‘The Boys’ Returns With More Facism, Blood, and…Human Centipede Sex???

The Boys’ fourth season revolves around its numerous characters’ attempts to grapple with past mistakes, regrets, and traumas. Yet despite that narrative focus, Eric Kripke’s wild superhero series remains a forward-thinking affair that has its crimson-stained finger on the pulse of our present, dysfunctional American reality. Once again attuned to contemporary political and entertainment-industry discord, the Prime Video hit, which returns June 13, continues to use its comic book conceit to plumb the ugly depths of domestic strife and, in doing so, to trace the many steps that lead democracies into fascism. In terms of shining a spotlight on the factors threatening to transform the United States into a new extremist Reich, it’s as sharp as anything on television—not to mention as outrageous as ever, its satire infused with trademark X-rated explicitness.

While The Boys’ latest run may not feature a jaw-dropping sight to equals last season’s premiere-episode sex scene, that’s not for lack of trying; from a human centipede-style clone orgy and a photo of a gaping rear end to a gaggle of suped-up animals and, ultimately, a “murder boner,” Kipke’s series habitually pushes the boundaries of good taste. Such sensationalism is, on the one hand, simply a byproduct of its out-there sense of humor, which includes ceaseless creative profanity. However, it’s also central to its critique of a modern world that’s gone increasingly mad. Of course, in this universe, society has been fundamentally altered by Vought International’s Compound-V, a drug that bestows humans with extraordinary abilities. Yet despite its outlandish premise, Kripke’s saga (based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic of the same name) is vital for the ways in which it ridicules not merely its genre but, additionally, the current, perilous state of the union.

With 30-plus hours under its belt (not to mention last year’s spin-off Gen V, whose story and characters factor into this season), The Boys is chock full of plot, and it only gets more complicated in this return engagement. Having grasped that the public loves him whether he saves or slays innocents, psychotic “patriot” Homelander (Antony Starr) sets his sights on two related goals: finding new members for Vought’s Justice League-ish team The Seven, and molding his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) into a mini-me who’ll carry on his hateful legacy long after he’s gone (a pressing fear, given the gray hairs he’s sprouting and keeping in a jar). To accomplish the former, he hires Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the world’s smartest person, who becomes integral to his plot to seize control of both Vought and America. With regards to the latter, he works hard to indoctrinate the boy with intolerance (“They’re only humans and toys for our amusement”) and, in the process, to sever the kid’s ties with Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), who’s intent on fulfilling his promise to Ryan’s mom (and his dead wife) Becca (Shantel VanSanten) to protect the adolescent from Homelander.

Read more at The Daily Beast.