Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Antony Starr deserves a whole bunch of new awards as best villain in a series for Homelander! Within the first few seconds of “The Boys” Season 4 Episode 4, I was holding my breath in anxiety, even though the scene features Homelander holding a cake and greeting people with a smile. An unnerving smile. Because you never know when he’ll brutally laser someone to death. Starr’s Homelander is simply synonymous with terror in each scene.
Also read: The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1-3 Review
Titled “Wisdom of the Ages,” there’s a whole bunch of things happening in “The Boys” Season 4 Episode 4. Hughie is dealing with his dad’s hospitalization, Annie AKA Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and her PR team are at their wits’ end over Firecracker’s (Valorie Curry) malicious media campaign, while the rest of the team is scrambling to figure out what Sister Sage’s (Susan Heyward) game plan is. And everybody, of course, is also dealing with their personal struggles: Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) over her dark past which led to her mutism, Frenchie (Tomer Capone) about the new boyfriend situation (still not warming up to this contrived sub-plot), Mother’s Milk/MM (Laz Alonso) is trying to rein in Butcher (Karl Urban), while Butcher is still hallucinating and losing his mind. Amid all the multiple subplots, you just cannot shake off Homelander’s bits—Episode 3 of “The Boys” had ended with him deciding he must go back to the “beginning” to fix his existential crisis.
While the first three episodes of this season felt somewhat trite, “The Boys” gets its groove back with this edition, which begins with Homelander going back to the lab where he was experimented upon by Vought’s minions right from his birth. I mean, damn, Antony Starr has hit the sweet spot of making Homelander appear scarily villainous by simply existing. You never know when he’ll swoop in and kill off a character. As Homelander confronts his traumatic childhood in a bid to erase any shred of humanity he might still possess, the new recruits of his team (The Seven) are busy working to destroy the Boys.
Valorie Curry is amusingly divisive as conspiracy theorist Firecracker, who sure knows how to push Starlight’s buttons the wrong way. Vought International gives her a live show called “#TruthBomb,” where she joins celebrity guests to “expose” Starlight, instigating an unexpected reaction from the otherwise composed Annie. Significant damage is done in this episode to affect the upcoming elections, and The Boys are nowhere near getting either Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) or Homelander out of the picture. Butcher (Karl Urban) has some plans, but nobody is happy to have him back on the team and his current state of health is doing him no favors. At this point, Karl Urban’s charm as the British pottymouth of the group has significantly faded, so it’s great that his screen time is limited, even though he continues to dominate the show posters.
Despite Homelander’s constant unhinged murderous streak throughout the show, Vought International emerges as the biggest antagonist in this episode of “The Boys.” Vought manufactured a generation of superheroes who cannot keep their powers under control, and some of them are so out of control that an anarchic America seems like a possible reality. Homelander thinks he is some sort of Jesus, who is meant to rule the masses and crush normies like ants—a reality extremely vexing, which is why there’s a desperate bill in the works to keep superheroes out of politics. A bill that might become a law, but not when America seems to be divided into two big factions: Homelander fans and Starlight fans, both superheroes.
Expect gory violent deaths, blood-splattered screens, and a whole lot of vengeance in this episode, which is undoubtedly already the best chapter of Season 4.
You can stream “The Boys” on Prime Video.
Read Next: The Boys Season 4 Episode 5 Review
Also Read: Mother-Daughter Murder Night Book Review (Audio version below)