Someone should take Marvel HQ and throw it straight into a blender with Succession, Jackass and some edgy society satire. And vupti: Out comes The Boys -- still the most grotesque, hilarious and uncomfortably well-acted series about power, morality and men in latex who have trouble keeping their dicks in their pants.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Season 4 picks up where the previous one left off: With blood in the hair, politics in the subtext and the Homelander who has now officially become a kind of orange colored Jesus. It's hard to write anything about The Boys without that sounding like an exaggeration -- but the truth is that the series still balances on the knife edge between the brilliant and the deeply distasteful. And it does so with a confidence that very few TV shows have.
Butcher remains the most traumatised British bulldog on television, and Hughie is still trying to find meaning in being human in a universe where no one really is. It's raw. It's dark. And it's actually... touching.
The new characters do exactly what they're supposed to: come in, mess things up, and leave us with the feeling that we're a little more screwed anyway than we thought. But it's Homelander that still steals the show. Antony Starr plays him with a mix of psychopathic charisma and a look that says, “I can hear you thinking -- and I don't like what you're thinking.”
What's most impressive, perhaps, is how much the series still has at heart. It's not just blood and boobs. It's a series that screams about media manipulation, fascism, tech giants and our willingness to sell everything—including ourselves—for a little reassurance and a TikTok following.
And so what?
We should be tired of this by now. We should say satire doesn't have to be so vulgar. We should be wrinkling our noses at that The Boys now has been there for four seasons and still pushes the boundaries, like a 14 year old with a youtube channel.
But the truth is: The Boys has never been better. It's wild, clever, funny and more relevant than ever.
So yeah -- The Boys are still asshats. But they are our motherfuckers.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
