“The Boys” recap: Homelander pays a disturbing visit home

The ensemble grapples with forgiveness… with mixed results.

Sure, it can shock us with gory, outlandish deaths and make us pee our pants laughing from edgy, creative one-liners, but The Boys is truly at its best when it’s doing all that while also tugging at our heartstrings. Season 4, episode 4, titled “Wisdom of the Ages,” does just that. Repeatedly.

One such example comes with Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) quest to save his vegetative dad (Simon Pegg) before his mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) pulls the plug and lets him die. How’s he gonna do that, you might ask? With Compound V.

Problem is, Compound V’s become extremely hard to come by… so Hughie calls in a favor from an unlikely source: A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). At first, A-Train refuses to help – Homelander’s got all remaining V locked in his apartment, and he’d really prefer not to get on an indestructible sociopath’s bad side. But then Hughie reminds A-Train that he owes him for killing his girlfriend, Robin. And he promises that if A-Train helps him, he’ll forgive him once and for all.

A-Train accepts and bolts out of the alley – but Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), who Hughie brought along as his “muscle,” is furious. She thinks Hughie should bite the bullet and let his father die. But before Hughie can argue his case, bullets start flying. Shining Light has followed Kimiko here and wants her dead for killing their associates in the prior episode.

Related: The Boys creator responds to fans asking if that's Karl Urban's butthole on season 4

Hughie is shot in the leg, and Kimiko drags him into a nearby office building while Shining Light closes in. Together, they’re able to MacGuyver up some weapons and fight off the Shining Light thugs, but not before Kimiko comes face-to-face with Tala (Erika Prevost), the girl from last week’s episode who she recognized from her past.

After Tala blows Kimiko in half (she recovers, as per usual), Kimiko subdues Tala then offers her hand… but Tala refuses it, and then explains why: Kimiko’s the one who kidnapped Tala and trapped her in the hellhole that is Shining Light in the first place. As Kimiko comes to grips with the sins of her past…

Homelander takes his own trip down memory lane, visiting the lab where he was experimented on as a kid. At the lab are Frank and Marty, two men who Homelander has, well… not exactly fond memories of. While Homelander was locked in an oven so Vought could test his tolerance to extreme heat, Frank used to pass the time by tossing balled up pieces of paper into a waste basket. And Marty once caught Homelander masturbating, proceeding to laugh at the poor kid and nicknaming him “Squirt.”

So, naturally Homelander kills them both. Frank, by burning him alive in the oven, and Marty by forcing him to masturbate in front of the entire lab, then lasering his dick off when he fails to get it up. And as Homelander relishes in this sadistic yet strangely cathartic act of vengeance, the true boss of the facility, Barbara (Nancy Lenehan), shows up.

Barbara reminds Homelander that he could’ve broken out of the facility at any time – it was his need for approval that kept him there, not their security protocols. Homelander, though clearly affected by this, insists that he no longer needs their approval… and he proves it by butchering everyone in the lab and locking Barbara in a small room with the scraps of their corpses.

I’ve gotta say, as evil as Homelander is, hearing about what Vought did to him as a child… it makes you feel for the guy. And that bit of forced mental gymnastics, right there, is what makes this show so special.

Related: How The Boys pulled off its own human centipede in season 4

Taking a brief break from the brutality, let’s check in with the relationship no one saw themselves shipping – between the supergenius Sage (Susan Heyward) and the dim light bulb that is Deep (Chace Crawford).

As Sage watches her pawn Firecracker (Valorie Curry) rip into Starlight (Erin Moriarty) on live TV, she convinces Deep to give her a frontal lobotomy so she can “not be me” for a few hours while her superbrain regenerates. To convince the hesitant aquatic hero, Sage promises to let him “a–f— me while watching the Kim and Ray J video.” How someone could even attempt to make a lobotomy sexy is beyond me, but somehow The Boys managed to… kind of?... pull it off.

While Sage and Deep dive into the weirdest sex scene of all time, their newly minted colleague Firecracker rants away on her new VNN talk show… which she’s set up right across the street from the Starlight House, cranking up to 11 her vendetta against her arch nemesis.

Butcher (Karl Urban) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) promise to neutralize her once and for all with a piece of blackmail they bought for $50,000 – photo evidence of Firecracker having sex with an underage boy. They show Firecracker the snap and threaten to tweet it out if she doesn’t clue them into whatever master plan Sage is cooking up, but Firecracker isn’t one to be blackmailed.

She tweets the photo herself, then goes back on her show and “confesses her sins,” explaining that her indiscretion made her change her life and “find Jesus.” But Firecracker doesn’t stop there… she goes right back on the offensive, showing her evangelical audience medical records of Starlight’s recent abortion (information she was given by the Machiavellian Sage).

Starlight has been watching Firecracker’s broadcast with barely restrained rage, but this sends her over the edge – so she races across the street and beats Firecracker within an inch of her life… with the whole world watching. Her actions backfire in a major way, sending Homefronters into a frenzy and all but killing a Supe Control bill that President-elect Singer was preparing to put before Congress.

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While Starlight copes with the ramifications of Firecracker’s cruel disclosure, Hughie receives a vial of V from A-Train, and to the supe’s shock… Hughie actually follows through on his promise, and forgives him. It’s a huge moment for both Hughie and A-Train, moving past the event that put the entire series into motion. Hughie doesn’t have time to truly process this milestone, however, ‘cause now he’s got the V and he needs to give it to his father if he’s going to save his life.

But Butcher has something to say about that. He followed Hughie to his meeting with A-Train, and now urges him not to use the V. Butcher tells Hughie that he tried using V on himself to cure his own illness, but it only made things worse. Progressively more sentimental as his physical state deteriorates, Butcher begs Hughie to reconsider, but Hughie just pockets the V and walks away.

Back at the hospital, Hughie takes his father’s hand… and decides not to give him the V. But as he comes to terms with losing his dad, Hughie suddenly notices a blue liquid flowing through Hugh Sr.’s IV. Turns out his mother picked his pocket while he wasn’t looking and administered it to Hugh Sr. herself. As the V flows into Hugh Sr.’s veins, his heart rate spikes – and his eyes pop open.

Related: Eric Kripke on why season 5 will be the end of The Boys

Frenchie, as you might remember, has developed a romantic relationship with Colin (Elliot Knight), whose parents Frenchie killed during his time as an assassin. This secret has been eating Frenchie alive for four episodes, and after a brush with death during the Firecracker op, Frenchie wakes to find Colin tending to his wounds, and he just can’t take the guilt anymore. He confesses to Colin…

And Colin pounds the living s— out of him, leaving Frenchie in a heap of blood and free-flowing tears. Why on Earth I held out hope that this relationship was going to end well beats me. I know this show, I knew in my battered and bruised heart where this story was going, and yet… it still absolutely wrecked me. All this, and we’re only halfway into the season. As Firecracker might say – Lord help us all.

Stray Observations:

• Homelander revisiting his childhood trauma was absolutely brutal, but in classic Boys fashion, also pretty hilarious. Worth calling out is Homelander’s apology to Marty after burning Frank alive: “I’d like to apologize for Frank. I got a little grumpy.” If that isn’t the understatement of the century…

• I’d also be remiss if I didn’t heap praise on the otherworldly image of Homelander’s birth as recounted by Vought lab supervisor Barbara: Homelander lasering through his mother’s womb, killing three doctors in the process, then levitating into the air with his umbilical cord still attached… I don’t know whether to be impressed with or concerned for whoever wrote that brilliant monologue.

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