‘The Boys’ Recap, Season 4, Episode 8: ‘Assassination Run’

It’s been a darkish and polarizing season of The Boys, hasn’t it? As we see increasingly more items about this present’s downturn in high quality — this one may be a cathartic learn in the event you’re fed up — I discover myself reflecting on the way in which my very own emotions have advanced from skepticism to nice shock with just a few stops at annoyance and distaste in between.

Sure, in some ways, season 4 was a downgrade. Tonally, the present has begun to stray from the neatly calibrated stability of years previous towards an overemphasis on gross-out humor and torture porn. The political satire is way blunter now with the principle villain modeled much more explicitly on Donald Trump, generally eye-rollingly so. (I didn’t want “make America tremendous once more” as the ultimate pre-credits phrases.) In comparison with season three’s cohesive Soldier Boy arc, the plot is extra scattered this time round; a number of particular person character arcs have felt repetitive or simply disconnected from the bigger story.

However season three additionally wasn’t constructed to fulfill ultimately. The Boys had been by no means going to kill Homelander efficiently, they usually didn’t even handle to kill Soldier Boy. There have been penalties that caught, sure, like Butcher’s sickness and Ryan’s bond with Homelander, nevertheless it nonetheless felt curiously weightless, particularly in comparison with “Herogasm.” Season 4 hasn’t had the identical downside: With the fifth and last season introduced already, the present is free to tug out all of the stops and truly alter the established order. We’re left with a deeply grim ending within the Empire Strikes Again mildew, presumably organising at the very least some redemption and hope alongside the bloodshed within the last eight episodes.

“Assassination Run” begins as electoral votes are counted on January 6. Dakota Bob Singer is about to grow to be president, and the Boys’ predominant two focuses are the identical as within the earlier episode: defending Singer from the shapeshifter murderer and perfecting the virus to lastly take out Homelander and Victoria Neuman.

The shapeshifter story line was launched solely final episode, so it’s becoming that it will get wrapped up within the first half of this one, although she manages to inflict an unbelievable quantity of injury earlier than we get to that time. First, Shifter retains up the Annie charade by borrowing a narrative about her great-grandpa and proposing to Hughie, a gesture he returns by presenting the ring he acquired from his mother. (It’d be cute if, you recognize, it was really Annie.) She additionally wiped all of the traces of Hughie’s grime on Neuman.

To take care of the identical form, Shifter wants to sometimes make contact with the unique and “recharge.” So she slips out and spends a while taunting the true Annie, a scene that serves a few functions. For one, it’s only a good excuse to see Erin Moriarty have some enjoyable enjoying twins, chewing the surroundings as one Annie whereas the opposite cowers in worry and desperation. However the face-off can be a literalization of the continued “good-girl Annie versus bad-girl Annie” concept with Shifter delighting in studying Annie’s recollections and teasing her for perceiving herself as a hero.

It feels a tad contrived, truthfully — I’m not completely certain why this random sociopath is so preoccupied with mocking the inner ethical conflicts of considered one of her victims when she must be targeted on assassinating the president — nevertheless it does enable Annie an opportunity to mirror and make peace along with her personal ethical ambiguity. I nonetheless don’t actually assume she’s carried out something that unhealthy, although, particularly as an grownup. Annie was a little bit of a bully as an adolescent, brainwashed by her mother and the ruthless pageant circuit, however her battle to make peace with that previous doesn’t actually evaluate to the luggage Frenchie and Kimiko are coping with.

As soon as she’s recharged, Shifter joins Hughie, Mom’s Milk, and Kimiko in a bunker set as much as defend Singer. That’s when Hughie actually places the items collectively, noticing his “girlfriend” utilizing the identical phrase as Shifter did after they met her in a distinct persona. He and MM do their finest to play together with Shifter’s pleasant chatter and conceal how a lot they’re freaking out, however their finest is decidedly not adequate, primarily as a result of they’re each actually terrible liars. Shifter simply reads their physique language and makes her assault, murdering a number of Secret Service brokers and breaking Kimiko’s neck earlier than lastly falling by the hands of the just lately escaped actual Annie. “I don’t know if I’m a hero. I don’t know who the fuck I’m,” Annie admits. “However I do know that I’m the bitch beating your ass.” Not her finest work, nevertheless it will get the job carried out.

With the plot to kill the president-elect thwarted, the whole lot adjustments for Neuman, particularly with the double whammy of Homelander exposing her supe id reside on air. He makes it clear that when she does grow to be president — as a result of he’ll kill Singer himself if crucial — she’ll simply be a puppet, managed by one of many solely supes deadlier than her. Much more vital, her daughter’s life is collateral. Neuman is aware of now, greater than ever, that Zoe might die in the event that they don’t escape this nightmare alliance.

For my part, this season has carried out a extremely good job justifying its varied flips in allegiance, particularly in the case of A-Practice (oddly absent right here). The identical is true for Neuman: We’ve seen extra interplay than typical between her and the Boys this season, between her conversations with Hughie and the team-up at Stan Edgar’s farm. So when she does name and say definitively that she needs out, agreeing to assist the Boys take down Vought in trade for cover, the second feels earned. And Hughie’s entreaty to his teammates feels earned, too, after the quantity of trauma he has skilled just lately (and normally). Possibly selecting forgiveness over extra violence is the way in which out of this.

In fact, the purpose when an alliance with Neuman really appears doable can be the precise level when she has to go. When Butcher exhibits as much as their assembly, Hughie’s plea to “belief him” isn’t almost sufficient to shift him away from his resolute “no offers” stance. He’s fast about it: An entire Doc Ock’s value of tentacles burst out of his chest, carry Neuman into the air, and rip her in two, spilling her entrails throughout her short-lived allies. All of it occurs in a short time, and no one is courageous sufficient to attempt to cease him from working off with the brand new virus.

The scenes on the CIA protected home with Butcher, Ryan, and Grace Mallory are all fairly good, constructing to a disturbing and unhappy climax when Ryan kills Grace by reactively pushing her away when she threatens to lure him there. That second retroactively justifies among the time spent on Homelander’s “therapeutic” journey to the lab earlier this season; Ryan doesn’t need to embrace his father’s beliefs, particularly now that he is aware of he raped Ryan’s mother, however he sees the commonalities in how they’re handled. Homelander was supplied crumbs of affection to nurture his dependence on a gaggle of people that solely actually needed to make use of him as a weapon. It’s exhausting for Ryan to not really feel like that is historical past repeating itself.

Sadly, Ryan’s resistance to his new designated project (killing his personal father) may be what dooms him if Butcher reaches a degree of no return by utilizing the virus on the son determine he swore to guard. He had no hesitation in sacrificing Neuman and torching his relationship together with his former group, in any case. And regardless of Butcher’s smirk as he flees into the evening, it’s exhausting to disclaim that America below Speaker turned President Calhoun will probably be a worse place than the America of even every week earlier than. Calhoun is firmly in Homelander’s management, and with seemingly no ideas or aspirations of his personal, he’s a extra ultimate puppet than Neuman would’ve ever been.

This was, broadly talking, Sage’s plan all alongside. Certain, there have been missteps and unexpected obstacles, however looking back, she did an amazing job setting the whole lot up in order that the bigger plan couldn’t actually fail. Singer is probably not useless, however he makes an ideal patsy when Neuman dies. The Deep, Black Noir, and Firecracker simply get rid of everybody at Vought who has grime on the Seven (if that’s even doable), apparently with completely no authorized penalties. And as soon as Homelander orders the so-called deep-state Starlighters to be rounded up, every of the Boys are rapidly tracked down and brought by deputized supes (together with Gen V’s Guardians of Godolkin). Solely Annie and Butcher are free, and the nation has plunged into chaos.

So a messy however compelling season ends with a imaginative and prescient of America that’s not so completely different from what was just lately outlined in Mission 2025. At this level within the present, the satire won’t have the identical punch because it did within the first couple of seasons, however even now, The Boys’s concept of dystopia nonetheless feels painfully acquainted.

• Okay, one fast rant: Look, I do know Eric Kripke finds Hughie’s expertise on the Tek Knight intercourse dungeon “hilarious,” however I’ve to say, it actually bothers me how this episode frames Hughie getting raped (sure, raped) by the shapeshifter posing as Annie. It occurs nearly 20 occasions, however he appears to don’t have any conflicted emotions about it apart from remorse at betraying his actual girlfriend. And Annie is completely unsympathetic to what he went via, making all of it about herself despite the fact that he primarily simply acquired sexually assaulted three episodes in a row.

• Coaching A-Practice has been canceled as a result of “We simply realized we’d make extra from the write-off,” which has some apparent real-world parallels.

• The lactation-inducing meds Firecracker is taking are making her very sick.

• Do we all know how that footage of Singer was recovered? I determine Shifter was discreetly filming it and, I assume, live-streaming it to Sage?

• I do know there are shippers who’ve rooted for Frenchie and Kimiko to finish up collectively this complete time, however I’m not considered one of them. Looks like an odd pivot to me, truthfully, after their awkward kiss final 12 months resulted in a mutually agreed upon friend-zoning. I by no means actually acquired the impression they had been placing their deep romantic emotions on maintain simply because they didn’t assume they “deserved” one another. Nevertheless it’s admittedly an enormous second after we later hear her really yell “NO” as Frenchie is snatched away from her.

• So Ashley took Compound-V! I’m stunned by how a lot I favored her subplot this 12 months and am very to see her as a supe.

• Is Butcher nonetheless set to run out quickly, or does ceding the ground to Kessler (his personal private Venom symbiote) someway defend him?

• Has Sage labored out a brand new plan for personal prisons now that Tek Knight is useless?

• “I threw you out like rubbish. Why would you do that?” “To see if I might.”

• Zoe leads to the identical group house her mother so desperately needed her to keep away from, which is fairly tragic.

• Together with a credit scene with Soldier Boy is such an MCU transfer, even when it is smart to deliver him again now. Possibly season three ought to’ve ended with “Soldier Boy will return.”

• Thanks for studying, and see you once more for the ultimate spherical!