.
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We started off with Season 4 Episode 1, titled “Department of Dirty Tricks.”
The episode could have easily been called “One Hour of People Threatening Victoria Neumann Even Though She Could Explode Their Heads In An Instant.”
Seriously, three separate instances of men threatening Neumann happened in this first hour, and it truly boggles the mind.
Imagine having the power to literally blow up people’s heads without ever touching them, and still somehow caring about their threats?
Homelander, Hughie, and Butcher all have dirt and/or leverage on the new Vice President, but again…she can explode heads.
Presumably, she’ll remember that at some point and people will start treating her with a little more caution.
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Maybe Singer should have picked Buttigieg as a running mate as people told him to. At least Pete has a backbone.
Homelander is really doing his best to step up and be a father to Ryan this season, which is deeply concerning, to say the least.
Poor Ryan has had a rough go of it, and deep down he’s just a sweet kid who is looking for acceptance and the love of a present father.
Unfortunately, the present father he’s got is Homelander, and that dude’s got serious issues in the parenting department. Okay, in all the departments.
Ryan looks to Butcher for support too, but since Butcher is now terminally ill as a result of dosing Compound V last season, old Billy is otherwise occupied.
Plus, he’s teaming up with Kessler, played by the always incredible Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and surprise: Kessler’s got an agenda.
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We know Butcher though, and Kessler can push him all he wants, but there’s no chance Butcher’s going to do anything to hurt Ryan. If it kills him, he’ll protect that kid.
In the second episode, “Life Among the Septics,” things got weird, even for The Boys. (The first episode ended with a photo of Butcher’s butthole, so the bar is low.)
At least, if you consider a sauna orgy at a conspiracy theory convention or a Will Ferrell cameo in a vaguely racist movie to be weird.
An orgy in a sauna by itself wouldn’t even be that weird, at least not by this show’s standards, but this one looked more like a scene from The Human Centipede.
Oh, and instead of multiple people, it was just several variations of one guy.
That one guy played God on Supernatural, as Rob Benedict joined the growing number of The Boys and Gen V cast members who also worked on Eric Kripke’s CW hit.
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So, that’s fun.
The episode also featured a dozen versions of the same guy running around butt-naked during a huge fight scene at a bat mitzvah, so things didn’t really get less weird at any point.
Ryan gets brought further into the Vought fold, and the poor kid accidentally kills someone during a staged save.
We’ve already seen how sensitive Ryan is, and Homelander is definitely not the warm source of comfort he needs. Thankfully, Butcher is ready and willing to step in.
By the third episode, “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying,” Butcher and his CIA buddy, Kessler, have hatched a plan to handle Ryan.
Obviously, Butcher is also a huge sensitive teddy bear (which we love) and can’t bring himself to drug Ryan to bring him in.
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Kessler’s declaration that they’ll either have to train Ryan or kill him was met with one of Butcher’s signature dark looks, so it looks like we’re in for some strongly worded disagreements between the old friends at some point this season.
There’s so much going on with the rest of the characters that it’s hard to keep track.
Frenchie has met a guy he likes and has started seeing him, but since the poor boy can never have nice things, his new flame is the surviving member of a family on the wrong end of Frenchie’s gun.
Deep is cheating on (and I cannot believe I’m saying this) his octopus girlfriend with one of the new members of the Seven.
And who can blame him, really? Sister Sage is gorgeous and quite literally the smartest person in the world.
The other newest member of the team is Firecracker, the Southern-drawling redhead of YouTube conspiracy theory fame, who has an interesting history with Starlight.
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I’m actually really pleased with this “Starlight was secretly a mean girl in her past” revelation.
It brings a bit of depth to the character that we’d been lacking. The women of The Boys deserve to be as three-dimensional as the men, after all.
We have had to say goodbye to some of the show’s biggest female characters in past seasons, so it’s nice to see a couple of new women added to the fray.
Kimiko is getting more flashes of her past while also trying to work through her trauma in therapy, which is kind of a huge deal.
A stranger recognized her during a fight, so now we wait to see what secrets of Kimiko’s past she will unlock.
Oh, and can we talk about Vought on Ice for a second? Not the blood and the sliced-off fingers, but the absolutely hilarious musical number we got to experience.
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Speaking of that scene, Neumann invites Zoey to go get a “frozen hot chocolate” when they leave. What exactly is a frozen hot chocolate, and how can it be both frozen and hot?
Actually, don’t tell me. It’s better this way.
Something else we’re noticing is a big shift happening with A-Train, and we’d better pay attention.
He’s starting to question his own loyalties.
Between saving Hughie’s life while Homelander was after him and handing over footage that cleared the Starlighter protesters of murder, the fastest supe on the Seven might be switching sides.
It’s not that shocking, because we’ve been shown that A-Train has a good heart. But it’s sure to have big consequences for him and anyone close enough to get involved with his migration.
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This season is already setting itself up to be explosive, and we can’t wait to see where the next few weeks take us.
What were your favorite moments in the first three episodes, and what are you hoping to see over the course of season 4?
Let us know in the comments and we’ll see you next week for the next installment!
Haley Whitmire White is a staff writer for TV Fanatic.
