The long-awaited fourth season of the Prime Video collection, The Boys, premieres on June 13, 2024
Last summer season’s Hollywood strikes delayed a lot of releases, amongst them the fourth season of Prime Video’s The Boys. We’re longtime followers of this extremely violent, darkly humorous anti-homage to superheroes, and thus are thrilled to see there’s lastly an official trailer for S4. It’s crammed with the bloody mayhem we have come to anticipate from the present, in addition to a tantalizing glimpse of the chief villain, Homelander (Antony Starr), performing in what seems to be an ice skating extravaganza.
(Spoilers for prior seasons beneath, particularly S3.)
As I’ve written beforehand, the present relies on the comedian e-book collection of the identical title by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Boys is about in a fictional universe the place superheroes are actual however are corrupted by company pursuits and a poisonous celebrity-obsessed tradition. The most elite superhero group known as the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, which created the supes with a substance known as Compound V. The Seven is headed up by Homelander, a violent and unstable psychopath disguised because the All-American hero. Homelander’s counterpart as the top of the titular “Boys” is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-appointed vigilante intent on checking the unhealthy conduct of the Seven—particularly Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher’s spouse, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), unknowingly fathering a son, Ryan, within the course of..
Having found he had a son, Homelander turned Ryan in opposition to Butcher in S2, which ended with a bloody showdown that noticed the demise of Becca in addition to the mutilation of Homelander’s supe squeeze, Stormfront (Aya Cash), who turned out to be a Nazi disguised as a “patriot.” (She dedicated suicide in S3.) Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) and Starlight (Annie Moriarty) efficiently blackmailed Homelander into loosening his bullying stranglehold on the Seven. Meanwhile, the federal government cleared the Boys of all wrongdoing after they had been publicly smeared as terrorists. A disillusioned Hughie (Jack Quaid) determined to attempt to struggle the Seven via politics fairly than violence and went to work for Congressperson Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit)—however he did not know she’s truly a super-powered murderer along with her personal murderous agenda.
The third season launched us to “Payback,” the title of an earlier Vought group of superheroes, loosely primarily based on Marvel’s Avengers. Payback members embrace Eagle the Archer (Langston Kerman), who appeared in S2 of The Boys . He’s the one who recruited the Deep (Chace Crawford) and A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) to the Church of the Collective earlier than the cult turned in opposition to him. By S3 he’d stop the superhero gig and was attempting to turn out to be a rapper. We additionally met Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) and Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden), and a complete episode was dedicated to one of many comedian’s most stunning storylines: Herogasm, by which the Boys infiltrated Vought’s annual superhero celebration, which turned out to be only one lengthy weekend of kinky intercourse and drug use on a secluded island.
The third season ended with Homelander killing one in all Starlight’s supporters who attacked Ryan throughout a rally—and fairly than being roundly condemned, the group cheered wildly, and Homelander realized simply how few constraints there have been on his psychopathic conduct. Soldier Boy (who turned out to be Homelander’s organic father) ended up in authorities custody, Maeve was presumed useless however truly simply misplaced her powers, and Annie/Starlight left the Seven to hitch forces with The Boys. As for Butcher, he had been juicing with V24, a model of Compound V that briefly gave people tremendous powers—at a value. By season’s finish, Butcher realized he was dying.
That brings us to the fourth season. Per the official premise:
The world is on the brink. Victoria Neuman is nearer than ever to the Oval Office and below the muscly thumb of Homelander, who’s consolidating his energy. Butcher, with solely months to reside, has misplaced Becca’s son and his job as The Boys’ chief. The remainder of the workforce are fed up along with his lies. With the stakes greater than ever, they must discover a method to work collectively and save the world earlier than it’s too late.
The trailer opens with a presumably doomed Butcher performing some soul-searching about how he is lived his life. “All I see are the messes I’ve made,” he says whereas we’re proven the scene the place Ryan leaves with a smirking Homelander. “And I ain’t obtained time to repair it.” He figures he has an opportunity to do one factor proper however he wants The Boys’ assist to succeed.
Meanwhile, Homelander is flaunting his energy, insisting that the nation “is corrupt past restore.” His plans for the nation’s “salvation” naturally contain violence: doing horrible issues “for the higher good.” So the Seven should now cease being beloved celebrities and as a substitute turn out to be “wrathful gods.” Not everyone seems to be on board with Homelander’s technique, notably A-Train and Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie), however there’s not a lot they’ll do to cease the Supes from rounding up any recalcitrant people and placing them in camps—or declaring “looking season on Starlighters.”
Humanity’s solely hope seems to relaxation in Butcher’s discovery of a virus that may kill Supes, first launched within the spinoff collection, Gen V. But first they’re going to must struggle off violent superpowered chickens and livestock which have been injected with Compound V—and one way or the other keep away from turning into the very evil they’re attempting to defeat.
The first three episodes of The Boys S4 premieres on June 13, 2024, on Prime Video, with subsequent episodes airing every week till the finale on July 18, 2024.
Prime Video
Listing picture by Prime Video