After the Season 4 Finale, What’s Next for ‘The Boys’?

In the closing minutes of the fourth-season finale of The Boys, a montage helps preview how the series will resume in its fifth and final batch of episodes. Homelander has gained more power than ever, while the Boys are splitting up and running away so that they can fight another day. Annie regains her abilities as she drives away with Hughie, Frenchie and Kimiko finally look hopeful as they prepare to leave on a ship together, and M.M. is about to get on a flight, possibly to rejoin his family. In some ways, it’s a familiar conclusion: Even though Homelander and his army of supes have won this round, the Boys will pick themselves back up and try again next season.

However, in the show’s typical fashion, The Boys subverts expectations at the last moment.

After acting president Steven Calhoun declares martial law and deputizes superheroes, who will report to Homelander, the federally sanctioned supercops descend on each of the Boys. Annie is able to escape from a Magneto-like supe, but Hughie gets captured. Kimiko says her first words in the entire series, screaming “no” as Frenchie is led into an armored van by Cate Dunlap, and Sam Riordan holds Kimiko back. M.M. gets the most unpleasant abduction of all, as a returning supe with a rather unique physical attribute takes him down in the airport bathroom. Only Butcher is left unscathed, as he’s already gone rogue with the last dose of the supe virus and a renewed sense of vengeful purpose.

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As eventful as the last few moments of the episode are, they’re almost quaint compared with everything else that happens in one of the most chaotic episodes of The Boys to date—and that says a lot for a series with flying sheep, superhero orgies, and exploding heads galore. The finale, which aired on Thursday, is the culmination of a season that centers its pointed political commentary on former president Donald Trump. Starting with Homelander’s trial, the parallels drawn between the leader of the Seven and Trump are very much intentional (perhaps too intentional). But the finale centers on an incident that imitates real-world events very much by accident: a failed assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.

(Given how close the finale comes after the attempt on Trump’s life at his rally last weekend, Prime Video added a trigger warning ahead of the episode and released a statement saying that “any scene or plotline similarities to these real-world events are coincidental and unintentional.” The title of the installment was also changed from “Assassination Run” to simply “Season Four Finale.”)

In Episode 8, Homelander’s plans to kill president-elect Robert Singer and replace him with Victoria Neuman fail. Homelander’s hired assassin, a shapeshifter who’s captured the real Annie and assumed her form, is discovered by Hughie just before she can kill Singer (but not before Hughie and fake Annie got engaged). Meanwhile, Neuman gets cold feet after Homelander threatens her daughter, Zoe, in extremely vivid terms. To make matters worse for Homelander, Neuman tries to betray him and protect Zoe by cutting a deal with the Boys, before Butcher intervenes and brutally kills her. If not for Sister Sage’s diabolical schemes (and ego), Homelander’s power play might have utterly failed. Yet the World’s Smartest Person is able to turn their losses into gains by leaking compromising footage of Singer to the press, leading to his arrest. And with Neuman out of the picture entirely, Homelander has effectively become the true power behind the White House.

In addition to the episode’s central events, there really is a lot jammed into the span of 60-ish minutes: Ashley takes Compound V to save herself from being killed along with half of Vought; Kimiko and Frenchie kiss again, and it seemed a little less weird this time (?); Ryan kills Grace Mallory after she and Butcher fail to win Homelander’s son over to their cause; and a slumbering Soldier Boy appears in a Marvel-like stinger as he’s delivered to none other than Homelander in a mid-credits scene.

There’s plenty left to unpack from the conclusion of Season 4, so let’s break down some of the finale’s most important events and where things stand ahead of the final season.

The Boys Divided

The Boys have failed many, many times. They have changed headquarters before, and they have worked directly for Neuman and for Singer, who gave them orders to kill Neuman. Becoming fugitives is nothing new for them. But things have never looked more dire for the show’s titular group of Homelander hunters than they do now.

Hughie, M.M., Frenchie, and Kimiko are all being taken into custody—and Homelander’s custody at that. (It remains to be seen what awaits Kimiko, given that she’s the sole supe of the bunch.) Only Annie manages to escape, and given her celebrity as the now-notorious Starlight, it won’t be easy for her to live a life on the run.

Heading into Season 5, the Boys’ fate may rest, once again, in Butcher’s hands. In one of the finale’s pivotal scenes, Butcher’s big bet on Ryan seems like it might finally pay off, as Butcher appeals to his ex-stepson’s (?) inner goodness. But Mallory foolishly presses their luck too far and lets Ryan realize not only that she and Butcher mean to use him as a weapon against Homelander, but also that they plan to leave him no choice in the matter. And so Ryan kills her and escapes, despite all the signs he had shown of feeling conflicted about his father.

With Mallory dead and Ryan seemingly a lost cause, Butcher lets the devil on his shoulder—or, really, visions of Jeffrey Dean Morgan hurling profanities at him—take the wheel at last. Unleashing his Temp V–induced, Symbiote-like tentacles, Butcher rips Neuman in half and steals the supe virus from the Boys. By the end of the episode, Butcher is on the road, carrying the one known weapon that could finally kill Homelander.

Given that he very much seemed to be conscious as he killed Neuman (in front of her daughter, at that), Butcher may have an actual symbiotic relationship with this suped-up cancer inside him, allowing him to live on with monstrously powerful capabilities. For Butcher, Season 4 was all about fighting his inner demons in what appeared to be the waning days of his life. Now it looks like he is finally ready to unleash those demons on Homelander and anyone else who stands in his way.

Loose Ends and Gen V

Even with all the ground the eighth episode covers, there are still a lot of loose ends heading into the final season, with the fates of several characters left unresolved by the end of the finale.

The Boys have their work cut out for them, but there are two turncoat members of the Seven who could return to help them: A-Train and Maeve, the latter of whom didn’t even appear in Season 4. A-Train’s redemption arc played a big role in this season, and much like Maeve before him, he went into hiding once he finished playing his part helping the Boys. He’s nowhere to be seen in the finale, but he and Maeve seem too important and too powerful to be left on the sidelines in the inevitable climactic showdown with Homelander next season. (And Maeve still needs to get revenge for her eye, among many other things.)

After Ryan kills Mallory in the finale, we don’t get to see what becomes of him. Ryan had just discovered that his father ordered a hit on the president-elect, raped his mother, and killed a lot of innocent people, on top of the betrayal he’s feeling from Mallory and Butcher’s self-serving manipulations. (As careful as Mallory was in the series, and even in her Gen V cameo, she really fumbled this one right in the end zone, didn’t she?) Throughout the season, Ryan showed the ways his mother’s—and Butcher’s—lessons have rubbed off on him for the better. Yet The Boys made sure to demonstrate just how close he is to becoming like Homelander, too. The path he pursues in Season 5 may tip the scales in one side’s favor.

There’s also the matter of two former Vought CEOs: Ashley and Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito). The last we see of Ashley in the finale, she’s not looking too hot! After she shoots up a vial of Compound V from Homelander’s not-so-secret stash, Ashley’s wig falls off and her head rapidly expands and mutates as she screams in agony. But, hey, at least she’s still alive, which is more than most of her unfortunate former colleagues can say. Meanwhile, Edgar appeared to have a one-way ticket back to prison at the end of Episode 5—except Neuman intercepted him before he arrived there. In Episode 6, she played dumb when Homelander brought up the subject of Edgar’s release, telling Homelander that “he can’t hurt us.” Edgar hasn’t been seen or so much as mentioned since. With his pseudo-daughter, Neuman, now dead, he’ll surely be looking to do a lot more than just hurt the feelings of Vought’s bad product.

And although it’s not necessarily a loose end in The Boys, the next chapter of Gen V’s story may provide our next clues about how everything will end in Season 5. The spinoff series’ first season introduced the supe virus that became a major factor in Season 4, and the Guardians of Godolkin—Sam and Cate—made a pair of cameos, including in the finale. And it seems like Gen V’s second season will pick up where The Boys left off.

In November, The Boys creator and showrunner Eric Kripke, who codeveloped and executive-produces Gen V, told Variety: “There’s Season 3 of The Boys, and then after that Gen V takes place, and then after that The Boys Season 4 takes place. And then after that, Gen V Season 2 takes place. It’s all more like cars on a train than it is a plate of spaghetti.”

The massive societal changes that occurred in the fourth season of The Boys will surely inform the world that Gen V will return to. (No release date has been set for Season 2 yet; production was scheduled to start earlier this year but was delayed after the death of actor Chace Perdomo, who played Andre Anderson, in March. If the show’s social media account is any indication, class will soon be back in session.) Gen V’s reciprocal impact on the ending of the flagship series is less certain.

There’s certainly some irony in the expanding universe of a series that has always been adept at making fun of other superhero cinematic universes. As Kripke told Variety in June, “The Boys story is about Butcher and Homelander and these two planets crashing into each other and this particular story doesn’t work without both of them. And you can only keep that going for so long. … But there can be other stories and other corners of the universe. And hopefully, it’s vibrant and perverted enough to allow for those stories.”

Homelander’s (Latest) Rise to Power

“Today, a new age of superheroes begins.”

In another iconic Homelander moment, Season 4 ends with the supe saying these words in an address to the nation—and to the rest of the world. And it comes at the tail end of a threat made directly to Starlight’s remaining supporters: “To the Starlighters, whatever rock you’re hiding under, we’re coming for you. I’m coming for you.”

Homelander has declared open season on essentially anyone who chooses to stand in his way, as Phase 2 of his and Sage’s plans—well, really, just Sage’s plans—begins. She has surely gained Homelander’s trust after she came back to clean up the mess that he and Firecracker got themselves into and deliver everything Homelander wanted. Now, they can move forward with their sinister plan of rounding up any “dissidents,” as Tek Knight referred to them, and locking them up in his prisons. (Chances are, that’s where the Boys are already headed—unless Homelander has somewhere special in mind for them.) As Firecracker says in a rather on-the-nose spin on a familiar political slogan, “We will make America super again.”

Protests were already erupting around the country after Homelander outed Neuman as a supe on live television, and now the president-elect has been arrested, the VP-elect is dead, and Calhoun has given Homelander more power than he’s ever had. Perhaps even worse, Calhoun has given the leader of the Seven the gift of another dangerously volatile supe: Soldier Boy, Homelander’s biological father. The two may have left off on a bit of a sour note when they last met at the end of Season 3, but with all the daddy issues that Homelander has (not to mention the mommy ones), he will no doubt be looking to make up for their lost father-son time in the episodes to come.

It might be awhile until The Boys returns for its fifth and final season: In June, Kripke told Variety that nothing is locked in yet but that his team would start filming around mid-November and shoot “well into” the middle of 2025. That’s OK: We could all probably use some time to recover from the exploding cattle, flesh-tearing shapeshifters, and Webweaving sex kinks. Well, at least until Gen V returns in all its disturbing glory.