The Boys Prepares Its Endgame by Setting the World on Fire in Shocking Season 4 Finale

For four seasons, Prime Video’s hit series The Boys has used the lens of skewering the superhero genre to craft a poignant and hilarious story about propaganda, politics, fame, and how, above all else, power (super and otherwise) runs the world.

That story has largely unfolded from the perspective of the namesake “Boys,” a ragtag, loosely government-affiliated team of troublemakers trying to keep a Justice League’s worth of asshole superheroes in check by humiliating them, blackmailing them, and—when the moment calls for it—killing them.

They’ve always been the underdogs, because it’s a good narrative tool, but also because they’re literally regular folks (well, most of them) taking on some of the most powerful beings on Earth. But the paradigm shift of the Season 4 finale changed the game in a way we’ve never really seen up until this point.

The culmination of Homelander’s quest for political power and the long-gestating realization that there really is no check for his immense superhuman abilities has finally come to a head, thanks in no small part to Sister Sage taking an interest in helping orchestrate it into being, mostly because she was bored and just wants to watch the world burn.

The Season 4 finale, once titled “Assassination Run,” now just called “Season 4 Finale” following recent events, feels very much like a penultimate moment, even before we knew it was literally the penultimate season teeing up the series’ final run. Homelander finally has his place in political power, as the absolute mess of assassinations and conspiracies in Season 4 exploded into the open in a bloody, visceral mess—with Homelander emerging stronger than ever, with the full strength of the United States government behind him.

Yes, the real-life political and MAGA parallels are a bit more on the nose this season than before, but none of that is surprising for people who have actually been paying attention to the series since its inception. The character of Homelander, and the stand-ins of the Vought News Network, were never playing coy about the way they were reflecting real-life right wing political players and movements, even if the show pushed the absurdity up a notch or two along the way (though one could easily argue reality might be just as absurd at this point).

But now, Homelander has ascended and our heroes are (as always) on the ropes.

For The Boys, at first they seem to tee-up the same hamster wheel they’ve been on plenty of times before: on the run, down but not out. And then, shit literally hits the fan. It seems like we’re being treated to a montage of the team all going their separate ways into hiding to regroup for one final push in a final season, then it suddenly becomes clear The Boys can’t just disappear nearly as easily as they have in the past. One-by-one, the team finds itself picked off and captured by Supes newly empowered by Homelander’s rise, including a few familiar hunting party members for fans who checked out the college-set spinoff series Gen V. Then, of course, there’s a super-powered Butcher still roaming the wilds, with reality bleeding into delusion as he succumbs to Temp V poisoning in his final few months to live.

Knowing the show is working toward a finite conclusion only makes the tension and stakes more palpable in hindsight. As fans of The Boys’ showrunner Eric Kripke’s previous genre hit Supernatural can attest, there’s value in mapping out a plan and putting an expiration date on a story. Kripke also conceived Supernatural as a five-season arc, though with the show being a massive hit for The CW, the network opted to keep it going three-times beyond its original plan—with Sam and Dean’s monster-hunting adventures running a full 15 seasons.

Though The Boys is certainly a massive draw for Prime Video as well, it’s hard to imagine this story running much further beyond its fifth (and officially final) season to come. The entire series is a slow boil, with the titular Boys jumping from the pot, to the frying pan, and now into the fire. There are only so many places left to conceivably go.

When the final season of The Boys arrives, it will be set in a nation and world far more unhinged and dangerous than the one we’ve watched unravel these first four seasons (which is saying something). We don’t know where The Boys are being sent after being captured, but it stands to reason Homelander will be doing them no favors. One option that could make sense: spinoff series Gen V wrapped its first season with its heroes who ran afoul of Homelander locked in a mysterious prison that seemed to have no doors. Could Hughie, M.M., and the gang find themselves in the same place? It could work, as we’ve already seen Homelander use that site once for dissenters. It would also make for an easy way to connect those worlds even closer.

Hughie and the gang have never been pushed this far to the brink, and for a show that’s build its brand on desperation, seeing where this story picks up and ends will be something to behold. Because there’s no need to try and reset the board yet again, or find ways to keep the treadmill running. The Boys has been barreling toward this since those opening moments in Season 1 when A-Train inadvertently ushered Hughie into this saga in one incredibly bloody millisecond.

It was always going to come down to The Boys vs. Homelander and the Supes. Now we know there’s nothing to slow down that face-off next season, and the creators will have no punches left to pull—because it’s over.

Put simply, that means all bets are off. This is a story that’s been building to something, and it’s hard to imagine everyone (or anyone) surviving once the dust settles. We can’t wait to see how it ends.

Trent Moore is a recovering print journalist, and freelance editor and writer with bylines at lots of places. He likes to find the sweet spot where pop culture crosses over with everything else. Follow him at @trentlmoore on Twitter.

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