The Boys: 16 Most Shocking Jokes & Moments In Season 4

Season 4 of The Boys could be its most shocking yet, with plenty of moments that left fans stunned. The Boys are a fractured group in season 4, with Butcher temporarily being forced to relinquish his power over the group as he struggles with his terminal diagnosis. However, the Boys get up to just as many ridiculous missions without him, and the supes at Vought get more and more violent as they aim for national domination.

Season 4 has received mixed reviews, with some critics and fans arguing that the show’s political satire has lost its edge. However, even if it isn’t the best season of The Boys, it still delivers plenty of jaw-dropping moments and wonderfully indelicate jokes. The Boys season 5 could be even wilder, especially as the show has cleared a path for Homelander to step into the White House. While future episodes are still a long way off, fans have plenty to chew on from season 4’s most surprising moments.

Sage Announces Her Arrival In The Best Way Possible

Sage, or Sister Sage as Vought labels her, is the most influential new character in The Boys season 4. The smartest person on the planet treats American politics like a strategy game, which highlights how her super-powered intelligence makes daily life boring for her. She gains Homelander’s respect by standing up to him, and she mouths off during her first day at Vought Tower, claiming that the institution “blows harder than Nancy Reagan on the MGM backlot”. This is a reference to salacious Hollywood rumors about Ronald Reagan’s wife from back when he was still an actor.

15 Homelander Kills Todd & His Friends With Baseball Bats

Homelander Feels Emboldened After His Fans Support Him Murdering A Protester

Season 4 of The Boys starts off with a bang, and it sets the tone for Homelander’s increasingly manic pursuit of power. Homelander invites Todd and two more of his most devoted fans to a secret meet-and-greet. They’re ecstatic at the chance to meet him, but he instructs Deep, A-Train and Black Noir to kill them with baseball bats. Supe violence is nothing new in The Boys, but there’s something about the method of execution here that is particularly disturbing. It’s more violent and personal than Homelander’s laser-vision, because it could have been done by humans.

14 Vought Cancels A-Train’s Movie For Tax Purposes

The Boys Takes A Swipe At A Recent Hollywood Trend

When A-Train is found to be the mole inside Vought, the company has to pivot quickly and cut all ties with him. Having just shot his newest movie with Will Ferrell, Vought decides to scrap the project for a tax incentive. The Boys takes aim at Warner Bros. and other Hollywood studios with this joke, referring to scrapped movies like Batgirl and Coyote Vs. Acme. After building so much anticipation for these movies, it’s frustrating to see them shelved. The Boys parodies this decision by showing Ashley proudly claiming that their decisions are driven exclusively by profit, with no regard for what audiences want.

13 Webweaver’s Safe Word

The Boys’ Spider-Man Parody Takes A Twist

In Tek Knight’s sex dungeon, Hughie discovers that his only escape is to repeat Webweaver’s pre-agreed safe word. The problem is that he has no idea what the word is. Tek Knight reminds him that it’s the thing he loves most in the world, so Hughie desperately tries to guess, but to no avail. Eventually, Tek Knight’s butler reveals the word: Zendaya. This is a reference to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies, since Webweaver is one of The Boys’ many Marvel and DC parodies. Zendaya plays Mary Jane in the MCU, and she’s also dating Tom Holland. Referring to her in such a perverse sexual scenario is extremely risqué.

12 Stan Edgar’s Relationship With Prince Andrew

Giancarlo Esposito Makes A Surprising Return To The Boys

After spending some time in prison, Stan Edgar made a surprising return in season 4 of The Boys. During an ill-fated mission on a farm with the Boys and Victoria Neuman, he steps in a muddy puddle. Neuman reminds him that he probably has dozens of identical pairs of shoes, but he claims that particular pair was a gift from Prince Andrew. The British Royal has been under a barrage of controversy in recent years due to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Stan Edgar doesn’t hide his association with Prince Andrew however, and there’s a hint of pride in his tone that suggests any link to the royal family reflects well on him.

11 Vought’s Targeted Advertising

The Boys Shows The Dark Side Of Product Placement

At V52, an event inspired by the likes of Comic-Con and Disney’s D23 Expo, Vought lists the dizzying number of upcoming projects in the works. One of the company’s proudest new inventions is a form of targeted advertising that alters streaming content to suit the audience. Deep explains that if a white viewer is watching a show, they will see product placement tailored to them, with the example of a bottle of beer. If a BIPOC person watches the same show, the character on screen will instead be holding a bottle of peach cognac. This is a dark comment on the state of personalized advertisements and data harvesting, and it’s made even funnier by the fact that it feels entirely possible.

10 Homelander Forces Marty To Masturbate

Homelander Goes Home For A Little Soul-Searching

The trailers for season 4 of The Boys teased the image of Homelander standing in an elevator soaked in blood. When this moment finally arrived, it did not disappoint. Homelander returns to the laboratory where he spent most of his childhood when he realizes he needs to reckon with his past to destroy his human need for affection. He soon leaves the entire staff strewn about the room in bloody pieces, but not before paying particularly close attention to two men. As retaliation for laughing at him in his teenage years, Homelander forces Marty to masturbate in front of his colleagues, before shooting a lazer through his genital area and watching him writhe in agony.

9 Frenchie Amputates Kimiko’s Leg

Kimiko Goes Through A Lot In Season 4

Kimiko’s super-healing powers are on full display in season 4 of The Boys. She leaps out of a building, has her neck snapped, and gets shot multiple times. It’s hard to make any of this feel fresh, but her amputation scene is even more graphic than The Boys’ usual fare. After she is injected with the supe virus, Frenchie has no choice but to amputate her lower leg before the disease can spread through her bloodstream. The playful music and her cuddly soft toy only make the action look even more grim by contrast.

8 Hugh’s Accidental Killing-Spree

Hughie Reconnects With His Mother Under The Most Extreme Circumstances Possible

Simon Pegg makes a much-anticipated return to The Boys in season 4, but for a while it seems as though his character will be stuck in a coma for the entire season. Ultimately, Hughie’s mother Daphne injects him with Compound-V in a desperate attempt to revive him. Hugh wakes up, but he gains powers that he can’t control. The first victim of his accidental killing-spree is a nurse who’s only seen in a bloody heap on the floor as Hugh holds her heart in his hands. Later, he kills someone in an even more shocking way, phasing halfway through their body.

7 Homelander Puts Frank In The Oven

Marty Isn’t Homelander’s First Victim At The Laboratory

Before shooting a laser through Marty’s groin, Homelander decides to settle the score with another employee at the laboratory. Frank’s death is somehow even more brutal and upsetting, as Homelander forces him to walk into a large incinerator before cranking up the heat. The Boys, naturally, doesn’t flinch at this moment, and it shows Frank’s skin peeling and catching fire in excruciating detail. Homelander’s revenge isn’t just about killing those who contributed to his suffering as a child. It’s also about making them suffer as much as possible.

6 Deep Gives Sage A Lobotomy

Sage’s Only Form Of Relaxation Involves Scooping Out Part Of Her Brain

Being the smartest person on Earth comes with a lot of stress, and Sage discovers that the only way she can relax is to give herself a frontal lobotomy. For a couple of hours until her brain fully heals itself, she is stupid enough to enjoy Deep’s company. Rather than feeling insulted by this, he takes his chance at intimacy with someone who isn’t a sea creature. To do so, he has to perform a frontal lobotomy on Sage himself with a hammer. It’s easy to become desensitized to the extreme levels of gore in The Boys, but this scene still stands out with some excruciating close-up shots of Sage’s eyeball.

5 The V’d Up Sheep

Sheep & Chickens Turn Into Bloodthirsty Beasts

To test the supe virus, Neuman’s scientists run tests on super-powered farm animals, but this backfires horrifically. The image of the razor-toothed sheep flying around and tearing people limb from limb is so unexpected and jarring that it risks breaking The Boys. The sheep are too ludicrous to feel truly threatening to the characters. It’s always possible that Homelander or Neuman might kill one of the Boys, but it never seems likely that The Boys will kill off a main character using a flying sheep. Still, it’s an outrageous moment that definitely stands out from the rest of the show.

4 Vought On Ice

A Christmassy Figure Skating Show Turns Into A Blood-Soaked Nightmare

Continuing its parody of Marvel and Disney, The Boys season 4 introduces Vought On Ice, a heavy dose of political propaganda inspired by Disney On Ice. Victoria Neuman secretly meets with Homelander at a rehearsal for the show, but a stray laser from Homelander sends the figure skaters into an all-out panic. The following sequence is a masterpiece of choreographed chaos, with skaters rushing over each other to escape as quickly as possible, inadvertently causing even more casualties. Later, VNN explains that the show is being delayed due to a fire in the arena, and not because half the cast is dead.

3 Hughie Enters The Tek-Cave

Hughie Regrets Meeting His Childhood Idol

Fans of The Boys comics would have been excited to see the arrival of Tek Knight, a perverse blend of Iron Man and Batman. He makes his debut in Gen V, but his one and only appearance in The Boys reveals a new side to him. Hughie idolized Tek Knight as a child, so he’s excited to score an invitation to the Tek-Cave. The inside is just as shocking to Hughie as it is to the audience, as Tek Knight reveals that when he says he wants a “sidekick,” he’s really looking for a submissive partner to indulge him in his disturbing sexual fantasies, all while his butler politely watches from the sidelines.

2 Splinter’s One-Man Orgy

A Forgettable Character Provides An Unforgettable Scene

The Boys has a long history of showing the disturbing ways that supes use their powers for bizarre sexual experiments. This reaches its peak in season 3’s shocking “Herogasm” episode, but the show constantly finds new and disturbing ways to top its previous outings. Splinter is introduced as Firecracker’s number one fan and most devoted creep. He uses his powers of creating copies of himself to make a long train of Splinters performing oral sex on one another, with the copy at the front of the line masturbating over a picture of Firecracker. It doesn’t impact the story at all, but it’s up there with the wildest moments in the show’s history.

1 Butcher Tears Neuman In Half

Season 4’s Big Finale Shows Butcher’s Development

Throughout season 4, and throughout the entire show to a lesser extent, Butcher has had to struggle with his two conflicting points on view in his brutal war on supes. One side, embodied in his mind by Becca, urges him to show compassion and restraint. The other, embodied by Kessler, tempts him to give in to his violent desires and eradicate supes no matter the cost. When Butcher reappears in The Boys season 4 finale to tear Neuman in half with his strange super-powered appendages, it shows that he has committed to his dark side. This huge character beat is just as gory and shocking as fans of The Boys have come to expect.