On July 18, the fourth season of the superhero satire ended on Prime Video platform «The Boys», based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Derrick Robertson. In the review below, we tell you why this season seems to be just an aperitif before the release of culminating the show is in its fifth season, but it deserves our attention even so.
Genre superhero satire
Showrunner Eric Kripke
Starring Karl Urban, Jack Quade, Anthony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jesse T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chase Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Claudia Doumit, Cameron Crovetti, Velori Currie, Susan Hayward, Simon Pegg, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Premiere Prime Video
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
Six months after the events of the last season, The Boys tries to neutralize Victoria Neuman, but this mission fails. Butcher is left with only months, if not weeks, to live. He is contacted by an old friend, CIA officer Joe Kessler, who is also against the Supers, and their cooperation may lead to unpredictable consequences. Homelander recruits new characters to join the Seven, of course, for his benefit — the smartest person on the planet, Sister Sage, and the fierce propagandist Firecracker.
Meanwhile, American society is divided into two camps — those who support Homelander and those who support Sprocket. Against the backdrop of this ideological confrontation, a fierce political struggle is unfolding, and The Boys do not give up hope of finally destroying the local Superman with a God complex.
Probably, from the point of view of moving the plot forward, the fourth season should be called the least successful. It received a lot of criticism, in particular, after the premiere of the first three episodes, when there was a lot of stomping around and the impression was that the writers were running in circles, not understanding what else to invent and offer the viewer.
There are also questions about the development of the characters, each of whom suffers some kind of personal psychological trauma or life drama, but some of these «problems» look too artificial and unnatural. Homelander suffers from a midlife crisis, collecting his gray pubic hairs in a jar. There is almost nothing left of the old Butcher: not only is he far from being in the best physical shape, but he has also lost his mind. Huey is worried about his father in a coma and is trying to sort out his relationship with his mother, who abandoned him as a child. Frenchie finds a new love interest, but everything is complicated.
And this is the kind of passion that befalls each of the characters, turning a brutal, uncompromisingly cruel and deliberately straightforward satire into helpless snot for soap opera fans. The storyline of Frenchie should have been thrown in the trash at the outset.
On the eve of the US elections, the political component of the story is particularly pronounced, as it is a direct criticism of Trumpism.
However, this does not actually affect anything. In America, particularly in the movies, only the lazy have not criticized Trump himself in recent years, not to mention the numerous lawsuits involving him. But all this does not prevent the Republican presidential candidate from confidently pursuing his goal. By the way, Amazon has already published an official statement stating that all coincidences of scenes or storylines with real events are accidental and unintentional. Bear in mind that there are some similarities between the events of the final episode and the recent one with a swing on Trump.
Despite a certain lack of qualitative progression of the plot, «The Boys» still looks like a worthwhile spectacle that stands out against the backdrop of the failed «The Acolyte», which was simultaneously broadcast on Disney+.
And there is also something to catch the eye of a clever viewer. In the debut episode, the viewer is confronted with a monster girl with terrifying tentacles in her mouth, which instantly reminds us of the fourth installment of «Resident Evil» Paul Anderson. At the same time, there is a funny allusion to Deadpool with his limb regeneration, and then — Kimiko jumping out of a window into a slum somewhere in «The Matrix». In one of the episodes, the creators were clearly inspired by «Saw». During the season, there will also be a direct mockery of Batman, Spider-Man, and the entire movie universe Marvel with their bizarre division into phases.
The show’s signature «perversion-blood-guts» feature hasn’t disappeared: the audience is offered its own version of a human centipede, infected killer sheep, and if that doesn’t seem enough, here’s the good guy Simon Pegg, who deals with others in the style of fatality from Mortal Kombat. From time to time, young animals from last year’s «Generation V»and a highly caricatured Will Ferrell will appear in one of the cameos.
In general, the season has enough concentrated crunch and the authors remain faithful to the spirit of previous seasons and the source material, although this time they have abandoned zoophilic superhero porn and this is probably for the best.
At the same time, along with interesting moments, there are questionable script decisions, and exciting scenes coexist with frankly superfluous and boring ones. After the pretentious ending with depressive grunge, which is really intriguing, it’s hard to get rid of the idea that the fourth season was nothing more than an intermediate stage on the way to the final fifth. We saved the most interesting things for later.
