The Boys season four is over and, to quote the great MM, it was truly “the bold and the bats**t.” Butcher’s choice to kill Victoria Neuman literally changes America and leads to his former colleagues being locked away. Homelander is running the country with President Calhoun under his thumb after Robert Singer goes down for Vicky’s death. And Sage is enjoying all of it. Despite having a ton of superheroes, no one on this show is truly a hero. But some characters activities are more nefarious than others. Quite a few villains are at play in The Boys season four, so let’s look at how they are shaking up this universe.
Homelander
Of course, the chief antagonist is Homelander. He’s trying to mold Ryan in his own twisted image and is willing to do anything to take down Annie/Starlight and the Boys for good. Homelander is threatening Victoria Neuman, lasering the heads of innocent people, and being an all-around d*ck to most of his Vought family. He’s also unraveling mentally so he could do or say literally anything at any moment, like when he went back to his birthplace and killed pretty much everyone in horrific fashion. In episode five, he even starts to turn Ryan into a diabolical mini-me by appealing to his son’s desire to help others while offering his twisted guidance. The longer Ryan stays with him, the less chances of Butcher being able to save Ryan before he becomes a full-fledged baddie. We saw Ryan warming up to him as the season progressed; however, things change in episode seven. Ryan is not feeling a Christmas TV spot encouraging kids to tell on their adults if they are not pro-supe and stands up to Vought and Homelander. Ryan does kill Grace Mallory (mostly by accident) but it is not clear if he goes back to Homelander or on his own.
Homelander forms a supe army with the Seven members as well as Gen V‘s Cate Dunlap and Sam Riordan. He’s also working with Victoria Neuman to overthrow the POTUS so she can take his place. It’s all very scary, indeed. Homelander’s crumble over the season has been quite the spectacle. He is heartbroken about A-Train’s betrayal, which resulted in him firing Sage from the Seven. (She obviously knew it was A-Train.) But Sage gets the final laugh when things all work according to her wild plan and Homelander gets President Calhoun to enact martial law that puts supes in charge of America and gets the Boys out of his hair.
Sister Sage
Homelander brought her into the fold to help sustain Vought’s power and destroy everything that Starlight has built. And boy is she using her smarts to the wildest extent. She convinces Homelander to have A-Train, Black Noir, and the Deep murder three of Homelander’s biggest fans and pin it on two Starlight supporters. (Her doing this as a Black woman and framing two Black men is exceptionally nasty work.)
She’s also turned the Deep against Ashley, which helped her secure power as Vought’s CEO. And, she brought Firecracker, a dangerous conspiracy theorist with a rabid following, into the fold to tell her lies on a really large platform. Having someone as calculating yet even-keeled as her to balance out Homelander is frightening. And, after discovering that she and Homelander were working with Tek Knight to set up prison camps, she’s really on some wild stuff. She knows A-Train is the leak but says nothing (despite them not liking each other), which indirectly results in the unnecessary deaths of Cameron Coleman and Webweaver.
In episode seven, Homelander fires her and she leaves Vought Tower in a huff. But the season finale reveals that Sage got video of Robert Singer chastising the Boys for not killing Victoria as he instructed, which allows all of them to go down for her murder. Homelander has Sage by his side once again as he basically becomes the leader of a nationwide supe militia. Sister Sage may not be killing people directly but she is certainly a villain in The Boys season four.
Firecracker
Being a dangerous “truther” aside, Firecracker is dangerous because of her deep-seated hatred for Starlight. In episode three, we discover Firecracker was shunned from the pageant world after Annie told people she had sex with judges. She’s certainly within her rights to hate Annie’s guts but she’s also putting a lot of innocent people in danger with her lies and twisted propaganda. Homelander’s followers are bad, but her devotees are 10 times worse because they will literally believe anything she says. Sounds familiar, right?
From sharing Annie’s very private information on a national platform to her gross statutory rape of a teenage boy, Firecracker is absolutely a villain in The Boys. She’s also Homelander’s new sidekick after, um, making milk for him. Firecracker is happy as can be in the season four finale with a country run by Homelander that will establish the “good values” that Jesus wants for America. Good grief.
Victoria Neuman
Victoria is also up to no good for most of season four. She’s working with Homelander and Sister Sage to get Robert Singer out of the way so she can be the President. Once installed, they want Victoria to give supes ultimate power in every city and get rid of any educational platforms/theories that are “anti-supe.” After what happened with Soldier Boy killing MM’s grandfather and Blue Hawk’s murder of an innocent Black man, this certainly isn’t good for society.
In episode five, we discover that she’s taken the supe-killing virus from God U and has (sorta accidentally) created an entire farm of Compound V-powered deranged animals. She wants to take Homelander down but she also wants to make sure that she obtains the highest level of power. Right now, she’s playing nice with the Boys and Stan Edgar, but Butcher’s decision to hurt Zoe’s father and force him into making more of the virus will probably lead to her popping a few heads. Hughie tries to get her to abandon the assassination plan in episode seven, but she refuses to go along with it. Victoria looks slightly guilty, but her desire for self-preservation (and protecting Zoe) will not allow her to do the right thing.
However, she sings a different tune in the finale after Homelander outs her as a supe. She’s willing to give up her VP title and run away from it all but Butcher kills her before that can happen. Welp.
Is Billy Butcher a Villain in The Boys Universe?
Butcher has never been an exceptionally morally just person. But he’s more of an anti-hero than villain… until now. His decision to push back against his team and murder Victoria, who was trying to do the right thing, is bad. He has no MM, Becca, nor Grace to reel him in. The only voice in his head is that darn Joe Kessler and that could lead to supe genocide.
We will have to wait and see how the surviving villains move in The Boys season five, which probably won’t come our way until 2026.
Originally published on June 13, 2024.