Endless feuds, political conspiracies, problematic superheroes and a lot of rubbish
Just two days before the premiere of the fourth season of ‘The Boys’, many are doing their homework. What happened in the previous one? Something about a Nazi superheroine? Oh, no, that was in the second one. The exploding penis thing? No, you’re thinking about ‘Gen V’, the university spin-off of the saga.
With so much back and forth between plots and characters, the acidic and violent superhero satire is getting closer every day to becoming another superhero franchise, and as such, being up to date with the goings-on of each of these scoundrels is essential. So if you’re thinking about seeing the new one and you don’t remember what happened, stay here and we’ll refresh it for you.
The good guys are still the good guys and the bad guys are still the bad guys.
After three seasons involved in work, he status quo overall not much has changed. Patriota continues to be the charismatic main villain who (no matter how many tricks and violence they use against him) they cannot kill. Vought remains an ultra-capitalist company whose mandate has changed hands several times, with the last CEO being Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Exposito), who after a battle of power and egos ends up losing against Patriota’s blackmail and resigning. The company’s last humanitarian action? Being related to a superhero orphanage (from which Victoria Neumann) and help the controversial congresswoman in her budding political career.
On the part of the good guys, the headlines ‘The Boys’ are more an idea than a reality, with some female presence rocking the group like a Kimiko increasingly less feral and more human, (helped in part by a frenchie who functions as a mentor/romantic interest) and a Starlight increasingly disengaged from Vought. As for the kids, Marvin (Maternal Milk) tried unsuccessfully to get away from the group in the previous season, with a complicated family situation and returning when the threat of the supers was imminent, while Butcher and Hughie have been increasingly radicalized by the company’s latest actions.
The political situation is regular
‘The Boys’ has not shied away from satirizing real-life situations, like that “Imagine” moment from last season. In the fourth, Patriot is about to enter her Trumpist era. After a stint with his power on trial within Vought, and a coven of followers using Nazi imagerythe live murder of an opposition activist has no consequence for the perception that his followers have of him, bringing Patriota even closer to total impunity.
Fisticuffs don’t solve things, but you can see that neither does voting, because the other big political twist of the season is that the elusive Victoria Neuman is a candidate for vice president. At the beginning of the season, Hughie had discovered that she was not only a superhero, but also the cause of a number of seemingly random murders where the victims’ heads exploded, thus fueling Neuman’s anti-superhero agenda.
Annie and Hughie are still involved in their own romantic series
From time to time the series can be sweet. Kimiko is a sweetheart when she’s not tearing people up, but the main romantic plot here is between Hughie and Annie. After comings and goings, both of them are openly dating, but the relationship went through a big bump in the previous season when Hughie began consuming Temp-V along with Butcher, temporarily turning him into a superhero and a rather toxic boyfriend, much to Annie’s disappointment.
The worlds of both sometimes they feel very separate. Annie’s plot last season was mainly one of emancipation from Vought and The Seven, realizing more and more that taking down the system from within is very complicated.
There are fewer and fewer of the original group of Los Siete
The evil “Justice League” that stars in the series does not stop having casualties. The group has been bleeding members since the first season and its influence is increasingly in doubt, to the point of having to hold a contest last season to look for new superhero talents. Some of its best members such as Reina Maeve or Black Noir (with his tragic death in the last season) have already left the team, and others are still reluctant, like El Profundo in his constant whitewashing of his image or an A-Train who is trying to return to the front line.
Carnicero has less and less to lose, and his own life is at stake
At the beginning of the series, Billy Carnicero’s vital mission was to destroy superheroes by the visceral hatred he has for them, especially Patriota for raping and killing his wife. When it turns out that Becca is not only not dead, but is alive and with Patriot’s son in witness protection, recovering her becomes the vigilante’s number one priority, but not so much for Becca, who finds herself in conflict with her new life and love for his son Ryan.
Ryan is a complicated figure for all. His isolated upbringing and the superhero’s genetic inheritance do not help create a functional person, and it is difficult for Carnicero to get attached to him due to consequences of the past. When in the final battle against Stormfront in the second season Ryan accidentally kills her mother trying to help her, this takes away the vigilante one more reason to fight, or at least, to do it clean.
The third season includes the plot of Butcher and a radicalized Hughie becoming superheroes for a time to try to balance firepower with that of their enemies. But By doing so you are putting your health at risk.. Billy suffers from dizziness throughout the season and at one point he receives a diagnosis from the doctor that he does not have long to live.
The superheroic virus plot lurks
Although it’s hard to imagine the characters and plots of ‘Gen V’ returning for the new season of the main series, there is one element that they tied into quite directly. The plot of a virus developed to kill superheroes He is the biggest hot potato of the spin-off, and towards the end of the season he ends up in the hands of Victoria Neuman. With her political power on the rise, it is very possible that the future vice president would use this as a threat rather than an actual weapon, as she herself would fall prey to its effects. But her mere influence may be enough to mess her up in the new season.
imminent release
All this is a review of the main plots, but of course there remain many doubts and small loose ends that can be returned to in the new episodes, will Soldier Boy wake up from his slumber? What will Vought do now that Edgar is out? Will Ryan definitely turn to the dark side?
We may or may not find all these answers and more in the next season that premieres on June 13 on Primebecause in addition to this, its showrunner has confirmed a fifth season that, unless plans change at the last minute, seems to be the last.
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