The Boys Season 4 Trailer Brings Blood, Chickens, And Creamy Delicious Milkshakes
The official trailer for "The Boys" season 4 just dropped, and it looks like some of the antiheroes in Prime Video's hit series are having a bit of an identity crisis. "Violence isn't brave," Jack Quaid's Hughie says at one point, noting that the titular kill squad should probably stop killing everyone if they actually want to save the world. Of course, in typical "The Boys" fashion, that nice sentiment is surrounded on all sides by violence: rooms full of dead bodies, a leg getting sawed off, and a guy going splat against a building, among other (gross) things.
That last kill will surely be of interest to fans of the series, as it's committed by Butcher's own stepson, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), who's now under the tutelage of his biological dad, weirdo supervillain Homelander (Antony Starr). After he seemingly explodes a guy against a building, Ryan is rewarded with the offer of a milkshake from dear old dad. That's not the only bit of dark humor in the promo spot, as we also see the gang go after a "V-ed up chicken" that bursts through a man's chest, a flying, bloody herd of sheep, and a killing blow that releases a whimsical stream of bubbles from the body of the fallen.
Gen V is joining the fight (for evil) in The Boys season 4
Gore and gags aside, "The Boys" season 4 seems to have a pretty serious throughline, with a dying Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and his gang trying to get rid of the Supes once and for all with a virus that's apparently capable of killing only those with superpowers. "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," he confesses over a hero shot of a crew including Hughie, Annie (Erin Moriarty), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso).
Meanwhile, Homelander and his ilk seem to be ramping up their villainy, or at least becoming more obvious with it. "We'll have to do some terrible things for the greater good," the blond baddie says, smoothing his hair while looking at a stack of dead bodies. "You'll no longer be beloved celebrities. You will be wrathful gods!" Based on the official description of the series, which says that the Boys are "fed up with [Butcher's] lies" and no longer see him as their leader, it seems like Team Homelander has the advantage here.
Interestingly, the new trailer also features some characters from "Gen V," the coming-of-age spinoff series co-created by Eric Kripke that aired last year, along with a plot lifted from that show's first season. The nasty-looking virus infecting the severed leg in the promo was first developed in a secret lab under Godolkin University, the school where up-and-coming Supes trained in "Gen V." Among the new generation of heroes and villains were Sam Riordan (Asa Germann) and Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), who had both gone to the dark side by the end of the first season of "Gen V" and appear standing alongside A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) in this trailer.
"The Boys" season 4 debuts on Prime Video on June 13, 2024.