From V-ed up farm animals to excessive gore to the return of fan-favourite characters, the new trailer for The Boys Season 4 has it all, and as a favour, we’ll try and make sense of it all.
Beware, this article contains speculation that may spoil the upcoming fourth season of The Boys!
The Boys Season 4 Trailer
During the CCXP Mexico Prime Video panel, which took place May 3rd, a new trailer was released.Cast members Antony Starr (Homelander), Erin Moriarty (Starlight), Chace Crawford (The Deep), Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko) and Claudia Doumit (Victoria Neuman) were present on location to announce the trailer to fans.
Released to YouTube and Prime Video’s social platforms immediately upon release, fans worldwide witnessed the beauty (and horror) in the latest trailer for Amazon’s hit streaming series. Set to the tune of Jarvis Cocker’s “Quantum Theory,” the trailer has a lot of content to unpack.
A lot happens in the whopping 2-minute, 48-second runtime. As the trailer begins, Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher narrates over a montage of short clips with a serious tone, possibly hinting at a more tragic season. Butcher tells his team, the titular Boys, “I look back on my life, and all I see are the messes I’ve made, and I ain’t got time to fix it. I can do one thing right with the time I’ve got left, but I can’t do it alone. I can’t do it without you.”
The statement worries the team, giving them both a sense of urgency and dependency. In the clips beneath the narration, we see Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) leaving a kitchen with Homelander and as Butcher continues narrating in The Boys’ office. We also get to see Kimiko wielding a blood-covered knife and Homelander sitting in his own office, staring blankly at a wall.
Next, we hear the Homelander himself giving a speech to his fellow “heroes” of The Seven, describing how corrupt America is (in a fun twist of irony) and how the superhero squad will have to do terrible things in order to save it. He continues to declare that these acts will ruin their statuses as beloved celebrities and turn them into wrathful gods, which our protagonists already view superheroes as.
In the underlying footage, anti-Vought and Homelander protests are abundant, a direct result of the prior season’s ending where Starlight outs Homelander as an evil person. We see the body of a man, whom Homelander has seemingly killed. We also get first looks at Queen Maeve’s and Starlight’s replacements, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valorie Curry). They seem to fit right into the team and are ready to bloody up anybody who crosses their paths.
Surprisingly, Black Noir is back, too. After dying in the previous season at the hands of Homelander, it seems a new Supe has on the black garments. We also see a blood-covered businessman and another one with a gag in his mouth, being unblinded by The Deep.
Firecracker stomps someone on the floor in the hall of The Seven before cutting to a surprised Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie), subsequently one of the most revealing scenes of the trailer. Gen V characters Cate and Sam appear in the background of a scene focused on A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). Ashley interacts with her assistant, also called Ashley, in which the assistant comments on something that does not sound good.
We see Homelander cremating someone. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, best known for his role in The Walking Dead, interacts with Butcher, who theorizes the world is about to burn and needs someone, like Billy, to save the people the Supes don’t like. The group of which JDM’s character is part has not yet been revealed, but they more than likely have wronged or angered Supes in the past.
An aerial scene follows someone driving to a snowy farm lodge. Subsequently, Butcher and Mothers Milk arrive in a lab, as Billy’s narration describes a virus that can eradicate Supes, “an answer to all our [The Boys] prayers.”
He tells the team of this discovery, which Annie describes as insane and desperate, which Butcher says is needed for the team’s current predicament. The team rapidly descends a few sets of stairs, seemingly in a rush. We next see Billy in combat with Black Noir, meaning Billy is still using V-24, as he would not usually be able to combat a figure like this.
Firecracker is on the Vought News Network, declaring “hunting season” on Starlighters, the resulting supporters of Starlight following her experiences at Vought. As this is broadcast, Annie watches, horrified at a TV.
The Deep engages in hand-to-hand combat with Starlight, somehow increasing his strength, knocking out concrete pillars and obliterating metal machines. We see Frenchie (Tomer Capone) getting attacked by Neuman’s daughter, Zoe (Olivia Morandin), who has four tentacles coated with sharp teeth that extend from her mouth.
In retaliation to this, Frenchie attempts to shoot her, but not before a third party tackles Zoe, possibly taking the bullet for her. In a new scene that takes place in a barn, a businessman standing opposite MM, Frenchie, and Starlight is killed after a chicken travels through his lower back/abdominal area.
As revealed in the trailer, these are chickens injected with Compound V, making the ones we see in the trailer bulletproof, strong, and super deadly. The team attempts to shoot at one but does not kill the avian. In a wider shot, we see Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) in the barn, and another in the background is most likely Hughie (Jack Quaid). In a different shot but still in the same scene, we also see Kimiko.
Next, we see A-Train sitting by himself, seemingly regretful, and a new scene of a bloody hospital patient stumbling down a hallway away from our protagonists. We then see a blood-covered white-tiled room with several human body parts within. In a warehouse, Kimiko hits someone in the back of the head with a claw hammer, but instead of blood spurting out from the victim’s head, bubbles do instead. This perfectly times up with Hughie’s anti-violence narration overlaying this segment of the trailer.
In the last 30 seconds of the trailer, Firecracker shoots someone, another character is shot in the back, and Butcher disarms someone – literally -by using a fire extinguisher to shatter an arm belonging to a Supe with stretchy powers. Ryan launches a stranger into a building, obliterating them on impact, much to Homelander’s happiness. A cut to The Deep shows him saying, “violence is power.”
Homelander offers Ryan a “creamy delicious milkshake,” and we see a Disney On Ice parody of The Seven, with a Homelander look-alike doing ice pirouettes. We get a scene where Frenchie & Hughie and Starlight & Kimiko are hugging each other. And for the grand finale of this long trailer — more farm animals!
A levitating blood-covered sheep attacks the team, who’s running as fast as they can to avoid being followed by many animals. A woman rips off her face, The Deep eats seafood, Annie wipes blood from her face, and another businessman dies after his head explodes. A leg gets amputated, Hughie is covered in blood, Homelander laughs maniacally, and Butcher gives a display of his manners.
Gen V
Gen V ends with the shocking finale in which Cate (Maddie Phillips) and Sam (Asa Germann) betray their peers, killing any non-Supes on the university campus where the first season took place before Homelander arrives.
Shortly after promptly defeating the four characters Cate and Sam betrayed, Homelander witnesses the two characters on the news labelled as the Guardians of Godolkin [University].
The virus Butcher refers to in the trailer is also a key plot point of Gen V, which Victoria Neuman discovered the headmaster of the school had been developing to enact revenge against the race that killed her family. In the post-credit scene of the show, Butcher finds the remains of the laboratory where the virus was being developed, The Woods.
This Season, On The Boys
In a new synopsis provided by the team at Prime Video, we learn a basic outline of what to expect overall this season which you can read below:
In Season Four, the world is on the brink. Victoria Neuman is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the muscly thumb of Homelander, who is consolidating his power. Butcher, with only months to live, has lost Becca’s son and his job as The Boys’ leader. The rest of the team are fed up with his lies. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it’s too late.
The Boys Season 4 stars Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr as Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January/Starlight, Jessie T. Usher as Reggie Franklin/A-Train, Laz Alonso as Mothers Milk, Chace Crawford as Kevin Moskowitz/The Deep, Tomer Capone as Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman, and Cameron Crovetti as Ryan Butcher.
Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan also join the cast this season, which will premiere on Prime Video on June 13th, 2024. You can watch the full trailer below.
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