Review: Prime Video Series Spins Its Wheels As It Crawls To Its Endgame Boys Season 4 Episode 6
Although The Boys season 4 has been enjoyable, episode 6 seems as though the show is crawling towards an endgame while spinning its wheels.
Examining Butcher's Internal Conflict and Potential Genocide
The Boys season 4's episode 6 is the most reductive, stressing some of its shortcomings as it approaches a finish despite a few significant revelations. Tek Knight gathers wealthy right-wingers who will be thrown on Homelander and Sister Sage's plan to seize the United States, thus we get yet another classic sting operation for the titular team.
Billy Butcher is still at Victoria Neuman's farm upstate, torturing her lab tech Sameer to compel him into producing more of the Supe virus elsewhere. Only one dose is needed, enough to eradicate Homelander, but Sameer cautions that the dosage might become an airborne virus killing all Supers, so rendering Butcher guilty of genocide. He has to consider the option, which results in an unexpected disclosure.
Episode 6 opens Butcher's world wide open when Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character, Joe Kessler, is revealed to be a hallucination when he personally addresses Becca Butcher, who has been showing up for pivotal events. This is a reveal that has been telegraphed from the start; the viewpoint of Butcher from the point of view of the coffee cup suggests something deeper occurring in the scene, but it only somewhat lessens the surprise.
This only confirms that the former leader of the Boys may be too far gone since it is now quite evident that a part of Butcher is ready to eradicate every Supe in existence if that means eradicating Homelander. Like the V inside his body, his search to save Ryan and eliminate Homelander has drastically changed him and is working as a poison through his system. In the last two episodes of season 4 Butcher could be preparing to make some significant sacrifices.
Tek Knight's Sex Dungeon: A Trip into Blackness
The celebrations at Tek Knight's estate fit quite well for a fresh mission. Bugging the rooms will help them to hear what is being said between Homelander, Sister Sage, and several high-ranking officials including billionaire types. In a particularly nasty scene, Hughie is supposed to bury the bugs under disguise as Web Weaver, a drugged-up Supe rendered disabled by Mother's Milk.
Hughie sadly only plants a few bugs before he is drawn to Tek Knight's sex dungeon and tied off for some psychosexual torture. Turns out, Tek Knight's need for a sidekick is only so he may fulfill his sadomasochistic dreams on someone in a superhero suit and, when Ashley joins, we are shown an extended sequence of Hughie's torture.
Though it's not particularly funny, nor as boundary-pushing or shocking as The Boys seem to believe, the scenario is performed for laughs. Although that topic is not outside the wheelhouse of the show, Hughie is essentially being sexually assaulted and this seems especially unusual in this context. Driven in with some extreme racism from Tek Knight (more "satire"), the whole dungeon scene tastes bad. Without discomfort, it would simply be boring.
Elsewhere, it comes to light that Homelander's scheme really calls for Tek Knight due of his American empire of private prisons. Tek Knight is more than ready to assist; Homelander and Sage intend to confine political dissidents. The only other revelation in the episode is a shocking one that highlights more of Homelander's scheme that will most likely come to pass on January 6th, the date the finale is scheduled to air.
Though Tek Knight's Batman parodies are among the most subtly unsettling bits in the entire show, The Boys is blatantly parodies of superheroes and comics.
Elsewhere in Tek Knight's estate, Annie confronts Firecracker, MM suffers a panic attack, and Kimiko and Annie are able to save Hughie with the aid of Tek Knight's chained down sex slave. Running MM to the hospital, A-Train's redemption keeps on while Neuman formally sides with Homelander before the billionaire gatherers. To much to Homelander's dismay, Firecracker tries to clear Sage from the path in one last scene by revealing that she can now generate breast milk.
Are The Boys Out of Steam?
Although The Boys season 4 has occasionally been interesting, most of it feels as though the show is whirl-bound toward an endgame. Since this latest episode shows my fears, the show ending with season 5 seems more like a good idea every day. There is not much more shock value to be pulled from this series and there most definitely isn't any sharp satire targeted at the viewers.
Much of the political commentary (including this episode) is a copy-paste of real-world events; billionaires meeting in wood-paneled backrooms, a joke about one of those men who refuses to be alone with a woman who isn't his wife, Tek Knight's explanation of the prison industrial complex and her gleeful complicity, Firecracker's Q-Anon-esque podcast and her brain-dead supporters. There is no joke or commentary here; we have seen all of this before, thus it is not shocking at all.
The Boys has some juice left in it, I have hope. I can't wait to see Butcher and Homelander's unavoidable conflict, the former's reunion with Ryan (in whatever form that may be), the several fates of all the people we have come to know over the past four seasons.
But right now, the show seems to be playing its cards too near to the chest when it comes to plot while flinging around on-the-nose commentary as sharp as an overused knife. This most recent episode confirms those worries; The Boys will have to make big leaps out of this rut before the fourth season ends.
Prime Video now streams the fourth season of The Boys, episode six.
The Boys: A Deep Dive into the Superhero Satire
Based on the same-name comic series, Eric Kripke developed the superhero/dark comedy satire series The Boys. Set in a "what-if" universe honoring superheroes as gods and celebrities with little consequences for their deeds. One group of vigilantes, headed by a vengeance-obsessed man called Billy Butcher, will counter these super-charged "heroes" to reveal them for what they are, though.
