‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episode 8 Recap: It’s Finale Time

The finale of The Boys Season 4 plays out against the backdrop of democracy’s end. Oh, wait. Is that too on the nose for you? Too ripped from the headlines of our real world? Well, in The Boys , they’ll also rip a politician right in half. Bodily. So even if this season got topical and toxic with the not-always-successful addition of “Make America Super Again” media mouthpiece Firecracker, the series invariably pivoted right back to its darkest impulses. Which is how you get Billy Butcher finally going full nihilist, becoming a chest-tentacled, humanoid-like (Compound-V-manoid?) vigilante, and firing a bunch of bladed, tumorous appendages at Victoria Neuman. In Season 4 Episode 8 (the creatively titled “Season Four Finale”), the president-elect goes from being on cusp of the Oval Office to being torn limb from limb.

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We’ll never know if Neuman was sincere in her offer to help the Boys stop Homelander. In a sudden reversal, she told Hughie she’d help after she was outed as a supe on national television – an actual truth bomb on Firecracker’s fever swamp talk show Truthbomb – but before Butcher introduced her entrails to a dingy factory floor. With Congress and House Speaker/Homelander patsy Steven Calhoun (David Andrews) certifying the presidential election, Neuman was supposed to slide into the big chair upon the removal of Robert Singer and his anti-supe agenda. So close to realizing her professional ambition, she chafed at the idea of becoming a talking puppet for Homelander’s godlike aspirations. And instead of meeting up with the Boys to hash out a deal, Butcher showed up to start doing his supe genocide, and right in front of Neuman’s daughter Zoe. It was Victoria’s dream to overcome her tortured childhood at the Red River Institute. Instead, Zoe is sent there to begin the cycle again. A place and a process Marie Moreau of Gen V knows a thing or two about.

Singer’s removal was supposed to be the job of the shapeshifter . Still cosplaying daily life as Annie January – she proposed to Hughie, he put his mother’s engagement ring on her finger, they had sex a lot – the supe visited Actual Annie in captivity to gloat, which is how we discover the power isn’t just shapeshifting of, like, human topsoil. Upon touching someone, the supe absorbs an entire lifetime of thoughts, the full range of human emotions. Certainly one of the more powerful supes we’ve encountered in Boys lore, but future appearances might be tricky. Instead of assassinating President Singer in a high-security bunker, the shapeshifter is attacked and subdued by Actual Annie. “You’re going to be tested for every disease imaginable,” Annie tells Hughie when they reunite. “I’m not catching shapeshifter syphilis.”

Neither Victoria Neuman nor Homelander are the first super-abled President at the end of this season finale. With Neuman dead and Singer arrested for ordering her murder, Senator Calhoun as House Speaker is next in line. He pledges fealty to the new superhero age, enacts martial law across the nation, and deputizes every supe loyal to Homelander. “Deep state actors” will be rounded up. And that includes the Boys, who thought scattering with fake passports might save them from Homelander’s pogrom.

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Instead of fleeing to Belize to meet his family, Mother’s Milk is accosted at the airport by Love Sausage (Derek Johns) and his gigantic tumescent dick. (Love Sausage hasn’t been seen in Boys land since season 3’s infamous“ Herogasm .”) When Hughie and Annie try to escape, they’re stopped on the road by object manipulator Cindy (Ess Hӧdlmoser), another blast from the supe past we haven’t seen since season 2 and the Sage Grove Center. Hughie is detained while Annie gets Starlight’s powers back just in time to launch herself into the air and escape. And for Frenchie and Kimiko, who not only reconciled in this episode but also, at long last, professed their love for another – “Forgiveness, letting go, a little fucking mercy – that’s brave…” – their new lovers on the run act will also have to wait, because who appears to stop them but Cate and Sam from Gen V . With one touch from Cate, Frenchie is under her spell, and as Sam holds back Kimiko, she screams out loud in anguish.

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Billy Butcher didn’t just manifest those politician-ripping tumor tentacles. They only appeared after his last hope to save Ryan and end Homelander faded. Dying in a CIA hospital, Butcher got Grace Mallory to bring Ryan in for a final plea to the memory of his mother. But coming clean with the kid about all of Homelander’s indiscriminate killing, including his laser eyes takedown of Transoceanic Flight 37, only radicalized Ryan and his burgeoning superpowers against becoming the Homelander killer envisioned by Billy and Mallory and the CIA. “You’re locking me in a cage unless I agree to be your weapon. Just like they did to my dad.” And Ryan snaps Mallory’s neck when he pushes her into a wall. Is it gonna be Homelander and Homeboy in the Oval, ruling together in Boys season 5? It was only after Ryan left the hospital that Billy finally embraced the concept of supe genocide. made the tentacles happen, Neuman was destroyed, and Butcher made off with the only bit of anti-supe virus that Frenchie managed to cook up. Billy is last seen steering into the unknown, with Kessler-as-tumor leering at him from the backseat. Really seems like his sentient tumor’s the one doing the driving.

• When Homelander issued a kill list to Deep and Noir as an interoffice Vought memo, Ashley Barrett knew she’d be targeted as someone with major incriminating dirt on HL. So she breaks into his trashed apartment and in a last desperate attempt to survive, injects herself with Compound-V. Here’s hoping the upcoming final season of The Boys doesn’t leave us hanging on what kind of supe Barrett transforms into.

• And speaking of Boys season 5, how about a mid credits future tease? It’s Jensen Ackles, returning as Soldier Boy. As brand-new prez, one of the first things Calhoun learned was that Vought’s first-gen supe is being kept alive by the federal government, lying in cryogenic tube sleep. When supes weren’t in charge, Soldier Boy was a secret to the world. But now it’s a new world, with new rules…

Johnny Loftus ( @glennganges ) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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