The Boys Season 4 Features The Weirdest Enemy In The Show's History (And That's Saying Something)
This article contains spoilers for "The Boys" season 4, episode 5, "Beware the Jabberwock, My Son."
"The Boys" is always upping the ante. It's the most subversive superhero show on TV and one that not only perfected the idea of "What if superheroes bad" but made it more than just a gimmick, exploring the ramifications of a world that would allow and push for superheroes to be actively terrible while delivering poignant social commentary (especially with Homelander). As grim and bleak as this show can get — and it often gets extremely bleak — "The Boys" also knows when to lean on absurdity for a laugh, whether it's the hilarious terror of The Deep being forced to eat his aquatic friend Timothy, the explicit chaos of Herogasm, the dildo fight in season 3, or everything about Love Sausage.
From the very start, "The Boys" has given us great fight scenes involving the weirdest and most messed up adversaries. No, I'm not talking about The Seven, but rather the laser baby from season 1 that nearly killed The Boys, as well as the massive whale that was impaled by them in season 2. Well, if those weren't strange and disturbing enough, season 4 just upped the ante yet again.
The matter of Compound V has been lingering in the background throughout this season, starting as a shock to the system that revealed supes were not chosen by god but are, in essence, lab rats. Then it was the Temp V shots that gave Hughie and Butcher powers — and is killing the latter. Now, it's Compound V emerging as a way to test the supe-killing virus from "Gen V," resulting in truly the show's weirdest enemies yet (which is truly saying something): farm animals.
The Boys' Woodland Critters
In the latest episode of "The Boys," titled ""Beware the Jabberwock, My Son," we finally have the anticipated crossover between the main show and last year's spin-off "Gen V," and it is a spectacular way to connect the two series. At a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe is struggling with connectivity going from a feature to a bug, "The Boys" makes "Gen V" feel not like a chore but a complement to the main show. Butcher just gives us a brief exposition scene recapping how he went over to Godolkin University and found out about the virus. That's it. We get a brief cameo from two characters in "Gen V," too, but you wouldn't know them to be any different than any of the many one-off supes that appear in the show unless you watched "Gen V." If you want to know more, the series is there waiting for you. If you don't, then you don't have to watch it and already have all the important information.
That's because what matters is the virus — the last hope for Butcher and The Boys to neutralize Homelander — and that's an easy concept to introduce without much context. To find it, The Boys head to a farm where a scientist, played by Omid Abtahi, is trying to replicate the virus for Victoria Neuman. The only problem is that the lab is in ruins, the staff is dead, and now the characters are being chased by monsters. Not just any kind of monsters, either, but cute farm animals injected with Compound V, which has turned them as violent and bloody as Cartman's Woodland Critters from one of the best episodes of "South Park" (just with fewer orgies).
The Boys meets Jurassic Park
First, we see a group of super strong chickens that impale and maim Neuman's security team and are also somehow bullet-proof. Then, we see a messed-up V-ed up bull, except it doesn't get to do anything because it is immediately devoured by FLYING CARNIVOROUS DEMON SHEEP WITH GIANT TEETH.
It is the sheep that are the stars of the episode. These are devil spawn creatures, the worst case scenario for the existence of Compound V. People with horrible superpowers like the monstrous tentacles, Neuman's brain-exploding powers, or even Marie Moreau's blood-controlling abilities are scary and disturbing, sure. Far worse, however, is an uncontrollable animal with tremendous power that's driven by nothing but bloodlust, like a sheep with bizarre teeth capable of flying and snatching its prey like it's nothing. The sequence where the characters are running through the farm trying to evade the sheep as they head toward a shed, all while the sheep grab them one by one, evokes the tall grass raptors scene in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (the best and scariest scene in that entire movie).
The fight against Homelander is coming, and it will not be pretty. But there is little hope that he will be as scary a villain as a group of sheep with superpowers. Never mess with farm animals.
New episodes of "The Boys" season 4 drop Thursdays on Prime Video.