‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episode 1 Recap: Off to a Diabolical Start

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 1.

The Big Picture

• Season 4 of
  The Boys
  kicks off with a botched assassination attempt at an election party.
• Homelander forms an alliance with Sister Sage, setting the stage for a dark and politically relevant season.
• The premiere doubles down on satire and introduces compelling new characters, maintaining the show’s fiery tone.

When The Boys first premiered in 2019, superheroes were still the dominant force in Hollywood. Avengers: Endgame had recently claimed the title of the highest-grossing movie of all time (only for that title to be reclaimed by Avatar not long after), movies about Captain Marvel and Aquaman had grossed a billion dollars, and we were just a few months away from the arrival of the ever-controversial but massively successful Joker.

The Boys has never really felt like your standard superhero fodder. After all, the creator of its source material, Garth Ennis, has famously confessed his disinterest in the genre. Showrunner Eric Kripke has created three blood-soaked, sex-fueled seasons that are far more than just another “superheroes gone bad” story. The Boys tackles fascism head-on as a scathing satire on capitalism, Trumpism, the virtue-signaling elite, and more. There may be a lot of dismemberments and casual nudity, but The Boys has always been a show that perfectly encapsulates the era we’re living in. But Season 4, as was recently revealed by Kripke himself, is officially the penultimate season of the series.

Season 3 ends with Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) having faked her death to leave the corrupt superhero team known as the Seven. The team’s leader, the deranged Homelander (Antony Starr), ruthlessly murders the crew’s silent but deadly member, Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell). Meanwhile, the incognito head-exploding Supe Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is on her way to becoming the Vice President of the United States. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) finds out that he is terminally ill after his extensive use of V24 (aka Temp V) and only has months to live. Ex-Seven member Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is now officially a part of the Boys and has become a reluctant political activist against Vought. Homelander and Butcher’s late wife’s son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), having aligned himself with the insane Supe, attends a political rally, where he is attacked by a Starlight supporter. In the final minutes of Season 3, Homelander finally snaps, murdering the protester in front of a rapturous crowd.

Smash Mouth Kicks Off ‘The Boys’ Season 4 With a Botched Assassination Attempt

Season 4’s premiere, titled “Department of Dirty Tricks,” opens on election night, where presidential candidate Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) and his running mate, Victoria Neuman, are hosting a party. As Neuman speaks to the crowd, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), Hughie (Jack Quaid), and Annie are preparing to assassinate Neuman in her private hotel suite. However, before they can even get started, Butcher has fled from the group, intoxicated, delusional, and throwing up near the dumpsters. Frenchie and Kimiko find him and are immediately concerned, but give him his disguise, which he promptly trashes. Somehow, the trio still makes it into the building, but as soon as they reach the elevator, Frenchie and Kimiko receive an order from MM to force Butcher to stay back.

It is also revealed that Homelander is also attending the event, and we first see him stoically using a urinal, examining a strand of his gray pubic hair. In any other series, this may seem like a stretch, but this kind of weirdness isn’t even that strange in the world of The Boys. He then meets up with Ryan, who is nervous about presenting himself at the rally. Homelander asks his son, “Would you be scared of a bunch of cockroaches?” to which Ryan meekly replies, “Yeah.” Homelander sadistically comforts Ryan with the reminder that “They’re only humans, and toys for our amusement.”

The Boys’ plot is interrupted once they realize that Homelander and Ryan are in attendance. Homelander meets up with Neuman, where it’s revealed through their conversation that he is now on trial for the murder of the pro-Starlight protester in the Season 3 finale. Backstage, Butcher sees Ryan walking with Neuman’s daughter Zoe (Olivia Morandin) and follows him to the kitchen, where he attempts to plead with him to get away from Homelander. Ryan tells Butcher that, according to Homelander, the protester he killed was a pedophile. Their conversation is short-lived once Homelander walks into the room and chides Butcher. He then leaves with Ryan, saying, “I do not want to miss Smash Mouth.”

As “Walking on the Sun” plays in the background, Frenchie and Kimiko make their way into Neuman’s hotel room. As they attempt to toy with Neuman’s eye drops, Zoe walks in and, while talking to security, spots Frenchie and Kimiko. Zoe then unveils her new Supe abilities as four sharp-toothed tentacles spring out from her mouth and devour the faces of the security men. She then swiftly attacks Frenchie and Kimiko, biting off the latter’s right arm. The pair jump out the window, with Annie catching Frenchie and failing to do the same with Kimiko thanks to her slowly-regenerating baby hand, leading to Kimiko face-planting onto the glass-coated concrete (though her face also regenerates before the eyes of her grossed-out colleagues).

Neuman discovers Hughie in the Boys’ van, and the latter questions her about why she turned her daughter into a Supe, to which Neuman replies: “To keep her safe.” She attempts to lie to Hughie by saying she always cared about him, and Hughie’s response is to throw acid on Neuman, which isn’t that effective besides producing some holes in her suit. Butcher then attempts to shoot Neuman in the head but somehow misses. Numan gets notified that she and Singer have just won Arizona, meaning they have won the presidential election.

The Seven Needs New Members in ‘The Boys’ Season 4 Premiere

Sometime after the botched assassination, Butcher and MM meet up with Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) at the CIA headquarters. Butcher is barred from the meeting, where it’s revealed to the audience that Singer has been conspiring with the CIA and the Boys against Neuman. The team only has until January 6, when the election is certified, to take out Neuman before she decides to explode Singer’s head too. In the lobby, Butcher reconnects with Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an old accomplice whose life he saved over a decade earlier. Kessler tells Butcher that the CIA still needs him before the inevitable Supe uprising occurs.

MM gets a call from his ex-wife Monique (Frances Turner), who tells him that their daughter, Janine (Liyou Abere) has been acting up more and more ever since her step-dad Todd (Matthew Gorman) disappeared, having become swept up in pro-Homelander conspiracies. Monique pleads with MM to find Todd, and he reluctantly agrees.

Back at Vought Tower, The Deep (Chace Crawford) appears in an interview, denying the claims his ex-wife made in her tell-all book about him having an affair with an octopus named Ambrosius (more on that later). Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) leads a meeting about recruiting a new member of the Seven, including Talon, Hyperion, Dogknott, Wrangler, and Sister Sage (Susan Heyward). A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) reveals that he previously worked alongside Sister Sage, whose power is that she’s the world’s smartest person. Black Noir is also in attendance at the meeting, somehow still alive after being dismembered not too long ago. Homelander has become sick of his team members and Ashley constantly trying to appease him. To prove a point, he orders the Deep to perform a lewd sex act on A-Train, and the two nearly do it before Homelander stops them, disgusted by their willingness to do anything he demands.

The Boys reconvene at their office, as Hughie rejects a call from his father (Simon Pegg). Annie and Mother’s Milk try to convince Hughie to cut Butcher loose from the team, but he refuses. Butcher discreetly meets up with Neuman at an abandoned “Vought Video” store. Butcher tries to persuade Neuman for a truce that could allow him to get Ryan back and in return, the CIA would give her protection from Homelander and that Hughie’s material on her from the Red River Group Home would be destroyed.

Sister Sage and Homelander Form an Unlikely Alliance in ‘The Boys’ Season 4

Hughie receives another phone call, where he’s told that his father is on life support, causing him to rush to the hospital. At Starlight’s House for At-Risk Teens, we meet Annie’s associate Colin (Elliot Knight), who was recommended to Annie by Frenchie. Kimiko begins to suspect that Frenchie has feelings for Colin after watching the two interact with one another.

Homelander, disguised in civilian clothing, visits Sister Sage at her home, testing her powers before opening up to her about his unhappiness and feeling of meaninglessness. Sister Sage encourages Homelander to cause civil unrest, causing the humans to begin killing each other and giving him an entry point where he can truly rise to power. Homelander invites Sister Sage to join the Seven, to which she reluctantly agrees. Hughie finds Butcher alone at the Boys’ office, where he confides that his father had a stroke and that he didn’t pick up the phone when he called right before it happened. Butcher embraces Hughie for the sole purpose of snatching his hard drive containing critical information on Neuman.

Todd Becomes an Unwilling Martyr in ‘The Boys’ Season 4

MM, Kimiko, and Frenchie embark on a stake-out and find Todd meeting up with two fellow “Hometeamers,” outside Planet Vought. The three men are invited in where they are greeted by Homelander, Sage, Black Noir, The Deep, and A-Train. Homelander unveils his plans to use his three top supporters as martyrs and orders his teammates to kill them with baseball bats. While Black Noir and The Deep do this with minimal hesitation, A-Train is more reluctant and stands by as his teammates do the work.

Outside the courthouse where Homelander is standing trying, Sage disguises herself as a “Starlighter” as the verdict is revealed to be “not guilty.” She proceeds to incite a riot by splashing hot coffee on a “Hometeamer.” Frenchie rescues Colin from being attacked by a protester and the two begin to kiss, while Kimiko watches from a distance. A-Train is given orders to drop the corpses of Todd and the other two conspiracy theorists right outside the courthouse to make it seem like they were murdered by Starlighters.

The episode concludes after the events of the riot, as Ryan confesses to Homelander that he still cares about Butcher and doesn’t want him to die. The Deep talks to his octopus lover Ambrosius, voiced by none other than Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton. Frenchie is shown to be in bed with Colin and gets up to look at a picture of Colin’s family. Hughie sits by his father’s bedside listening to the voicemail he left before being interrupted by his estranged mother (Rosemarie DeWitt). The episode also ends with the revelation that Butcher has been having hallucinations of his late wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten), leading to him having a change of heart about sending Hughie’s files to Neuman. Neuman receives a text from Butcher, only to see that Butcher has sent a lewd photo instead.

The Season 4 premiere may not be as shocking and gross as past season openers, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Not only does it maintain that fiery and angry satire, but it also maintains its sense of humor and knack for creative violence. Homelander is never not a fascinating character, but Butcher and the team’s ongoing quest to take him out could get repetitive very easily. However, the way Kripke is able to raise the stakes all the way to the White House leads us to believe that this may just be the darkest and most politically relevant chapter yet.

The first three episodes of The Boys Season 4 are now available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Prime Video