‘The Boys’ Season 4 Episode 4 Recap: “Wisdom of the Ages”

Oh, the frustrating state of Billy Butcher, that beloved and irascible prick, here in The Boys Season 4. First, he’s demoted. Next, he’s ejected. Then, he bruises his way back in, only to be booted. Again. Which brings us to episode 4 (“Wisdom of the Ages”), where for the umpteenth time, Mother’s Milk returns Billy Butcher to standing with the group. Enough! Can we just say that the Boys’ formal command structure is fragmented, that they’re all just passengers in the team’s communal teardrop window van, traveling to the site of their next big mistake? Because Butcher’s status seems to be conveniently unstable, much like his condition that’s supposedly terminal. Let’s get a closer look at those creepy-crawlies scuttling around beneath his skin: 

While Butcher is prone to disorientation and blackouts, and frequent interactions with an apparition of his late wife that only he can see, he’s also able to ram crowbars through the faces of furiously-multiplying supes and take clandestine meetings with black bag CIA guy Joe Kessler. And shortly after his latest reinstatement, it’s also revealed that Billy Butcher somehow has the power to explosively dismember another supe attacker. It’s Ezekiel (Shaun Benson), or at least it was Eziekel. The first appearance since Boys season 1 for the super-stretchy, blonde dye job sham preacher, now an ally of Firecracker, results in a particularly messy redistribution of his supposedly godly body parts. 

Butcher has become both unreliable and more reliable. All of that subcutaneous grub scurrying, while allegedly making him terminal, has also mysteriously made him incredibly powerful.   

So was it the Compound V that did it? Maybe, maybe not. In an impulsive play to save his clinically brain dead father, Hughie contracts with A-Train to steal him a vial of Comp-V from Homelander’s quarters. (A-Train does this, in the process discovering HL’s mason jar full of gray pubes, his secret stash of breast milk, and a vengeful Ashley Barrett leaving a floater in the head supe’s toilet.) When Butcher discovers the plan, he tells Hughie to quit while he’s behind, because Compound V will only worsen his dad’s situation. Butcher even admits he kept dosing himself with V. “All it did was bring up the big day.” Hughie should know better, anyway, given his own misadventures with the Vought superdrug. Maybe he should have listened to Kimiko’s heartfelt but pragmatic advice via text. “I think you’re supposed to let him die.”

(The circumstances of Hughie’s A-Train meetup also involve his first exclusive team-up with Kimiko, a fun character moment derailed by the reappearance of Kimiko’s enemies in the Shining Light Liberation Army. Kimiko’s personal history with the scarred SLLA fighter we met briefly in episode 3 is intriguing. But once she blows her in half with a grenade launcher, only for Kimiko to regenerate like it’s no big thing, any tension in the scene dissipates.)

Homelander has gone home, upon the advice of all of the Homelanders in Homelander’s shattered vanity mirror of a brain. But it’s not an opportunity for humanity and healing. It’s an opportunity for vicious spite. Emotional and physical torture of the researchers who raised him in a facility operated by Vought International. Re-lived scenes from his violent lab rat youth, like the “bad room” with its red vault door, or the oven where they attempted to burn off his skin. (“Get in the oven, Frank.”) And the humiliation of Marty (Murray Furrow), the research lead, who Homelander forces to publicly masturbate before lasering the man’s groin anyway. A sneering frat boy prank and desperate act of projection, perpetrated by a superhuman whose insecurities are his own built-in kryptonite. But hey, at least Homelander brought the lab an ice cream cake. Fudgie the Whale! 

Starlight’s reclamation of her power comes with great responsibility, which Annie January squanders by losing her cool on live television. Given Annie’s private medical records by Sister Sage during a broadcast of Truthbomb, Firecracker reveals Annie’s decision to have an abortion to the rabidly conservative viewing audience of Vought News Network. Starlight drowns out Firecracker’s ugly pronouncements of “baby killer!” by punching her repeatedly in the face, but Sage watches the commentary on the live feed go crazy – “First pebble down the mountain…” – and Robert Singer calls Annie to withdraw his support of her and the Starlight House nonprofit. Singer’s regulatory bill for supes was set to fly through Congress. Now, not. “Sorry doesn’t bring back all the Republican votes you just torched.” 

Firecracker’s toxic I’m rubber and you’re glue act is causing a lot of L’s for the Boys. It’s all so much performative blather from the new Seven supe, who Homelaner has characterized as “looking like she just fell off her jet ski.” What’s next from Firecracker? Showing up to the State of the Union dressed like a Batman villain? But it’s working. When Butcher and MM threaten to release incriminating information about Firecracker having sex with a minor, she turns it around on them, just like she did with Starlight. “Fuck around and find out,” Firecracker retorts, and leans into monster mode. She had a relationship “with a sweet young man.” Her sin was “washed away” by the love of Jesus. All of that bullshit. The damage is done. Firecracker’s brand remains strong – whatever you throw at her, it sticks to you – and the Boys are no closer to stopping Homelander and Sage’s plan for a coup.

BOYS NOIZE:

• The V52 Expo is an upcoming Vought event that resembles CPAC crossed with Comic-Con, and who’s on the list of announced speakers but Sam Riordan and Cate Dunlap. Speaking of Gen V, We also get an advertisement featuring Derek Wilson as Tek Knight, the Boys universe investigative journalist who never met a hole he didn’t want to fuck. “Tonight, 8/7 central, on The Whole Truth. After their bloody campus rampage, Marie Moreau and the other Goldolkin Four have seemingly vanished into a dark, gaping hole…” According to exec producer Eric Kripke, they were already writing the scripts for Gen V season 2 when co-star Chance Perdomo – As Andre, he was one of those falsely accused “Godolkin Four” – died in a motorcycle accident. (His role will not be re-cast.) As its first spinoff, the events of Gen V are emerging as increasingly relevant to what’s occurring in the main Boys timeline. 

• “Stab me in the heart, I die. Stab me in the brain, and the little fuckin’ bitch grows back.” As the world’s smartest person, it turns out Sage’s brain is furiously regenerative. But this process also causes her discomfort. Which leads us back to her episode 3 hookup with the Deep. She employs him again, this time saying they can continue their sex having, but only if he performs a field lobotomy on her frontal lobe. And he does it. This squirmy scene, where Deep sticks the probe in Sage’s eye socket, is very much giving Total Recall. “When you feel the crunch, you’re there…”  

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.