The Boys Season 4 Ending Explained: Welcome To The Final Act

This article contains spoilers for the season 4 finale of "The Boys."

If there's been one major complaint about "The Boys" over the past two seasons, it's that the show is stalling for time. Our main characters keep getting storylines that are all about them exploring their past, even though most fans at this point would prefer them to be dealing with their future. The show has seemed afraid to kill off any major characters, and the group dynamics of the titular Boys has become stuck in a perpetual back and forth between "We don't need Butcher" and "I hate to say it, but we're gonna need Butcher."

Not helping with the frustration is the way season 3 centered so much of its back half around the possibility of taking Homelander down. Our main characters had the opportunity to kill the big bad villain, but they squandered it. Overall, it was probably the smarter choice to keep Homelander around as long as possible, as he's easily the show's most compelling character, but maybe don't tease his death so strongly in season 3 if that's the plan.

The season 4 finale continues the trend of not killing Homelander, but this time it doesn't feel like stalling. "Assassination Run" is easily one of the most jam-packed episodes of the show so far, paying off several seasons' worth of storylines and promising a dark, climactic finale in season 5. The show's status quo has been shaken up in an irrevocable way, and thanks to Eric Kripke's recent confirmation that yes, "The Boys" is sticking to its original five-season plan, viewers can trust the series will no longer run around in circles. From this point on, the stakes are real. Characters can die at any moment, and there's no time to mess around.

The finale's biggest gamechanger is the revelation that Sister Sage, the genius who Homelander asked to help him take over the world, was genuine in her desire to help. It turns out that all those apparent hitches in her plan were secretly part of her plan all along, give or take a few stray bullets and some messiness with Victoria Neuman (more on her later). When a tearful Homelander asks her why she still helped him even though he treated her like garbage, Sage responded, "To see if I could." 

She then thanked him for the opportunity, seeming honestly grateful. It would be heartwarming if she hadn't pretty much destroyed the whole world. But as depressing as this all is, there's still some hope that Sage will be an ally to the Boys the next time we see her. After all, there's still that ominous "Phase 2" she's referred to. Maybe her goal is to shape the world to her pleasing, and that involves letting Homelander burn it down before she helps build it back up in season 5.

That might be too optimistic of a thing to hope for, but us Sage fans would sure love it if she could use that big brain of hers for good instead of evil. Either way, it's nice to see a morally dubious woman finally escape her relationship with Homelander in one piece. After Stillwell and Stormfront (and now Neuman) all tried and failed to control Homelander, it's cool to see that at least one woman was able to buck the trend. It's just a shame about all those people he killed along the way. 

Even if we didn't know for sure that season 5 was the final season, this plot development alone would make that clear. As of the finale's closing montage, Homelander has unchecked power for the first time in his life. He's no longer above the law; he is the law, and the rest of the show's characters are now either stuck in hiding or actively being imprisoned. After four seasons of setting up Homelander snapping and taking over the world, he's actually done it. It was just a little better handled than it was in the original "Boys" comics.

This doesn't just make the stakes as high as possible, it also promises that season 5 will be Homelander at his most dangerous. We understand at this point that as much as Homelander wants to rule the world, he also wants people to love him, and nobody will genuinely love him in his current condition. He's still surrounded by spineless sycophants who bore the hell out of him, and it'll only make him worse and worse.

The big question, beyond how much damage he'll do as a man who's basically Emperor of the World, is how far can Homelander go before his base finally turns on him. The show has not been subtle about all the Trump parallels, with Homelander's fans growing more fervent even as Homelander kills a man right in front of them. As we head into season 5, we'll be wondering when, exactly, the turning point comes, if it ever does. How fascist can a fascist get before his supporters realize they've made a mistake? It's a prescient question, potentially the defining question of the rest of the show.

The most tragic figure in the season 4 finale is the head-popper Neuman (Claudia Doumit), who realizes too late that allying herself with Homelander will never work. Neuman's world comes crashing down the moment Homelander outs her as a supe on live TV, then threatens the life of her daughter.

But for a moment in the finale, it looks like the Boys have a chance at averting disaster. Hughie and Neuman work out a deal, and Hughie convinces the rest of the gang to ally with Neuman to help take Homelander down. It's a nice little metaphor for different coalitions coming together to oppose an impending far-right regime, much like that French election earlier this month. But this isn't France. This is America, where our coalition against fascism can fall apart to petty infighting at any moment. Case in point: here comes Butcher, who's just allowed the devil on his shoulder to take control of his body.

Butcher not only gets in the way of the Boys' plan to stop Homelander, he also brutally murders Neuman with a bunch of seemingly-indestructible tentacles. (Her poor orphaned daughter now has to go to that depressing Red River Institute, the one place Neuman didn't want her to end up.) We've seen already that Neuman's capable of withstanding a bullet to the head, and even Homelander's lasers, which means that Butcher might be the most powerful supe on the show now. Maybe he can finish off Homelander on his own next season, but that would still leave another huge problem to take care of.

It turns out that the Compound V Butcher took really did turn him into a powerful supe; it's just that he could only embrace his supe powers by ceding control to Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Joe Kessler, a dead guy who only exists inside Butcher's mind. Butcher's season 4 storyline has been an ongoing Freudian battle between imaginary Becca and imaginary Joe, with Joe serving as Butcher's id and Becca serving as his superego. The only thing keeping Butcher back from embracing his darker urges has been his faith in Ryan, but when Ryan rejects Butcher and Grace Mallory's plea for help — killing Grace in the process — Butcher loses all hope. He gives into the dark side, and Evil Butcher is born.

It's a devastating turn of events, a plot point that kills any potential reconciliation between Butcher and the Boys, or Butcher and Ryan. The only saving grace is that it seems like Butcher's got a real shot at taking Homelander down again, this time under a far more reliable method than the Temp V from last season. But once Butcher kills Homelander, who will kill Butcher? His behavior in the season 4 finale makes it clear he's a danger to the world himself, and will have to be put down. Will he be killed by someone like Hughie, who's always been Butcher's soft spot? Or someone like Ryan, who will finally step up to save the day in the show's finale? Either option would be thematically appropriate.

One of the most interesting (and frustrating) things about Ryan is just how uncertain his identity is. He was sheltered from the real world for most of his childhood, and now he's spent the past season being pulled back and forth between Butcher and Homelander, with Homelander taking up most of his time. It's hard for him to figure out which direction is the right one, and which of these terrible father figures is the least evil. The fact that Homelander promises a life of fun and power, whereas Butcher promises a life of hard decisions, doesn't make it any easier.

In the season 4 finale, Ryan seems to take a firm step towards Team Homelander, but based on everything we've seen so far, there's no reason to assume this choice is set in stone. Ryan is nothing if not unsure of himself, and the truths Grace told him about Homelander will likely fester in his mind until he can no longer deny them. Ryan may have disappointed us this time around, and he may have turned his father into a terrifying tentacle monster, but at least there's still a chance he'll reject the path Homelander went down. For a show that's known for its cynicism, it would be a fun change of pace for Ryan to turn out okay.

The season ends with a montage of Frenchie, Kimiko, Hughie, and MM all being captured by Homelander's new force of deputized superheroes. It's particularly troubling for Frenchie, who's been mind-controlled by Cate from "Gen V" and will likely be forced to be a killer yet again.

But the real game-changer for most of these characters happened outside their final kidnapping. For instance, Frenchie and Kimiko finally made out after four seasons of denying their love for each other. It's some much-needed catharsis for any fans frustrated by the longwinded Colin subplot, and it adds some extra tragedy to the moment where Kimiko screams for Frenchie. This is also the first time we've ever heard her voice, and it couldn't be under sadder circumstances.

The other fun development is that Annie's powers are back, which saves her life in the nick of time. What made her powers return? It likely had something to do with her no longer being trapped between the Starlight or Annie persona. Season 4 Annie has been defined by her uncertainty towards her path in life, about whether to fight for change via her public image or through her fists. But now that Firecracker and Homelander have destroyed Annie's image and branded Starlight fans enemies of the state, maybe this means some of Annie's uncertainty has dissolved. If she's going to survive this next season, it'll be through an actual war, not a PR war.

Another big lingering question is what'll happen to Ashley, who's last seen injecting herself with some Compound V to save herself from the purge at Vought. We know from past examples that Compound V can have some truly disturbing side effects when given to an adult, and sure enough, the first few seconds of Ashley's transformation promise she's turning into some sort of Cronenberg monstrosity. Things are looking bleak for our favorite girlboss CEO, but here's hoping there are at least some upsides to the transformation for her. Ashley's been stressed out of her mind for three seasons now, so maybe she deserves a win.

Then there's Soldier Boy, whose return is set up in the season 4 finale's post-credits scene. Soldier Boy's the biggest wildcard of all; there's no telling how he feels about the events of season 3. Does he still want to kill Homelander, or is he more angry at Butcher and the rest of the Boys for turning on him at the last moment? Things can go either way.

In a season finale that brings seemingly every living character back into the fold, one person conspicuously missing is Queen Maeve. The former supe is presumably living a quiet peaceful life in a farm somewhere in the Midwest, but how does she feel about everything that's happened since she's gone off the grid? Will she take some Compound V again to join the resistance, or was season 3 the end for her character on the show? Once again, we'll have to wait and see.

"Assassination Run" is the most the emotionally engaging "The Boys" has been in a while, and it serves as a strong argument in favor of a show taking its time. Fans may still be pissed by how long it's taken to shake up the status quo, but the main reason this finale has such a strong impact is because of how long we got to enjoy that status quo while it lasted.

The show has dedicated the past few seasons to exploring its characters as much as possible, diving into their backgrounds even if it annoyed certain viewers. The result is that we've been given plenty of time to care about the show's players and understand them on a deeper level; that way, their triumphs and/or defeats next season will have a much stronger impact. When A-Train helps take on Homelander in season 5, it'll matter so much more because we've seen how long he struggled for the courage to fight. If Hughie has to be the one to stop Butcher in the finale, it'll hold extra weight because the show's taken all this time to highlight how special their dynamic is.

Although seasons 3 and 4 were a bumpy ride, with some awkward narrative missteps that frustrated viewers, the season 4 finale proves that it was worth it for the show to take its time. In a TV landscape that's largely strayed from the slow-burn approach of 24-episode seasons released on a regular basis, it's nice that "The Boys" understands the appeal of gradual build-up. The show's fans have waited a while for things to get real and the series' proper endgame to arrive. The season 4 finale promises that it's finally here.

"The Boys" will return for its fifth and final season at a yet-to-be-announced date.