‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: “We’ll Keep The Red Flag Flying Here”

Nobody’s a superhero on the inside. That’s the crux of The Boys Season 4 Episode 3 (“We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here”), where everyone’s battle starts with themselves. Kessler, who Jeffrey Dean Morgan is playing with a cynical, tie-loosened weariness that demands more screen time, challenges his old buddy Billy Butcher to overcome his inner turmoil about honoring his late wife and doing the right thing – as the CIA sees it – which is to lace powerful young Ryan’s cookies with a fentanyl sedative. Annie January, who has reemerged as Starlight on her own terms, discovers that Firecracker’s hatred of her is not just a culture war stoke. Annie wronged the newly-installed member of the Seven when they were both beauty pageant teens, knowledge that inflames her shame over a mean girl past. And even as they seek healing through new love and therapy, the collective progress of both Frenchie and Kimiko is threatened by emotional roadblocks linked to their respective pasts. The Boys will always embrace gonzo gore. Eagerly. But it’s at least trying to expose its characters’ inner lives. Not just their innards.

Which isn’t to say Homelander won’t still laser beam a random Vought employee and leave Ashley Barrett to clean up the corpse. But even this instance offers a chance for reflection. Once Homelander consolidated power by bringing Firecracker and his new right hand Sister Sage into the Seven, Barrett got fed up, and griped to her masochist sex partner that she was about to quit. Bearing witness to another indiscriminate murder is a real amplifier for the instinct of self-preservation though, and instead Barrett put her resignation letter through the shredder. 

Victoria Neuman actually is a supe on the inside, the blood-manipulating, head-popping kind, who must maintain her outer veneer of progressive ideals if she is to seize the Oval Office. President-elect Robert Singer knows what she’s hiding – he’s leading the charge to have her snuffed by the CIA. And she knows he knows. Which makes the whole scene with their transition team a hoot, because Neuman’s gotta sit there and lie about supporting a federal ban on superheroes in police, military, and government positions. While Singer dismisses supes as entertainers – “Shouldn’t we put them back on The Masked Singer where they belong?” – Neuman secretly meets with Homelander and Sage, whose plan to overthrow the federal government hinges on Neuman revealing her true self. Sage believes this is the key. But that doesn’t make her any happier about going from the Homelander Whisperer to a suited-up Seven member.

Speaking of Sage, who else is seeking clarity on her motivations for helping Homelander stage a violent national overthrow in the first place? We’re still waiting on that backstory to drop. But in the meantime there is an intriguing scene between her and the Deep, of all people. Equally humiliated by Homelander during a meeting of the Seven, Deep ignores his octopus lover Ambrosius when she tries to comfort him – he gives her a douchey “Everything’s fine, babe” dismissal – and instead complains to Sage in her quarters. But his gripes only go as far as her bloomin’ onion from Outback Steakhouse, and they jump each other’s bones as Say Yes to the Dress plays in the background.

Kimiko’s therapist has referred to her condition as psychogenic mutism. In other words, her inability to speak is not physical, and is instead an effect of her emotional trauma. And it’s taken a few sessions, but Kimiko’s willing to explore this. Especially once she connects it to the Shining Light Liberation Army, a terrorist cell of which happens to exist right near Boys headquarters. She recruits Frenchie for backup, who just popped a “melange of hallucinogens” – say that phrase aloud in a French accent like Tomer Capone, c’est very agréable – and they sneak in, prepared to kill. But retribution on the SLLA for murdering her family is derailed by a high-as-fuck Frenchie imagining the blood spewing out of Kimiko’s enemies as toy ducks and plush toys, and she lets a woman with scars across her face flee in the mayhem unharmed. (They clearly knew each other.) Meanwhile, Frenchie’s hallucinations morph into a visit from Nina, his former Russian mafia boss, and all of the people he ever killed for her – including crush Colin’s family – appear and start taunting him. For Kimiko and Frenchie, their pasts are prologue for the present problems. Their inner lives are interfering with their ability to kick butt in the Boys’ real world. But for now it’s all just friction. “We can’t solve each other’s problems.”

Homelander is unable to reach Ryan with his usual brand of toxic narcissism and emotional vacancy. It turns out parenting is hard! Hard enough that, for the second time this season, the head supe seems on the verge of just laser-eyeing his biological son and being done with it. But instead, his inner self comes calling. Or, selves. They beckon from a shattered mirror. “It’s time to overcome this need for love, this sickness, once and for all. You’re never going to be your true self until you transcend your humanity.” Homelander is a superhero on the outside. But inside, he’s in a battle. Just like everybody else.

BOYS NOIZE:

• If you watched Gen V, the sequence in “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here” where Frenchie is super high and seeing Kewpie dolls and bubbles instead of body parts and blood spatter has the same exact feel as when Sam Riordan imagined his attackers as Muppets and ripped them limb from bloody limb.
• Hughie has a bit of a heart to heart with his mom Daphne. She apologizes for walking out on him and his dad all those years ago, and attributes it to a severe and lingering case of postpartum depression. “Getting dressed, it was like Everest. Then one night I took 40 Ambien and tried to kill myself.” She left the next day. “I was just fucked up. You know, like everyone…”

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.