This article contains spoilers for The Boys.
For better or worse, that’s a wrap on Season 4 of The Boys. Though each season of Prime Video’s wildly popular superhero satire has only been eight episodes, Season 4 most certainly struggled more than the rest when it came to truncating its story. Still, the series left us with plenty of build-up to Season 5, which will wrap up The Boys’ portion of the Vought story. Fans of the universe need not stress, though. Gen V will continue, and there’s still plenty of room for more spinoffs of the series. In the meantime, let’s take a look at this Season 4 ending and how it sets up the final season of The Boys.
The Boys Season 4 Ending Explained
When in doubt, you can always bet that William bloody Butcher (Karl Urban) is going to f*ck everything up. Funny, given the fact that Homelander (Antony Starr) did the exact same thing on the opposing team. We’ll get to The Seven in a bit though; right now we’re on Butcher’s bullshit.
After Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) impassioned speech to the rest of The Boys — sans Butcher — about being more human if they’re going to fight monsters and giving Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) a chance to defect and help them stop Homelander, the team begrudgingly agrees to give it a try. No one’s necessarily enthused by the plan, and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) is on standby ready to shoot the head-popping Supe with the Supe-killing virus should she get squirrely. Still, by trusting Hughie with her daughter Zoe (Olivia Morandin), both The Boys and the viewer have more than enough reason to believe that Neuman is being honest about her intentions.
Had things worked out, Neuman would have been an invaluable asset to The Boys, and continued a long-standing trend of showrunner Eric Kripke in redeeming a series’ most awful characters and forcing the audience to care about them despite how much they were once despised. But Butcher and Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) screw the pooch when coming clean to Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), resulting in the terrified young Supe effectively committing matricide for the second time. This results in Butcher’s faith snapping as quickly as Mallory’s neck, and he, transformed by his V’ed-up cancer, marches straight to the warehouse and unceremoniously rips Neuman to shreds despite Hughie’s pleas.
With Neuman’s demise comes the final stage of Sister Sage’s (Susan Heyward) plan. She leaks video of President Singer (Jim Beaver) telling The Boys to kill his Vice President, and the murder is pinned on him. The Speaker of the House is made President, and immediately pledges allegiance to Homelander, declaring Martial law and announcing that Supes will be the enforcers across the country, all reporting to the leader of The Seven.
At that point, all that’s left is for The Boys (again, sans Butcher) to spread out into the wind to avoid being captured and killed. But, like many of their plans, that quickly goes to shit and the team is all apprehended with the exception of Starlight. MM (Laz Alonso) is stopped by Love Sausage and his super wiener, Frenchie and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) are taken by Gen V’s Cate Dunlap (Maddie Philips) and Sam Riordan (Asa Germain), and Hughie is detained by the psychic Cindy while Starlight narrowly escapes.
The Boys (As We Know Them) Are Done
While there’s no future where the captured members of The Boys remain incarcerated all throughout Season 5, Billy Butcher’s team is no more. They had already left him in the dust in the beginning of Season 4 for his previously long list of indiscretions, but slowly came back for one reason or another. Butcher will surely continue to weasel his way into working with them for a multitude of reasons, whether it be saving them or trying to enlist them on his suicide mission, but it would make little sense for any member of the team to come around to his plan with him ultimately being the reason that they’re all screwed.
This is especially true of Hughie, who begged him to listen to him for once before Butcher destroyed their chances of stopping Homelander and handed Sister Sage literally everything she needed to complete her plan.
Fugitive Starlight
Annie January went through it this season, but for good reason. While she’s not the same kind of monster as the rest of The Seven, she still doesn’t take much accountability for who she was or how she treated others growing up. Now that she’s out of the space(s) where she was abused and assaulted, it’s up to her to reckon with her behavior and own her personal growth.
Presumably, this is at the center of her inability to really find herself (or her powers) in Season 4. But now that her entire team (and fiance) have been kidnapped by Vaught cronies, it’s time for this girlie to own her power and get this show on the road. We see the first step of this in the episode's final moments, when her powers seem to finally be back to their former glory. Here’s hoping she can harness them long enough to save her friends.
Ryan on the Run
What an impressively complicated character little Ryan has become (even if it’s hard not to find him personally annoying). On the one hand, he has little control over his powers and has been put in a uniquely impossible scenario. Father figure 1 is dying, Bio dad raped his mother (alongside his extremely long list of other indiscretions), and then Father figure 1 and Mother figure 2 (that’s Grace) want him to kill is dad. Butcher and Grace gave this kid all of 30 seconds to process the information that Homelander is a complete monster and that before threatening to lock him underground and train him to kill his dad.
But, on the other hand, Ryan is an unquestionable danger to society. While sweet and typically mild-tempered he may be, we’ve already discussed the fact that he’s committed matricide twice before even considering the stunt man he killed.
Grace and Butcher were both morons but, regardless of which side of the war Ryan is about to fall on, the kid has to be trained.
Sister Sage and the World’s Best Chess Game
Sister Sage is, without a doubt, the most valuable new player on The Boys, so I am thrilled that she made it out of the season alive (despite MM’s best intentions). While it was clear that Sage was in control all along and never had any concerns that she wouldn’t be able to pull off her plan, Homelander did whatever he could to stop it in its tracks every step of the way. Sage, of course, accounted for this behavior and was able to pivot enough that what we now know to be Phase 1 came to fruition. Though what’s truly interesting here isn’t whatever Phase 2 ends up being. Instead, it’s whatever Sage and Homelander’s partnership evolves into in Season 5.
For all intents and purposes, Sage has now shown Homelander the truest form of loyalty that he’s ever experienced. As he acknowledges, he threw Sage in the garbage. Yet she still comes back and gives Homelander everything he wanted with a little bow on top, and spent the majority of the season continuously calling him out on his bullshit. For the first time in his life, Homelander has experienced an actual friend (who, not for nothing, has now seen Homelander cry).
No matter what else happens in Season 5, at least we’ll have at least one fresh partnership now that Homelander knows that he can actually trust another living being. How long that lasts, of course, is up to his ego.
Seems Bad, Ashley (No Shit, Ashley)
In a last ditch effort to save her life while The Seven are culling Vought’s non-believers and dirt-havers, Ashley (Colbie Minifie) takes a shot of V to Supe-up before they have a chance to murder her. (RIP, other Ashley.) We don’t get a good look at her, but we know that she’s mutated and seemingly fled. You can be sure that, whatever kind of monster she’s become, we’ll be seeing her in Season 5.
What Does The Boys Finale Mean for Gen V Season 2?
After Cate and Sam were announced for Season 4 of The Boys, we all participated in some wild speculation on how they would be involved (all of which turned out not to be true, as their participation ended up being extremely limited). However, that’s not going to stop us from doing the same thing about The Boys characters on Gen V Season 2!
Logically speaking, it would make sense for Hughie, Frenchie, MM, and Kimiko to end up in the same prison as Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), Emma Meyer (Lizzie Broadway), Jordan Li (Derek Luh and London Thor), and Andre Anderson (the late Chance Perdomo, who will not be recast). Meaning that when one group breaks out or is rescued, it stands to reason that the other group will be able to do so alongside them.
Moreover, this whole Supe Coup (delightful to type, less fun to say) impacts all of America — so The Boys story will most certainly be impacting Gen V Season 2 in a big way. Just which characters will play a major role in that — if any — remains to be seen, but it is safe to assume that we’ll be seeing Gen V Season 2 first, as it started production in May.
