Spoilers The Boys Season 4 Discussion ( Spoilers)

[The Wormhole]

Hot damn, that was excellent! I got to admit, I was weary going into the show this week, mostly due to previous episodes making it clear this would center around January 6 making me worry we were going to get an analogy of what went on in 2021. Plus, as noted earlier in this thread, the way this episode was set up previous weeks also made it look as though it could have some uncomfortable parallels to a certain real world event from this past weekend. Fortunately, the episode doesn't seem to have anything to do with either of those and can be enjoyed on its own merits.

And damn, what amazing episode it was. It had everything, shit getting real, dramatic moments that pull on the emotions, like Butcher's "good-bye" to Hughie where he was telling Hughie about the restaurant he always wanted to go to with his brother. And as is typical of The Boys, there was some hilarious moments throughout it as well, like the bit making fun of Zaslav's pulling movies for a tax write-off when discussing why A-Train's movie won't be released.

Well, was that a coup at all or just the system at work? Disregarding the Supe element if a VP Elect turns out to have a massive secret that would derail her eligibility, the President Elect secretly being filmed talking about killing his VP Elect - what would happen in reality? The 25th is not applicable in this situation as it only covers the president not being able to exert his executive power ( such as being sick, unconsious or undergoing surgery for example), so something else needed to happen to pass power onto the Speaker. Have to research that a bit but how they did in the Boys couldn't happen in reality i think, at least not while observing the Constitution.

Admittedly not an expert but with the way it played out in the show, with the VP Elect murdered and the President Elect revealed to have a role in the murder and taken into custody, there's now no one from the winning party able to take the Presidency. The sitting President has to leave office on January 20, which would mean the only person who can become President is the Speaker of the House.

I do know there is a provision in place that should an election not happen in the scheduled November, than the following January 20 both the sitting President and Vice President are required to resign and the Speaker of the House is sworn in as President. Which seems roughly similar to the situation we see in this episode.

 

[Jayson1]

I think Saige is way more evil than I thought. I think she wants to basically destroy society out of pure intellectual curiosity just to see if she can do it. I really liked the final. Can't wait for next season. Loved Jim Beaver's character using the word idjits. Nice "Supernatural" reference. Also excited for more Solider Boy and hope for Maeve. Also maybe Stormfront.

 

[The Wormhole]

Loved Jim Beaver's character using the word idjits. Nice "Supernatural" reference.

I also liked when he snarled "Balls!" when he screwed up with his golf.

 

[FPAlpha]

I think Saige is way more evil than I thought. I think she wants to basically destroy society out of pure intellectual curiosity just to see if she can do it. I really liked the final. Can't wait for next season. Loved Jim Beaver's character using the word idjits. Nice "Supernatural" reference. Also excited for more Solider Boy and hope for Maeve. Also maybe Stormfront.

Then again she is intelligent enough to see that Homelander and his gang are unhinged and if left unchecked for too long will result in widespread destruction, possibly on a global scale. I think she's playing both sides, seeing what she can accomplish but she must have a predetermined point of no return at which she may enact Phase Two and be accessory to at least reigning in Supes if not getting rid of them altogether ( also an exercise if she can accomplish it).

After all she's not a combat Supe, Homelander could kill her on a whim any second and she would be powerless to stop him so long term he's a danger to her too.

 

[Jayson1]

But I think that is why she went to work with Homelander. She likes that he is unhinged. Also really powerful. He is basically a nuke and she has the launch codes with her brain and she likes that. Because of the power or because she is one of those., people that just wants to see the world burn, type of people. She in theory could have been using her brain for years trying to make the world better but because of that experience where I believe the doctors let her mom die due to racism she doesn't give a shit about either side.

 

[FPAlpha]

Sure but there's also self preservation at a certain point. Homelander is erratic and unpredictable at this point and will only get worse. It may factor in her plan but i think it's prudent to put in certain failsafes just to protect oneself should he feel murderous and i'm the next best target. While Homelander actively sought her out to help him it stings for a Narcissist to be reliant on others or know he's not the best at everything and Sage let's him know it in her own arrogant way.

So she can overplay her hand and get him at the wrong moment, people have done that and gotten laser beams through their head. He's a nuke but you don't know the yield at any given moment and it may be prone to exploding on its own.

 

[Aragorn]

Maybe Phase Two is just undoing Phase One to see if she can.

 

[Jayson1]

Sure but there's also self preservation at a certain point. Homelander is erratic and unpredictable at this point and will only get worse. It may factor in her plan but i think it's prudent to put in certain failsafes just to protect oneself should he feel murderous and i'm the next best target. While Homelander actively sought her out to help him it stings for a Narcissist to be reliant on others or know he's not the best at everything and Sage let's him know it in her own arrogant way.

So she can overplay her hand and get him at the wrong moment, people have done that and gotten laser beams through their head. He's a nuke but you don't know the yield at any given moment and it may be prone to exploding on its own.

I wonder if she has done the math and it says something like their is only a 6% chance he will ever try to kill her. Especially now that is surrounded by just idiots. Not only that she has even calculated a way of avoiding even that 6% situation chance, happening with some kind of escape plan.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Man, Erin Moriarty's vocal fry as the shapeshifter was painful!

 

[Thestral]

What kind of a stupid ending was that to the season?

So let's see, Sage's "Big Plan" required:

1. Her assassin to fail (that was a close thing)
2. Ryan to leave Homelander so that
3. Grace Mallory could fuck up by confirming that she's training Ryan to fight Homelander so that
4. Ryan would kill her so that
5. Butcher would give into his worst instincts/Kessler and then
6. Butcher to know Neumann was meeting with the Boys and then
7. Go for Neumann instead of straight for Homelander
8. Hughie would get Neumann into a vulnerable situation
9. Dakota Bob to be on camera explicitly saying he hired somebody to kill Neumann
10. Neumann having been outed

I was already disappointed by Neumann's death but having Sage come waltzing in at the end with "Oh yeah this was the plan all along" felt like such an ass pull. And I hope Butcher's happy that Supes are in charge now.

What's the point of showing us Deep's internal trauma with the octopus when he's just a one-note avatar for twisted machismo now and Homelander's #1 toady?

Also pour a drink for Hughie because the writers just hated him this season. At least we got the great scene with his dad.

Kimiko and Frenchie were wonderful at least. Those two and MM are a big part of why I'm gonna keep watching.

Props to Erin Moriarty too - hell of a good job. And as annoyed as I am at her for putting Hughie through the ringer, glad Starlight's got her powers back.

 

[Starkers]

But Sage didn't suggest she'd planned it all to the nth degree. She made it clear that many elements hadn't gone how she'd originally planned. I took it to mean that she had a set of high level goals, and then a lot of plans and sub-plans and contingencies, plan A,B,C,D etc. The minutiae hadn't always gone how she planned it, but the overarching plan did work our exactly how she predicted. They got from Point A to Point B, the journey just took a little longer and they took a few detours than she expected.

That was really good, special props for the Annie vs Annie fight and Butcher's goodbye to Hughie. There was some great acting from Urban there.

It'll be interesting to see which way Ryan flips. He is his father's son, and has a lot of Homelander in him, the question is whether the Becca in him can win out.

I'm interested to see what kind of powers Ashley gets, given she's so much of a whipping girl for the show I'm expecting it to be something embarrassing and/or kinda rubbish.

Glad Annie has her powers back. Looks like she's going to need them!

 

[Crazyewok]

o. I was so proud of Ryan! Becca raised him well.

Well this aged badly.....

 

[Starkers]

Ryan is one mixed up kid

 

[theenglish]

That was an interesting end to what I consider to have been a mediocre season. I am glad I watched Gen V, but it does leave me wondering what path those characters have gone down.

I also missed why Erica lost her powers and how they came back. Did we ever learn that?

 

[the G-man]

What kind of a stupid ending was that to the season?

So let's see, Sage's "Big Plan" required:

1. Her assassin to fail (that was a close thing)
2. Ryan to leave Homelander so that
3. Grace Mallory could fuck up by confirming that she's training Ryan to fight Homelander so that
4. Ryan would kill her so that
5. Butcher would give into his worst instincts/Kessler and then
6. Butcher to know Neumann was meeting with the Boys and then
7. Go for Neumann instead of straight for Homelander
8. Hughie would get Neumann into a vulnerable situation
9. Dakota Bob to be on camera explicitly saying he hired somebody to kill Neumann
10. Neumann having been outed

I was already disappointed by Neumann's death but having Sage come waltzing in at the end with "Oh yeah this was the plan all along" felt like such an ass pull. And I hope Butcher's happy that Supes are in charge now.

What's the point of showing us Deep's internal trauma with the octopus when he's just a one-note avatar for twisted machismo now and Homelander's #1 toady?

Also pour a drink for Hughie because the writers just hated him this season. At least we got the great scene with his dad.

Kimiko and Frenchie were wonderful at least. Those two and MM are a big part of why I'm gonna keep watching.

Props to Erin Moriarty too - hell of a good job. And as annoyed as I am at her for putting Hughie through the ringer, glad Starlight's got her powers back.

There's nothing wrong with political satire. There's nothing wrong with political satire that targets real life candidates or events. But a coherent story has to come first and one gets the impression that they were so fixated on "getting (you known who)" that they didn't really stop to think whether the mechanics of story were as developed as they needed to be. In fact, I've seen a few reviews of this season that are prefaced with (paraphrase) "I share the creator's politics but the satire/story isn't working because..."

 

[Commander Troi]

Add me as another one cheering for Kimiko and Frenchie. I actually said, "FINALLY!"

I was *not* expecting Butcher to kill Victoria. And poor Zoe!

Damn sad to see Grace die. Ryan is definitely betwixt and between now. I wonder what he'll do next.

I think Kripke and I have similar nightmares. I just don't have a TV show to dramatize mine.

 

[Jayson1]

I don't mind the politics in "The Boys." I wouldn't call it smart satire because of how unsubtle it is. But it is funny satire because of how broad they go. In many ways the show reminds me of "American Horror Story." It's political but also done in a campy fun way. Humor and the shows ability to shock you to just how far and crazy it will go is it's strength. That and the fact that the show does right by it's bad guys. Even though the good characters are decent the shows writers do know people really love watching the bad character like Homelander be bad. Yet they are smart enough that even though they go broad with the political talk they still finds ways to make you sometimes even feel bad for Homelander, The Deep and then they take that and reverse it by having them do something really terrible and immoral. Thus you never know what they might do in any scene.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well this aged badly.....

Eh, Ryan hasn't yet done anything that can be categorized as evil, and when he has killed people it's been either accidental, like Becca or the stunt guy earlier in this season, or been in self defense, Mallory was planning imprisoning him. Even then, actually killing her might have been accidental as well, though that could be open to discussion.

 

[Crazyewok]

Starting to really not like Starlight. Finding her such a selfish self-righteous cow.

Hughie basically gets raped in the worst way possible in a BDSM dungeon and by a shape shifter and she all "me me me me me poor me" and worse in the latest episode blaming him.

 

[Jayson1]

Starting to really not like Starlight. Finding her such a selfish self-righteous cow.

Hughie basically gets raped in the worst way possible in a BDSM dungeon and by a shape shifter and she all "me me me me me poor me" and worse in the latest episode blaming him.

I don't think she has become selfish but she has become more self-righteous which IMO has made the character more boring. IMO all the good guys this past season had less than interesting arcs. Some good stuff with Hughie's dad and Butcher really got interesting in the later episodes but the baddies really do carry the show ALOT. Even the ones slowly becoming less bad like A-Train. Ashley and Neuman though I guess that last ones story is over.