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ByDevin Meenan/
Spoilers for the first three premiere episodes of "The Boys" season 4 follow.
It's probably not a coincidence that while we're once more in an election year, "The Boys" season 4 has chosen to make a presidential campaign a cornerstone of its storyline. Last season ended with faux-progressive, head-popping supe Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit)being chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
"The Boys" season 4, episode 1, "Department of Dirty Tricks," opens with the election being called for Neuman and her running mate, Bob Singer (Jim Beaver). In a mild surprise, Singer is working with the Boys and their CIA handler Grace Mallory (Laila Robins). He now knows Neuman is a supe and that once he's sworn in, his head will only stay on his shoulders for so long.
Though he's not on the ticket, Homelander's (Antony Starr) presence is felt in Neuman's storyline. He's at the victory party and intends future-President Neuman to be his patsy in seizing control of America. This season reveals that while he's invulnerable to violence, Homelander ages like a human. (Starr is currently 48 years old in real life). His mid-life crisis is driving him to finally create the supe-dominated world he's always wanted so that he can leave it to his son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti).
During season 3 of "The Boys," I wrote about how fans really shouldn't have been surprised by Homelander being so evil. The show wears its anti-capitalist, pro-social justice politics on its sleeve. For creator Eric Kripke, Homelander has "always been" a stand-in for former and hopefully not future President Donald Trump. "The Boys" season 4 once more proves these similarities run deeper than Homelander sharing Trump's ugly blond hair and affection forNazis.
Homelander's trial doesn't last long
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At the end of "The Boys" season 3, Homelander laser-visioned a protester who threw a plastic bottle at Ryan. His watching crowd of supporters only cheered, in a transparent allusion to Trump's infamous declaration, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."
Spin-off series "Gen V" (set between "The Boys" seasons 3 and 4) mentioned that Homelander was on trial for murder. Viral marketing for this season, framed as in-universe Pro-Homelander ads, also alluded to the trial. (#HomeFree.)In "Department of Dirty Tricks," Homelander is briefly shown sitting in a courtroom, before his verdict is announced later in the episode: "Not guilty." The decision prompts a clash between Homelander fans and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) supporters — one egged on by Homelander's cronies.
Thisoutcome is quite different from real life. On May 30, 2024, just two weeks before "The Boys" season 4 premiered, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts related to financial fraud. He's the first president or former president to be convicted of a crime. (The Vought International X accountwas quick to capitalize on the news.) Trump is also facing further criminal charges related to his alleged interference in the 2020 election and his keeping classified documents after his term expired.
"The Boys" season 4 began filming in August 2022. If Kripke and co. had the benefit of foresight (Trump was first charged in March 2023), I wonder if they would've turned this trial into a longer storyline. "The Boys" loves lampooning current culture, but production logistics means that its references aren't always timely when they make it to public release. The outcome may have seemed like a foregone conclusion, but not even getting a single scene of Homelander being grilled on the witness stand is a wasted opportunity.
Homelander may not be a convicted felon (yet) like the 45th president, but they both deserve to be!
Homelander is plotting a coup in The Boys season 4
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Two of the criminal cases Trump faces are related to how he refused to accept his loss in the 2020 presidential election, and encouraged his supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Homelander's own coup is underway in "The Boys" season 4. While his superpowers mean that he could take control using brute force, he prefers to do it "legally."
Homelander has recruited Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), a supe who is apparently the smartest person in the world, to guide his master plan (since he's not smart enough to pull this off himself). Sage's plan is all about giving the American people something to fear, so that Homelander can ride in on a white horse as their savior. Like Julius Caesar, Homelander understands it's easier to rule people if they're on your side.
Trump likewise relies on a base of enthusiastic support. He's infused the word "populism" with negative connotations, when really a movement of grassroots support should be the opposite of authoritarian rule. In "The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump," political scientist Corey Robin writes:
"Trump [...] upends the always delicate relationship on the right between elite and mass, privilege and populism. Conservatism is an elitist movement of the masses, an effort to create a new-old regime that, in one way or another, makes privilege popular."
Homelander's support embodies a similar contradiction; he wants to make his "mud people" supporters into literal mud, and they love him for it because they don't realize they're not in his elite club.
As for Sister Sage, her presence as Homelander's in-the-know advisor calls to mind Project 2025, a scheme cooked up by think tank the Heritage Foundation to clear out any non-Trump loyalists from the U.S. government if he wins the 2024 election.
Why Homelander kills Todd
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"The Boys" season 3 introduced Todd (Matthew Gorman), the new boyfriend of MM's (Laz Alonso) wife Monique (Frances Turner). In season 4, Monique reveals that she broke up with Todd after realizing his radicalization was a bad influence on her daughter Janine (Liyou Abere). Todd's still a Homelander fanboy, though, and gets lured to his death alongside two other fans with a promise to meet their idol.
As part of Sister Sage's plan, Homelander has A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), the Deep (Chace Crawford), and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) beat Todd and his two friends to death with baseball bats. A-Train dumps their corpses outside the courthouse, making it appear like Starlight supporters killed them.
Like Homelander, Trump is more than willing to throw his die-hard supporters under the bus if it means personal gain. While he's never (as far as we know) had them directly killed, he did cause the death of Herman Cain (a conservative activist and failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate). Cain died in July 2020 from Covid-19, which he was infected with while attending a Trump rally. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows admitted in private, "We killed Herman Cain." In an extra galling and darkly-hilarious turn, Cain's still-active Twitter account kept posting in support of Trump after his passing.
Homelander's daddy issues
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"The Boys" season 4 finally shows Homelander raising Ryan full-time. Spoiler alert: he's not a good dad. In episode 2, "Life Among the Septics," Homelander intervenes in Ryan's first (staged) superheroic act and goads him to kill one of the criminals – who is really just a stuntman). Homelander brings a crying Ryan a milkshake (another example of his milk fetish) and thinks the tears are because he took Ryan's spotlight, rather than because he made his son murder someone. In episode 3, "We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here," Ryan joins the Seven on stage for the first time, and Homelander aggressively tells him to smile. It's no surprise that in that episode, Ryan later goes over to Butcher's (Karl Urban) apartment to play some foosball instead.
Trump, who has five children, is reportedly quite a bad father too. He barely acknowledges the existence of his second daughter, Tiffany and is reported to have once slapped his son Donald Trump Jr. for not wearing a suit to a baseball game. Mary Trump, niece of Donald and author of "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," has claimed Donald's bullying and narcissistic personality was shaped by his "high-functioning sociopath" father Fred Trump.
Homelander, too, has daddy issues. He was born and raised in a lab, never experiencing true familial love growing up. In "The Boys" season 3, when Homelander found out Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) was his biological father, he made an emotional appeal to him — and was rejected for being a "weak, sniveling puss*, starved for attention."
At the end of "We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here," a falling out with Ryan prompts Homelander to go back to his own beginning (presumably the lab he grew up in). Godspeed to anyone still working there.
"The Boys" streams on Prime Video, with new episodes premiering on Thursday.
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