10 Valid Criticisms of The Boys Season 4

Superhero fatigue is real. How can it not be with all the superhero films and TV shows that Marvel and DC have been shoving down our throats? But amid this endless stream of superhero content, there is one show that can save us all: The Boys. Based on the eponymous comic book series by Dynamite Entertainment, The Boys is a delightfully depraved superhero show that makes the MCU look like child’s play. It offers a realistic and tragic glimpse at how the world would look if superheroes really existed. The “supes,” as they’re called in this world, wouldn’t always be heroes. They’d be flawed, egotistical, even terrible people, who would be supported by a billion-dollar media empire that’s more interested in selling merchandise than saving lives.

During its first three seasons, The Boys has been praised by both critics and audiences alike and has amassed a legion of fans. Its recently released fourth season however, which just wrapped up last week, received the show’s lowest audience score on Rotten Tomatoes: 53%. And here are 10 valid reasons that justify fans’ unhappiness with the latest season.

10 Black Noir Deserved Better

Black Noir was one of the best supporting characters on The Boys. A silent assassin, he was a black ninja with regenerative abilities and super strength. If you saw Black Noir, then it usually meant that he was coming to kill you, not save you.

Season 3 revealed that Black Noir suffered physical and emotional trauma at the hands of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). The finale set up a highly anticipated confrontation between the two characters — but it never happened. Instead, Noir was unexpectedly murdered by Homelander, which left a bitter taste in fans’ mouths.

Season 4 continued this disservice to Black Noir. He was replaced by a new Noir, who could actually speak and spent the whole season trying to “understand” his character. It was funny but also felt inferior to the Black Noir from previous seasons.

Season 3 also spent a lot of time humanizing Noir and diving into his past. Season 4 undid some of this character development by revealing that Black Noir would get a “murder boner” whenever he killed people, painting him as another sociopathic supe rather than a brain-damaged assassin who was strictly following orders.

9 Reversed Much of The Deep’s Character Development

The Deep (Chace Crawford) is a great parody of DC’s Aquaman. It doesn’t matter if Jason Mamoa is playing the character; Aquaman is lame, and everyone knows it. Aside from his sexual assault on Starlight (Erin Moriarty) in the first episode, The Deep is a comically stupid character, a bro with a sexual fetish for aquatic animals.

After getting canceled by Starlight and the public, The Deep spent the last three seasons trying to redeem himself and become a better person. And season 4 undid a lot of that work.

Once again, The Deep was reduced to another sociopathic supe carrying out murders for Homelander. It would be different if he didn’t take pleasure in the killings, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Like Homelander, The Deep now wields his superhuman abilities to strike fear and force respect in his victims. In his fight with Starlight, The Deep admits that he was never sorry for what he did to her, which upset many fans. There’s no more redemption for The Deep now. He’s shown his true colors and has established himself as a supporting antagonist on The Boys.

8 Inconsistencies with Homelander’s Powers

Homelander (played to perfection by Antony Starr) is The Boys’ version of Superman, the closest thing to a god that humanity has ever seen. He’s a near-invincible supe with super strength, flight, laser vision, and heightened senses.

The man can detect scents and sounds from far distances, but season four had some gaping inconsistencies with Homelander’s abilities. It boggled viewers’ minds when Hughie (Jack Quaid) disguised himself as Webweaver at Tek Knight’s mansion, successfully managing to fool Homelander.

Even if Webweaver’s suit did have a funky smell on it, how did Homelander not sniff out Hughie? Then, just a few minutes later, the Boys crash Tek Knight’s mansion. Starlight has a soft-spoken conversation with Firecracker (Valorie Curry), and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) straight up shoots Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) in the head. Homelander, with his heightened senses, couldn’t pick up any of this?

7 Frenchie and Kimiko Were Supposed to be Family

Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) have been close since season one. Fans couldn’t help but wonder about the nature of their relationship: are they going to hook up, or is this thing strictly platonic?

In season 3, Frenchie and Kimiko shared a brief kiss that seemed to hint at romance. But the pair later agreed that the kiss was weird and that their relationship went beyond romantic love; the two of them were family. Many fans liked that The Boys went this route — but season four had other ideas.

In the season 4 finale, Frenchie and Kimiko shared another kiss, and this time, it was full of passion and romance. But fans weren’t buying it. We’ve already seen this story; why is The Boys bringing it back?

And more importantly, why is the show changing it? It was refreshing to see two close friends of the opposite sex not feel the need to hook up. Not to mention, Kimiko acted supportive and excited when Frenchie found himself in a relationship earlier in the season. There were no hints of jealousy or longing on her part.

Likewise, Frenchie didn’t seem to have any conflicting desires for Kimiko at the time either. The fact that Frenchie and Kimiko have acknowledged their brother-sister bond actually makes their season four kiss even weirder than the last one.

6 Hughie’s Trauma and Repeated Sexual Assault

This one triggered a lot of fans, especially those who love Hughie. The poor kid just suffered the traumatic loss of his father (Simon Pegg), who Hughie had to euthanize. Immediately after that, he’s strapped down to a table and sexually assaulted by Tek Knight (Derek Wilson) and Ashley (Colby Minifie). The showrunners called this scene hilarious.

But for Hughie fans, it was a callous moment that pushed the envelope too far and seemed to prioritize shock value over the well-being of one of the show’s protagonists. But The Boys didn’t stop there with its abuse of Hughie.

He’s later sexually assaulted again by a shapeshifting supe who disguises herself as Starlight. Sure, he thought it was Starlight at the time. But imagine his horror when Hughie, the equivalent of a boy scout, learns that he had inadvertently cheated on the love of his life with a sociopathic stranger. Not to mention, this supe did sexual things to Hughie that he didn’t seem to want or enjoy.

And then to top it all off, Starlight gets mad at him like it’s somehow his fault, as if this poor guy didn’t just euthanize his dad and get sexually assaulted multiple times in one season.

The Boys spends a lot of time on mental health, giving characters the time and space to deal with their trauma. Kimiko, Frenchie, Starlight, even Homelander — their traumas have all been handled delicately and with care. But when it comes to Hughie, The Boys is too busy sexually torturing him, turning him into the butt of a really bad joke.

5 Butcher’s Entire Story Arc

Another fan-favorite character is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the vengeful, superhero-hating, foul-mouthed Brit that every character in The Boys loves to hate. Butcher has been a major player since season 1, but it felt like he was side-lined for much of season 4. He was booted off the Boys, and literally every time he appeared on-screen, everyone would call him an a**hole and throw a fit that he was breathing the same air as them. It got a little old after a while.

Butcher’s storyline mainly consisted of talking to hallucinations and dealing with his terminal illness. One of the “big twists” of the season was his friendship with Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who — surprise, surprise — turned out to be another hallucination. Kessler seems to be a split personality a la Fight Club, a twist that we’ve seen over and over again. Hopefully, in the final season, the showrunners find a way to better utilize Butcher and Karl Urban’s talents.

4 The Boys Never Die

The Boys — Hughie, Butcher, M.M., Frenchie, Kimiko, and Starlight — have been intact since season 1. Despite constantly facing off against powerful, dangerous, and sometimes murderous supes, The Boys always manage to survive and escape unscathed. Four seasons of life-threatening action, and they barely have a scar to show for it.

By the end of season 4, it starts to feel a little ridiculous. There’s one scene where Sister Sage and her lackeys have The Boys surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned. It’s the sort of moment where a major death could’ve and should’ve happened. But once again, The Boys manage to knock off their superhero opponents without losing one of their own.

And what ends up saving them? Pinkeye (and also Butcher). Sure, we saw Grace Mallory, the founder of The Boys, (Laila Robins) bite the big one in the season four finale. But she’s not an active member of The Boys and is more of a supporting character. It’s like The Boys are protected by a superpower of their own: plot armor. And it might be time to shed it in the show’s final season.

3 Too Much Focus on Shock Value

The Boys has always been known for its shock value, ever since its first episode when Hughie’s girlfriend is unexpectedly obliterated by a supe at supersonic speed. This show is no stranger to gore and graphic sexual content. But it all used to feel purposeful, even necessary, to capture the deranged world of these characters.

But in season 4, the depravity felt like it was only there to generate shock and awe, as if the showrunners felt the need to up the ante in the gross and violent categories from previous seasons.

You have a bastardized version of Spider-Man crapping out spider webs like diarrhea. You have Hughie getting sexually tortured by Tek Knight and Ashley, who rubs her juices all over Hughie’s face. You have Homelander, the strongest and most badass character in the show, being breastfed like an infant. You have Hughie’s father, a nice, ordinary guy who’s injected with Compound V and unwittingly massacres a hospital. And then, you have a supe who’s a part of a rimjob train with about 10 clones of himself. The ultra-violence and sex felt way more gratuitous during the show’s fourth season, and also unnecessary.

2 Many Side Storylines Felt Pointless

Many of the side plots this season felt pointless. Frenchie winds up in a romantic relationship with a man named Colin (Elliot Knight), whose family he killed once upon a time ago. Ridden with guilt, he turns himself into the police — only to be released a couple episodes later to help out the Boys, negating his storyline and his desire for redemption.

And now that Frenchie has a burgeoning relationship with Kimiko, it’s doubtful that anything more will come from his relationship with Colin. Someone from Kimiko’s past also shows up this season, a scarred young woman who was involuntarily injected with Compound V alongside Kimiko. But this character was dropped like a hot potato.

Will this young woman resurface in The Boys’ fifth and final season, or will she go the route of the missing Russian in The Sopranos, never to be acknowledged again? Hughie’s mom also suddenly turns up after years of absence, while his father meets a seemingly random demise. Despite spending hours on these storylines, all of them fizzled out. They didn’t further develop the characters themselves or the show’s central plot and ultimately led nowhere.

1 Things Got Way Too Political

This is by far the biggest complaint about season 4. The Boys always dabbled in political satire, holding up a cracked mirror to our own society and government. But this time, they went a little too far with it. Firecracker came to represent radical Republicans, rambling on talk shows about far-fetched right-wing ideologies and conspiracies.

Meanwhile, Starlight came to represent radical, woke Democrats. And then, to top it all off, these two characters clashed violently over one of the most sensitive topics in our country right now: abortion. The producers’ own political beliefs seemed to be interwoven into the show’s narrative; there was a lot more support among the main characters for pro-choice rather than pro-life.

More notably, Team Homelander spent the whole season conspiring on how to get into the White House and obtain more power for themselves. Their scheme involved an assassination attempt on the current president, a plot that eerily reflected current events. This coincidence forced producers to kick off the season 4 finale with a disclaimer, alluding to the real-world assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. And the date of this fictitious assassination attempt in The Boys? January 6, the date of the Trump mob’s notorious insurrection on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Unless you live under a rock, then you’re well-aware that 2024 is an election year. Politics are ramping up, especially now that current president Joe Biden is no longer seeking re-election, sending American politics into a tailspin. Many of us run to entertainment and TV to escape our real-world situations, not to be reminded of them so harshly.

In capturing our divided America, season 4 of The Boys spent its entire story arc drowning viewers in political commentary at a time when many of us are trying desperately to get away from it.