The Boys: Season Four Finale

 "I used to freak out whenever I saw blood. Now I barely blink at it."

Wow. That's how you do a season finale. Deeply satisfying, emotionally deep, devilishly clever and with the mother of all twists at the end. And, of course, it's about something. Far right skulduggery while certifyuing a US presidential election on January 6th, plus all the horrible Vought propaganda... yeah, this is not too far removed from realty. Indeed, that scene where Homelander is disgusted at Firecracker's coughing and humilates her for it, despite the fact it's a side effect of harmful drugs she's taking so that he can, er, you know... that total, cold ingratitude: he's Trump, isn't he?

The way this plays out is brilliantly done. Before the devastating endfing we have moments of hope. Yes, Annie is disgusted at Hughie for sleeping with her doppelganger, but she doesn't dump him. And Hughie's speech about forgiving a repentant Victoria Neuman persuades Frenchie and Kimiko to forgive themselves- and, at last, kiss!

But this is bleak, and seems to be leading inexorably to a dystopia, with Homelander's puppet as president. Billy Butcher is dying. The anti-supe virus isn't ready. And yet... the assassin is defeated. And Butcher reveals the power he's unknowingly had... and uses it to kill Neuman, a horrible, yet perhaps necessary act from a man who may be opposed to the baddies, but could never be called a hero. And the failure to persuade Ryan- and his casual slaying of Mallory- is horrible. As is Homelander's casual order to kill everyone on staff who knows too much.

So the ending, with Homelander thinking he's lost until Sage turns up and reveals it's all gone according to her plan, is inspired. Dystopia achieved, and Homelander has a newfound awe of Sage.And... most of the Boys are caught, no doubt destined for internment camps. Annie escapes though. And A-Train is out there somewhere. And then there's Ashley, last seen having taken V and undergoing ba horrifying transformation...

This is utter, utter genius telly.

The Boys: The Insider

 "Necessity is the MILF of invention!"

Brr. That fascist puppet show is the creepiest thing ever. But it's a sign, yet again, of just how on-the-nose The Boys is on the truly terrifying fascism of Trump and all the other MAGA terrorists.

So much happens in this penultimate episode. There's a shapeshifting baddie. A-Train comes good... and reveals himself as the leak: no going back now. Is this a redemption arc? It's chilling, though, when Starlight says he was "born uppity", just before a distraught Homelander fires Sage, who is . But a depressed Homelander is a dangerous Homelander, especially once he sees what Ryan's done on national TV. All this is at once clever plotting and good characterisation.

Then there's Butcher's collapse, Kimiko's connection with Frenchie over their scared guilt for past murders... and her near death. There's MM coming close to leaving for Belize with his family... but deciding to fight the good fight anyway. This seems ominous. Is he going to die in the finale? Alongside, surely, Butcher?

Then there's Webweaver's humiliating death, harsh even for someone as deeply masochistic as him.... and oh, the Deep. It's almost tragic how his octopus lover gently confronts him about Sage, only for him to instictively end up killing her, her last words being that she loves him... and later on he finds out that Sage has also been doing it with Black Noir. Ouch. The Deep has to be quite the most impressive charcterisation of a truly pathetic, contemptible man I've seen pretty much anywhere.

Gulp. Here comes the finale. It promises to be good...

The Boys: Beware the Jabberwock, My Son

 "It's an absolute wonder to me that you've all managed to live this long..."

Oh my. Only The Boys could possibly do flying killer sheep infected with Compound Vi quite like this episode. As ever, this is exquisite.

So many little touches. I love, once again, the little bits of Vought advertising excess, with its tone deaf attempts at diversity and the blatant not to Kevin Feige's public unveling of the next raft of Marvel films.

There's so much more, though. The ending, when Billy Butcher reveals what his real, devilishly clever plan was. The links to Gen V. Homelander's slowly successful corruption of Ryan. Ashley's cold betrayal of the ex-sub whoi dumped her, framimg him and ensuring his horrible death. Seeing Stan Edgar again, and his commentary on everyone. Firecracker really going all out to destroy Annie.

And yet there's real heart here. Frenchie's terrible guilt, and Catholic guilt at that, over all the muders he's committed... and what it spurs him to do. 

But the real, incredible, heart-wrenching tragedy here is, of course, Hughie and his dad, with a tour de force performance from Simon Pegg. The dynamics between Hughie and both his parents here is utterly incredible. 

And yet, even here, there's glorious amounts of gore. Ah, The Boys. Like nothing else on telly, and I love it so much.

The Boys: Wisdom of the Ages

 "Your life is literally in your hands..."

Wow, This is a dark, dark episode. For a start, much of it consists of Homelander slowly torturing, humiliating and killing those who made his childhood so damaging. It's all good character stuff... but damn, it's dark.

But so is everything else. Sage has her own demons, unable to be free from the burden of her genius. So much so... that she gets her toyboy the Deep to give her a te,porary fontal lobotomy so she can dumb down for a while.Wow. And that's only the second grossest moment in this episode. The worst is... you know.

Then there's the dying Butcher, the little worm that's roaming in his skin, and that... explosion or something that saves his life. Frenchie finally confesses to Colin. Hughie does his ultimaterly fruitless little deal with A-Train... and what's happening with his Dad?

And yet... the most distressing part of the episode is how cruelly Firecracker (who at one point say to Sage "You know, when I first met you, I thought you were kind of uppity. But you're one of the good ones"... just wow) ruins Annie's life on television via a six hour hatchet job. Liberals are always held to higher moral standards than fascists, because we have morals and they don't. The asymmetry explains why they succeed, and why we must sometimes compromise on our ethics in order to crush them.

This is darker, more of a downer, than most episodes. But, as ever, besides the grossness and the cynicism is a real moral outrage.

The Boys: We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

 "Elon Musk has more charm than he does. And she's half-android."

This episode proves that, good as the last two were, it's possible to get even better. Such a brilliant, perfect, nuanced piece of television.

There's all kinds of very contemporary subtext here, with Vought and its cronies pushing superheroes as a far right wedge issue. There's a man with a gun who nearly murders some of Starlight's followers because of a crazy, Pizzagate-style conspiracy theory. There's a nod to the concerning transphobia epidemic that's rife today, Sister Sage's sinister Project 25-style plans include plans to remove all books covering "critical Supe theory" and allowing Supes to outrank the police and military. Brr.

Yet the character stuff is deep. Hughie finally gets to see his errant mother as a real human being, who left her child not becaudse of innate evil but because it was the only way to save herself folloeing a suicide attempt caused by post-partum depression. Wow. Sister Sage and Firecracker join the Seven... and, very cleverly, after we've come to realise what a nasty, MAGA piece of work Firecracker is, the rug gets pulled out from under us: she genuinely comes from nothing, and had her life chances ruined by thirteen year old little rick girl Annie... and "People don't change". Wow.

Meanwhile, Kimiko realises she has to face her past and overcome her deomons, while Frenchie refuses to share about him, retreating into getting high, having to face not only that he's killed Colin's family but has murdered so many. It's interesting to see where they're going with this. M.M. struggles with leadership, the new Black Noir struggles with his acting, and the Deep has a love triangle going on with Sage and, er, an octopus.

But the real meat of the episode is the tug of war between an increasingly scary Homelander and the dying Butcher for Ryan. Butcher and Ryan have a truly affecting scene, Ryan clearly seeing Butcher asa flawed, damaged but ultimately good man. Homelander, meanwhile, is casually leaving a trail of human bodies behind him... but what't that multiple personality moment at the end? He has to go "back to the start?"

As ever with The Boys, I've no idea where this is going. But I bleeding well love it.

The Boys: Life Among the Septics

" I swear to God... stupod people who think they're smart make me want to eat my own ***."

Yet again, there's a lot going on here, early in the season though we are. Sister Sage continues to be fascinating- the smartest person on the planet and utterly amoral. She has ber own agenda too, and we start to see parts of it. Despite her obvuous disdain for the subtle racism directed at her, she is ultimately a supe supremacist, telling the Deep to stand up to Ashley because "You're an evolutionarily superior being."

Ironically, she's an interesting comparison to Stormfront and, in the end, similarly fascistic. It's just that her racism is less... old-fashioned. And Homelander quite agrees. Much of the episode consists of Ryan prepping for his first "Solo save" in public, which goes horribly wrong as the "villain" is horribly killed by Homelander. Chillingly, Homelander just doesn't get why Ryan is upset about this- "humans are fragile".

Horrifying though this is, it shows a horrible truth: superheroes never truly save anyone, it's all staged... as A-Train is forced to admit to his nephews. Meanwhile, he's filming his own origin movie which is changing his past to include all sorts of subtly racist tropes... and Will Ferrell. No wonder he's annoyed enough to sneak footage exonerating last episode's two murder scapegoats to Annie and Hughie.

Meanwhile, Kimiko gets drunk, continues to be lovely to Frenchie and maybe, just maybe, confronts her own past. Hughie, meanwhile, confronts his errant mother. And the ongoing psychodrama between M.M. and the dying Butcher continues.

Best of all, as ever, is the social commentary- the subtle and not so subtle racism of MAGA America, and the dangers of conspiracy theories, which are far from harmless and all have dangeroud far right ideology not far beneath the surface. Ah, I love The Boys. I just need to get bleeding well caught up.