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The Boys season 4 trailer

Bojji

Member
The Boys become a parody of itself.

It was one of the best shows (S1 for sure) now it's mediocre at best, it's also full of typical leftist propaganda and it's not even subtle. 2 episodes of S4 were boring as fuck, like they didn't know what to do with the story, S3 had its flaws but it was much more entertaining and story was focused on really interesting character (Soldier Boy). S4 is a mess.
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
Well, thatā€™s a dark way to look at it! We view it as hilarious. Obviously, Tek Knight is our version of Batman, and we wanted to really play around with that trope: Batmanā€™s fascist underpinnings as a really wealthy dude who hunts poor people, and then profits of the incarceration.

Batman is a fascist? Not heard that one before.

And we still have clowns claiming they ā€œboth sidesā€ the mockery. Itā€™s clearly heavily one sided in the mentally deranged category.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Well, thatā€™s a dark way to look at it! We view it as hilarious. Obviously, Tek Knight is our version of Batman, and we wanted to really play around with that trope: Batmanā€™s fascist underpinnings as a really wealthy dude who hunts poor people, and then profits of the incarceration.

Batman is a fascist? Not heard that one before.

I'm enjoying the show but THAT is a take!

From my understanding, Tek-Knight was supposed to be an Iron Man parody... But now they've made him Alt-Batman. And we don't see WHY they call him Tek-Knight. He's supposed to have a suit of armor like Iron Man... Now we'll never see it.
 

bitbydeath

Member
I donā€™t get the Hughie drama, he was only grinded upon. The real crime here is that they canā€™t get any women to take their clothes off.
 

FingerBang

Member
I donā€™t get the Hughie drama, he was only grinded upon. The real crime here is that they canā€™t get any women to take their clothes off.
I agree. The whole "he was abused" thing makes no sense. He's in a squad that kills people, and he has killed before. He can withstand some tickling and Ashley's huge clit.

The problem with the scene is that it went long for way too long. It should have been a couple of minutes before Tek Knight finds out (or reveals he knows) Hughie is an impostor and move on.
 

Toots

Gold Member
you're joking right. If this season is one thing, it it painfully, obviously unsubtle, about anything
Eddie Murphy What GIF by Amazon Prime Video

I thought that flashing a man's spread anus to the viewer in ep 1 was the epitome of transgressive subtlety.
Pay no mind to the fact that Kripke himself said the actress was not aware which amount to sexual harassment (unsollicited asshole pic, unsollicited dick pic, same shit).

I swear when i saw that shit i envisionned kripke jacking off to the idea of beinfg able to get away with this high school level "jokes" and rebellious attitude. Guy must have had no friend during his education. No one would want to hang with such a douche.

Edit : pretty sure it was his own asshole also i don't believe his "we hired a model" story one sec. Dude is so lame and depraved he could not have put any other asshole than his own.
 
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taizuke

Member
The real crime here is that they canā€™t get any women to take their clothes off.

That would be considered misogynistic. Modern shows tend to shy away from that. You'll see nothing short of penises and male nudity and woman in dominatrix type stuff but god forbid you see female nipples. Even shows like House of The Dragon which have every excuse to show things like that because of the setting, have considerably toned down the female nudity.

And, before anyone says that HotD has been great without it, you're right. I just don't understand why we have to tone it down. These are pieces of fiction. We tune is to see these worlds brought to life, and if these worlds are cruel to women or depict women horribly then it is what it is. People can have whatever opinion they want and if they think The Boys is misogynistic and don't like it then they can watch something else.

As for Hughie, his father just died. Remember, Annie asks him before the whole Tek-Knight thing if he was okay and he said yes. When he says he's not okay at the end of the episode i think is because he hasn't had the time to properly grief.
 

BadBurger

Many ā€œWhelpsā€! Handle It!
I'm sorry but no,poor writting can not be defended just like that.

You can't have it both ways...

You can't both have updated political comentary of the year 2024 but when something is badly written just scoff it as "lol it's just jokes from when the comic was written,

What may be poor comedic writing to you is not poor writing to others.

The core elements of Batman have not changed in a good thirty years. So the commentary still works.

As for the rest of Batman, Ennis seemed to view him as an authoritarian who was unkind to poor people. Criminals are typically poor. He routinely ruins their lives and even cripples them on occasion rather than using his endless wealth to reforming them and solve the societal ills that led them to being criminals in the first place. It's easy to see how Ennis would come to this obvious conclusion / opinion.

Also take into account Ennis's age. When he was first exposed to Batman it was probably when he was running around with a ward in booty shorts and elf shoes, and has always surrounded himself with underage individuals. So if one was to write satire of this character, well the angles are pretty clear. Especially for something like The Boys.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
So uh, 1 episode to go and nothings really happened this season.

I hope the finale sets the next season to be a banger.

My guess is thatā€¦

Butcher is going to try kill Homelander with the virus and accidentally kill Ryan, causing Homelander to fully detach and become a real threat to everyone.
 

The Skull

Member
Too much filler. The good parts are just enough to keep me interested and seeing
MM going ham with a chain gun on the new Black Noir was pretty bad ass. Really like his character
 
This season has gone to shit.

The show is just not fun anymore. The jokes rarely land. The pollical messaging (it's not commentary anymore, rather closer to propaganda) is so unsubtle that it might as well step on a pulpit and start preaching a sermon to the audience directly... it's almost there.

Like WTF was the whole abortion thing? On the one hand, you essentially have a character exposed for aborting a pregnancy that the audience is supposed to feel sorry for, yet the plot gives no justification for this, and anyone who claims to have a different opinion on the subject is literally a "POS" while the writing again gives no justification nor reasoning why; we as the audience are just supposed to take this view as gospel truth. Then the same show, shows how Huey (the father) is such a kind, compassionate and ultimately supportive towards Starlight, so much so that it throws into question her reasoning for aborting the child in the first place.

Like whatever is your political position on the topic of abortion, if you're going to try to make a case for the pro-choice position, this is really not how you do it. If anything, despite the showrunner Kripke's clearly left-leaning politics that he's unapologetically injecting into the show, this case was one where the writing was so bad that he ends up making a case for his opposition in this debate.

It's irony that seems entirely lost on the showrunner.
 
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DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
This season has gone to shit.

The show is just not fun anymore. The jokes rarely land. The pollical messaging (it's not commentary anymore, rather closer to propaganda) is so unsubtle that it might as well step on a pulpit and start preaching a sermon to the audience directly... it's almost there.

Like WTF was the whole abortion thing? On the one hand, you essentially have a character exposed for aborting a pregnancy that the audience is supposed to feel sorry for, yet the plot gives no justification for this, and anyone who claims to have a different opinion on the subject is literally a "POS" while the writing again gives no justification nor reasoning why; we as the audience are just supposed to take this view as gospel truth. Then the same show, shows how Huey (the father) is such a kind, compassionate and ultimately supportive towards Starlight, so much so that it throws into question her reasoning for aborting the child in the first place.

Like whatever is your political position on the topic of abortion, if you're going to try to make a case for the pro-choice position, this is really not how you do it. If anything, despite the showrunner Kripke's clearly left-leaning politics that he's unapologetically injecting into the show, this case was one where the writing was so bad that he ends up making a case for his opposition in this debate.

It's irony that seems entirely lost on the showrunner.

Starlight's reasoning wasn't wrong or right. Plenty of women don't want to bring life into a world they feel is effed up. And The Boys universe is VERY effed up! Would YOU want to bring a baby into a world with someone like Homelander?
 
Starlight's reasoning wasn't wrong or right. Plenty of women don't want to bring life into a world they feel is effed up. And The Boys universe is VERY effed up! Would YOU want to bring a baby into a world with someone like Homelander?

You missed the entire point of my post.

I'm not making any moral argument about Starlight's reasoning for the abortion, only one that the reasoning for or against was presented in the worst possible way by the poor writers and showrunners.
 

wondermega

Member
I suspect next week's episode will be at least decent, but yes, please just hurry up and get us to the final season already. There's been some kinda fun bits this season, but overall it really felt half-baked like the people making the show are basically over it. That's a shame because the world is so interesting, the characters SHOULD be one-note but so many of them are really well put-together (and many of the actors are just really good!) But yeah when even the show itself feels like it's dragging itself to its own party, it feels like.. why didn't they just end it like they probably wanted to with this season, instead of dragging out the corpse for one more? I am exaggerating of course, but it doesn't bode well for what is to come.

I feel like this is where you see the bureaucracy bleeding through ("The higher-ups have stipulated that there will be 2 more seasons instead of one, because of ratings and X, Y and Z shows didn't do well enough to continue," etc)
 

FireFly

Member
You missed the entire point of my post.

I'm not making any moral argument about Starlight's reasoning for the abortion, only one that the reasoning for or against was presented in the worst possible way by the poor writers and showrunners.
Well the abortion subplot was introduced as a way for Starlight to be emotionally manipulated and put on the back foot, so I don't think there was ever any intention for there to be a "fair" debate.
 

Fbh

Member
Yeah this season has just been boring.
That one episode with the killer sheep was the only decent one that felt a bit closer to the older seasons. A lot of it comes across as filler, like they don't really want to commit to any major changes to the story or status quo.
And while that has, to some extent, been true for most of the show, this has also been the first season where no story thread feels interesting or fun and most of the new characters are boring too. I mean come on, they even managed to make a Jeffrey Dean Morgan character boring.

Even Homelander has been rather tame these past couple of weeks. At the end of the last season when he killed that dude and people cheered him on I thought we'd see a bigger shift in his character, that scene was supposed to be him realizing that he can "let go", at least a bit, show more of his true self in public and many people would actually idolize him for it. I thought it would be one of the most important scenes in the show because it's the moment he realizes there are people who will cheer him on for who he is instead of who he pretends to be. I thought this season we'd see a more unhinged Homelander (thought not quite in genocide mode), but instead he hardly seems to have changed.

And that's before taking into account the annoying, one sided and completely devoid of subtlety political messaging this season which I won't get into.
 
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I see this season as a result of bits of good writing mixed with bits of bad. Itā€™s hard to do a season thatā€™s almost entirely focused on character growth and character changes when everyone is preferring actions and movement.

+The events surrounding A-trainā€™s character arc is great stuff.
+The events surrounding Ryanā€™s internal struggle between wanting a family (Homelander) vs his need to fulfill his motherā€™s wish to be a good person, is good stuff.
+Finally getting a drip feed of Kimikoā€™s past has been good stuff.
+Starlight finally starting to just say F-it when it comes to certain events which has led her to violence
+Homelander not knowing how to run a business correctly like Stan Edgar predicted. He pivoted into something easy (clickbait and heavy politics).
+Also Homelanderā€™s childhood reveal including his way of getting over that trauma.
+Ashleyā€™s change from being confident and dominating to now a shriveled up human being who is too broken down and too scared at this point to even let A-train help her leave.
+The Deep finally(?) realizing that he is a full-on bad guy and wants to be a killer
+Scenes with Huey+Dad.
+Butcher attempting to keep ryan good and finally finding a way to see the good in supes.

-Hueyā€™s personal storyline has been sidelined especially after the dad episode, as he gets taken advantage of or worse in multiple episodes. However he doesnā€™t seem to break or change a slight bit due to these events.
-Frenchieā€™s storyline has been cyclical and at this point annoyingly used as a buffer between more important content.
-MMā€™s back and forth on how he feels about his team and The Boys has also been cyclical.
-Neumannā€™s story being cyclical.
-Waste of a Stan Edgar return
-Butcherā€™s good ghost/bad ghost thing, while kind of cool conceptually, is kind of pointless when you realize how the ghosts are essentially unnecessary as Butcher would have reached some of these conclusions and moments on his own anyway.
-Homelanderā€™s arc feeling a bit aimless after the childhood episode. I felt that he had found a better purpose and was finally starting to be a good father to Ryan, but instead he went back to business as usual, including a slight character regression once presented with breast milk.
-Sister Sage sorely needs a ā€˜revealā€™ episode for all of her planning
-New Noir needs more scenes and development, he is in an awkward ā€˜joke but not jokeā€™ character phase
-The showrunner not pulling the trigger on two extremely powerful Gen-V supes and instead using them as a tiny cameo, including wasting Tek Knight on a raunchy cameo when itā€™s known that he is essentially a super detective with all 5 senses being super.

Again this list is almost even, but the list heavily favors the negative side because you quickly realize 2-3 members of The Boys are sucking away screen time with barely anything new to show for it, and thatā€™s frustrating since they are not secondary characters but instead main cast.

This finale will probably not be that strong of a finale unless they have done reshoots. I expect a season 4 ending that will kill maybe 1 but leave things as safe as possible, because the original plan was for more than 5 seasons. If season 5 is at least as good as seasons 3 or 1 then this show will end very strong, because now they have enabled the ā€˜you can kill off more than one main character nowā€™ switch.
 
Well the abortion subplot was introduced as a way for Starlight to be emotionally manipulated and put on the back foot, so I don't think there was ever any intention for there to be a "fair" debate.

That may very well have been the objective, and if they did that and stopped there it would have been fine. But instead, they decided to also beat the audience over the head with the showrunner's particular position on the subject, going so far as to label one side of the debate "pieces of shit" with no justification or reasoning, while utterly fumbling any reasonable attempt to present the showrunner's position in any meaningfully intelligible light.

It was just shitty writing. Shitty writing that ended up making the audience less empathetic to the position it was trying desperately to promote.
 

Geomancer86

Member
On the Noir side it seems his powers could match the comic version again (after deviating on the show and killing the OG Noir).

I can see a timeline where they still have the same ending as the comics but without the crazy character angle and more like "the new black Homelander" that defeted old Homelander when it got on a crazy mad rampage...
 
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BigLee74

Member
Definitely a noticeable drop in quality over all previous seasons, but still mostly enjoyable.

Sageā€™s ā€˜scrape my brainsā€™ is nowhere near a Stormfront ā€˜laser my titsā€™.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
That was a fantastic season finale and sets up multiple plot points for the finale.

So how did it end?

Kimiko and Frenchie finally hook up.
Homelander and Sage successfully executed their presidential plan.
Butcher kills Victoria and fully embraces the V-virus inside him.
All the boys, minus Starlight, are captured in the end.
Ashley injected herself with V but we don't know what happens to her afterward.
 
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That ending, while good, definitely felt like an ending where they wanted to stretch the show out a bit more. This season was Kripke's typical very slow buildup to a table-flipping finale. I assume he does this every now and then so that he would challenge himself to write his way through the next season. The Sam-Lucifer deal and sacrifice from Season 4/5 of Supernatural being an example.

This stretching and table flip happened a few times in Supernatural as well, but the difference is that Supernatural was also a semi-procedural show and it had large episode counts between seasons, which helped space things out. The Boys is an 8 episode season show that doesn't have the crutch of being procedural to help it during those slower moments, so it suffered a bit due to this.

Since plans have changed and next season is the last, they're going to have to rush the plot a bit or 'undo' what happened in those last 15 minutes, or potentially use Gen V as a secret 5th season and in it's finale have those kids help break out The Boys. I mean...you can't keep utilizing the two villains of Gen V in the main series but ignore their heroes.
 
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That ending, while good, definitely felt like an ending where they wanted to stretch the show out a bit more. This season was Kripke's typical very slow buildup to a table-flipping finale. I assume he does this every now and then so that he would challenge himself to write his way through the next season. The Sam-Lucifer deal and sacrifice from Season 4/5 of Supernatural being an example.
First 5 seasons of Supernatural was so so good.
 

Paasei

Member
Just finished watching season 4. I liked it overall, but again thereā€™s more threats coming along. Seems they really do want to stretch this for another season or 3. I just worry I get over it if it goes on much longer.
 

Goss Harag

Member
My favourite part was how all series long they've been trying to come up with efficient ways to kill supes but Annie manages to kill one with just a simple chokehold.
 
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My favourite part was how all series long they've been trying to come up with efficient ways to kill supes but Annie manages to kill one with just a simple chokehold.
The shapeshifter matches the strength and durability of the person she shifts to. In this episode there was a scene where she essentially said 'I can't use your powers Annie, because you're having problems yourself'.

If Annie is strong enough to choke herself out, then she would be strong enough to choke out her own mimic.
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
They were really fucking cooking with episode 8, i think itā€™s my favourite episode of the whole show.

Final season is 2026, fuck I canā€™t wait that long!

We'll have Gen V season 2 to tide us over (it'll most likely have some crossover with The Boys before the two shows merge in the final season of The Boys in '26
 

bitbydeath

Member
The shapeshifter matches the strength and durability of the person she shifts to. In this episode there was a scene where she essentially said 'I can't use your powers Annie, because you're having problems yourself'.

If Annie is strong enough to choke herself out, then she would be strong enough to choke out her own mimic.
Still not sure how she got her powers back, or what the issue was there.
 
Still not sure how she got her powers back, or what the issue was there.
They were going for a Spiderman 2 moment of Annie having to accept who she really is and not deny that deep down she was always Starlight, including her younger years where she was not a good person. They could have made this better with a much-needed flashback, just like with other characters facing their pasts and moving on from it in their own way.

It was the running theme of this season:
  • Butcher finally accepting that he wants to destroy all supes. He is done trying.
  • Homelander finally shedding his past of needing empathetic loving humans in his life. He has stopped caring.
  • Annie/Starlight finally accepting that she has a selfish/asshole side. She is done bottling it up.
  • The Deep finally accepting his role that he is a bad guy/killer. He told Annie he's done pretending. He told Homelander he wants to kill.
  • New Noir finally understanding and accepting why killing is fun as a supe. He will probably be even more of a killer next season.
  • Ashley finally realizing she isn't as strong-willed as she thought. She chose not to be free, she is just a coward, and out of desperation she did a stupid act in the end.
  • Kimiko finally sharing her past and growing from it. She accepts that she knows how to kill but will do it for good reasons. Also the final scene with her was a big change.
  • A-Train finally changing to be the hero that he always wanted to be deep down. He made some critical saves this season and left The Seven.
  • Ryan finally deciding to follow his mother's mantra, to the detriment of both his father Homelander and step-father Butcher. He does not want to fight.
  • Neumann realizing that she can't change this endless system for a future with her daughter, husband, and father. She finally gives The Boys a chance to help her.
  • Hughie accepting that he needed to step up and make choices in the group and not continue to be the little Hughie his Dad saw. He made a hard choice in the end for the team with Neumann (even if it didn't go well thanks to RNG Butcher).

The two characters who didn't really have a moment of growth this season was MM and Frenchie. Frenchie's past has been more than explored so this felt like a repeat of him doing it again. I guess the best development he got was that him and Kimiko finally said that they love each other, romantically. MM was always going to choose his morally right path which was in the opposite direction of his family being safe. He just needed a pep talk to do so, and oddly enough it was A-train who did it.

That's why I was saying earlier that this season has a lot of good bits mixed with bad bits. Technically it was a character growth season, but I think maybe the way it was paced or sequenced wasn't up to par with other seasons.

I think that once next season hits you will probably see a ton of people going back to youtube clips of this season and noticing extra character moments they didn't realize the first time around, because they were too annoyed or bored with season 4 as a whole.
 
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