The Boys Season 4: Trailer Analysis
The Boys Season 4 trailer is out now if you love Comic Cons, perhaps you already know that the South American ones have now launched the challenge at the very famous San Diego Comic-Con and the New York Comic-Con; a challenge that perhaps, at least based on the results achieved in the last year, they have even won. Thanks to the strikes of actors and screenwriters, the North American Comic Cons in 2023 were influenced by the absence of big names and majors present at the panels, Marvel among all. Comic Cons in South America immediately took advantage of this. In December the Brazilian CCXP had already hosted panels dedicated to several shows including House of the Dragon and the Mexican CCXP was not unprepared.
In three days it hosted several celebrities including the cast of House of the Dragon, Freya Allan for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Tom Ellis also part of the cast of The Boys. The Prime Video series was a great protagonist of the event and took advantage of it to launch the trailer for its highly anticipated fourth season. The Boys trailer turned out to be the most interesting event at CCXP, the only real new trailer released during Comic Con. This is a trailer that reveals a lot about the plot of the new season and previews some connections with Gen V, the spin-off TV series of The Boys. Here’s everything you need to know about The Boys Season 4 trailer.
The Boys Season 4: You’re All f*Cking Welcome!
Finally, after some clips, a teaser, and many posters, Amazon Prime Video has distributed the first (and probably last) full trailer for the fourth season of The Boys, and the time has come for a real war between heroes. Yes, you read that right, not between heroes and villains because in The Boys the nuances are the stylistic signature of the characters. It might sound great, but if you were looking for an escape from real-world problems, you won’t find it in the new trailer for The Boys Season 4. The Boys gave us an extreme look at where America could have ended up if it had been left in the hands of powerful superhumans. Now? Well now the Boys have also joined the Supers and disaster, for those who are no longer ordinary humans, is around the corner. Let’s look together at what the new trailer for the next season of The Boys hides because there are plenty of Easter eggs and previews. Before understanding where we will arrive with the new episodes it is essential to remember where we left off.
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is dying in the finale of The Boys Season 2 because he cannot (or does not want to, his drug addict status is currently unclear) stop taking V24; there’s a culture war going on, with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and Homelander (Antony Starr) as the faces of their respective sides; Singer and Neuman won the election and are now President and Vice President of the United States of America. And the revelation at the end left everyone stunned: Victoria Neuman is super and perhaps she doesn’t believe in the beautiful ideals that she used to win her campaign for the Capitol. Given what perhaps some of you didn’t remember, here is the full spoiler analysis of the trailer for The Boys Season 4.
Billy Butcher’s “Last” Dance
While it’s highly unlikely that Billy Butcher will die from V24 poisoning at the end of Season 4 or otherwise, what’s important is that he truly believes this will happen.
“I look back on my life and only see all my messes. And I don’t have time to fix it. I can do one thing right with the time I have left but I can’t do it alone.“
The trailer opens with Butcher gathering the Boys for one last run, which he sees as his last chance to right at least some of his mistakes and perhaps save his young son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), or at least get him away from the flu by Homelander. To understand some aspects of the trailer and in particular Billy’s way of acting in the fourth season of the series, there is no need to question how he will die or whether this will happen. Firstly because it is difficult for this to happen within what will not be the last season of the series and secondly because the writer believes that the character will not leave us just because of something simple like V24 poisoning. It would be poetic but we believe that his end will be like a true hero.
Finally, what interests us now is Butcher’s introspection. In The Boys Season 4, Billy must face his mortality and fear of disappointing the long-lost love of his life. Unfortunately, the fear of dying seems to affect anyone, even Billy Butcher. However, you shouldn’t expect these moments of character reflection and introspection to make up a large part of season four. All the characters, in fact, immediately return to their old and now consolidated lackluster adventures once the quiet introduction of the trailer is over.
Sweet Ryan doesn’t have much space in the trailer but he will have a very important role in the fourth season of the TV series. He and Sam from Gen V (and we will delve into the connection with the spin-off series of The Boys shortly) perfectly represent how easy it is to negatively radicalize young American boys towards violence. The hope is that they both get out of it before paying with their blood for their ill-considered choices and their easy influence. The trailer for The Boys Season 4 sees young Ryan, who is now in Homelander’s custody by choice of the boy himself, turning his back on Butcher. Nothing new compared to what we had already seen but a confirmation that does not bode well. What we weren’t sure about beforehand was how far Homelander would be able to push Ryan’s potentially gory streak.
In the trailer, we discover that the step from innocence to evil is very short as Ryan seems to use his super strength to throw a human being against a brick wall. However, at least he seems suitably mortified afterward. Maybe he acts brutally because he is forced by Homelander and not because he wants him. Or does he act in this way because he is in a fit of anger and immediately afterward regrets what he has done? Despite these considerations of ours, there is always the possibility that the trailer was cut specifically to deceive us. Ryan committing early murder might be a slap in the face he needs to realize that he’s not interested in plea bargaining for his biological father Homelander. Or unfortunately, it is equally possible that this gesture becomes the point of no return for him.
Homelander and the Gen V Connection
At the beginning of this analysis, we reminded you of Gen V, the spin-off series of The Boys which made its grand debut in the Prime Video catalog last year. The show is set primarily within Godolkin University, an exclusive college for superheroes, where students train to become a new generation of Supers and one day replace some of the Seven. We were fairly certain that Gen V’s Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) and Sam Riordan (Asa Germann) would appear in The Boys season 4, as it was Homelander who broke them out of prison after burning the Godolkin campus to the ground in the finale. of Gen V. What we still can’t understand even thanks to the trailer is what their roles will be in all this debacle. We see a glimpse of them at Vought Tower, but it’s Firecracker (Valerie Curry) who appears to be leading the war on Starlight, not Cate. Firecracker, along with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), are two new additions to the Vought team this season. We don’t yet know their powers but we do not doubt that they will be lethal. In any case, considering these two new additions to the Seven team we can deduce that Cate and Sam have not yet been promoted to the status of official members of the “grown-ups” team.
Black Noir seems to have been resurrected from the world of the dead. If you remember in the finale of The Boys Season 2 it was Patriot who killed him because Black Noir had always been aware of the fact that Soldier Boy was Homelander’s biological father but he never revealed it to him. We know that the face under the mask is dead but what we will see will be a new character with a different identity, even if in reality there will always be Nathan Mitchell inside the whole thing. To confirm what we have just said, Eric Kripke (showrunner of the series) intervenes and declares:
“We’ll have Nathan playing a really interesting and hilarious character wearing the suit next season. Because a character who is completely silent and with a black mask can always be recast.”
Between Politics and Unrest: The War Comes to a Head
If you thought The Boys’ satirical and political commentary was timely and insightful before, you’ll need to buckle up now. We’re in for a bumpy ride in the fourth season of the series! The Boys Season 4 promises to be full of political clashes that don’t end in the most peaceful way possible. The full trailer features various scenes of riots, war, and many, perhaps too many blood splatters. The two sides of the dispute are led by Homelanders and Starlighters, with Homelander remaining exactly the allegory of a dictator throughout the show and Starlight involuntarily ending up as the face of all those who oppose Homelander’s fascism.
Homelander has stopped being a member of the Seven tied only to “being a celebrity” but without any possibility of concrete action. Now the time has come for him to act and take the place that rightfully belongs to him. Vought has lost control of its Supers, and the only thing standing between the Seven and the common people is a small group of kids led by Billy Butcher, The Boys. What role will humans have in all of this? It is reasonable to assume that during the fourth season, we will see many human victims, unaware spectators of a cause that rarely wants their good. Who knows, however, that a human might not also have a relevant and leading role. Also interesting is the contrast between violence as an instrument of power used by Homelander’s followers and humanity as a quality to be better, supported by Hughie and Starlight.
Victoria Neuman is certainly no longer human. Neuman fooled everyone during the third season, even non-viewers who until the end believed her to be the only truly “good and human” one in the series. No, Neuman is also a Super and in The Boys Season 4, she appears to still have a virus that can eradicate anyone with Compound V in their systems. What the Vice President intends to do with it, we don’t know, but the real question is: Can she maintain her cover before the Boys kick down her door and try to steal the “cure”? The implications of releasing a virus capable of killing Supers are far-reaching and quite complicated, a fact the trailer acknowledges when Starlight highlights Billy’s desperation.
Billy seems quite convinced of her plan but unleashing the contagion in its current form would not only kill Butcher’s enemies but also Ryan, Starlight, Neuman’s daughter, and a lot of other innocent bystanders. Not to mention the possibility that you could also eliminate any V24 users. Butcher is resigned to dying, but is he also okay with taking Hughie with him? We doubt it since he considers the boy as his son and always tries to protect him. Billy could find an alternative solution or his plan could fail in any case, at which point last-minute improvisation will be the Boys’ winning weapon, as almost always. To find out how much of what we have hypothesized and analyzed matches with the script of The Boys Season 4 we just have to wait until June 13th, the date on which the very first episodes of the new season of the show will debut. For the rest, you need to wait for the weekly release. We can’t wait.
