The Boys Season 4 Sunk The Show’s Best Weapon

Season 4 of The Boys mirrored the current state of the US with all the subtlety of an SNL skit. New edition Firecracker may be a ginger but Marjorie Taylor Greene in a red wig is still Marjorie Taylor Greene.

A different name and some cleavage does not a satire make.

What was once a biting satire of Donald Trump’s America is now just copying headlines verbatim. Remember Pizzagate, the infamous QAnon conspiracy theory involving child trafficking in a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor? The Boys Season 4 remembers.

The series actually had an episode where a man shows up at Starlight’s at-risk youth shelter with a gun, demanding that the kids in the basement be freed.

There are, of course, no children there, just as there weren’t any children in the Washington pizza place when a man did the same thing in 2016. It played out so on the nose that I’m not entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish.

The whole point of satire that The Boys Season 4 missed is exaggeration. You take something ridiculous that’s happening and take it to an improbable conclusion to show people how bad it really is.

Sure, Idiocracy looks like real life now, but in 2006, it seemed like a pessimistic warning. “Here’s where things could end up if we aren’t careful,” and of course, we weren’t.

The problem with The Boys Season 4, like SNL, is that it is reactive instead of proactive.

Instead of predicting what future atrocities the far right will commit, the show would rather mimic the ones happening now. The show was never subtle, of course, but this season has been particularly bad.

I can only assume that series creator Eric Kripke was getting sick of hearing about people not realizing Homelander was the bad guy and just said the heck with it, let’s just make the bad guys MAGA.

Unfortunately, he essentially cut off his nose to spite his face. Making Homelander more like Trump isn’t going to make the idiots who idolize him like him any less.

All it does is make the more moderate and liberal viewers who were enjoying Kripke’s barbed takedown of the alt-right groan and roll their eyes. We already got what you were doing, dude. No need to write it in bold italics.

Watching Firecracker spout actual talking points taken right from MTG’s mouth, hearing Starlight called a groomer—it’s just too much. This isn’t some ignorant “Why does everything have to be political now?” rant.

The Boys comic book may have been a superhero satire, but The Boys television show has always been a political satire using superheroes as stand-ins.

It’s why we love it. That and the extremely messed up violence. At least The Boys Season 4 got that right.

Next season is the series’ last and I really hope Kripke sticks the landing. But with all the crazy shenanigans the country is bound to experience as we get closer to the election, I’m not sure he can. Hopefully, I’m wrong, and The Boys Season 4 will stand as a momentary dip in quality before a banger 5th season.