REVIEW: ‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episodes 1–3

The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1–3 make one thing immediately, abundantly clear: the boys in question are not alright. The “Boys,” supes, and anyone who falls between either category. As Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Starlight/Annie (Erin Moriarty), Mother’s Milk/MM (Laz Alonso), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) try and put a stop to Homelander (Antony Starr) and Victoria Neuman’s (Claudia Doumit) nefarious plans, we see as their weak spots are exposed. Because while Starlight is now officially on the team and they’re at least, to a point, working together, the group of would-be world saviors is struggling to keep themselves afloat.

It makes for a dynamic reintroduction to these characters as they all deal with either the fallout of Season 3 or other, more finely-tuned personal struggles. Butcher is facing the repercussions of abusing the drug Compound V, which gave him artificially supplied superpowers. Now, with only months to live, he’s losing his way, strength, and place on the team. Only Hughie is vouching for him. His main objective is to save Ryan from Homelander’s clutches. We watch as he grapples with how to do so morally. His ups and downs are the most engaging Butcher has been in ages.

But it’s not just the once-defacto leader who is struggling. Hughie’s dad, a returning Simon Pegg, has a stroke. With it comes the reappearance of his mom (Rosemarie DeWitt), who he hasn’t seen since he was six. Quaid anchors these moments with necessary gravitas as he fights his inner demons to understand why she left. He, Frenchie, and Kimiko are all facing trauma from their past as they try and figure out how best to move on from it and whether or not confrontation is the best method.

The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1–3, don’t forget the Supe side. Homelander, as always, is a terrifying villain and made more so by the silent, barely there desperation that reaches past his God-like facade. He doesn’t care about humans, nor does he care about his son. He cares about power and being in control, but he’s sick of members of The Seven mindlessly agreeing to his every whim out of fear. That, coupled with his realization that he is aging, leads him to welcome a new hero to the team, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the smartest person alive.

Sage is easily one of the most exciting additions in the early episodes. Even more so than Homelander, we can’t read her. Their first meet-up is a superb exercise in underplayed acting as both characters try to size the other up. Homelander wants her to join the team, and Sage worries his ego can’t handle it. And while she may be right, he gives her just enough wiggle room to make it enticing. She doesn’t want the limelight, but she wants to see how much she can get away with when working side-by-side with the most powerful man in the world.

This leads to some of the grimmest, most shockingly violent moments of The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1–3. The public is currently divided into teams that wish to prove Homelander’s innocence of publically murdering a man in Season 3 and those who want to see him locked up. The influences of the ripped-from-the-headlines aren’t subtle, especially with insurrection-style violence, and January 6 is a significant date for the storylines. But it’s throughout this chaos that Sage stokes the fire. Three men end up being brutally murdered due to Homelander’s influence and control over A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), and The Deep (Chace Crawford) and they’re planted in the Starlight team camp.

This violent back and forth is where so much of the friction of the first few episodes lies. Like so much of The Boys, there’s plenty of garish humor, too. And, as always, some of it is hard to stomach. An entire “Disney on Ice” style event (but make it The Seven on Ice) ends in hellacious bloodshed in Episode 3. In the premiere, we see what has happened to Neuman’s daughter, who she injected with Compound V. The results are deadly as she transforms into something monstrous.

The strength of the violence in The Boys is that it’s quick and comes out of nowhere. We can’t just look away since the writing gives us minimal opportunity to avert our gaze. We’re stuck in the dread and shock-induced laughter that some of the bloodshed inspires because it’s all so ludicrous and over the top.

So when the series manages real tension, such as the moment in Season 3 when Homelander seems to catch wind that someone is eavesdropping on him, it sticks to us and makes us hold our breath. These corrupted supes have amassed severe public power and physical, untouchable strength. With the team at its current status, it’s hard to imagine any outcome where the supes don’t win unless they lose by their own self-destruction.

While The Boys Season 4 starts off strong, certain elements hold it back. Unfortunately, Starlight continues to be dull, and her antagonist of the season, the Alt-Right, conspiracy theorist Fire Cracker (Valorie Curry), is abrasively obnoxious. Curry is almost doing too good a job because Fire Cracker actively pushes buttons. And while Frenchie has always been an interesting character, he works best with Kimiko rather than his side plots.

One of the series’s sweetest, most understated moments comes from Frenchie and Kimiko as the latter realizes he might have feelings for a man who works with Starlight. They’ve always been kindred spirits, and while she tells him she loves him, they’ll never be together romantically. He agrees, and there’s no drama at the moment. It’s shockingly refreshing to see these two interact the way they do, with a learned sense of intimacy without it being romantic. They’re platonic murderous soulmates, and that’s enough.

But this scene and one in Episode 2, where Kimiko gets drunk to numb her past pain, highlight why they should only ever work together. Sure, there’s depth to their solo side plots, but it’s never as much fun as when they’re working together. That’s true of The Boys in general. The show is often entertaining in its hyper-violent way, but it comes together the most when the ensemble bounces off one another.

The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1–3 is a solid reintroduction to the world and the steadily increasing threats they face. With a dissatisfied, mid-life crisis-stricken Homelander at the center, the stakes seem impossibly higher than ever. The series makes intense work of anchoring the characters through their mortality without forgetting the heightened, brazen humor that made it such an initial sell.

The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1–3 are out now on Prime Video.