The third season of Amazon’s The Boys has already concluded, and if your initial reaction was “wait, what?” we sympathise with you, Marvelous Viewers, as that was also our reaction. However, we do have a beef with Laz Alonso because he promised to reveal the show’s moniker, Mother’s Milk, this season, but he never did.
However, what we did receive was a remarkably low-casualty episode that somewhat confirmed the predictions we made in our Episode & Investigation and Season Finale Predictions videos, both of which are available on our channel.
Even while the final battle was, funnily enough, quite anticlimactic, it was the conclusion that particularly showed us how grim Season 4 would be. And if it is anything like what we are anticipating, you guys will not be able to wait for it to be released as soon as possible.
Without further ado, here are all of the theories and predictions for Season 4 of Amazon’s The Boys, explored! Oh, and before we get started, be aware that this episode will contain a LOT of spoilers.
What Went Down in the Season Finale of Season 3 of The Boys
It is actually sort of unsettling that episode 8 largely adhered to a relatively basic storyline framework given the fact that Eric Kripke and company had given us surprise reveal after surprise reveal in the run-up to the finale. Sure, what happened toward the end could be considered a twist, but we do not agree. But for now, let us start at the top. We will get to that in a moment. As we had anticipated, the episode begins with Homelander stealing Ryan from Grace Mallory, however he left her alive ostensibly because he did not want to kill in front of his son.
And because Ryan is a disgusting egomaniac who genuinely believes that he is God and sees everyone as vermin, any situation featuring him feels terrible to us in the first place. However, Antony Starr captures so much genuine passion in these father-son exchanges that you almost want to support the character. Ryan is initially afraid to speak with Homie because, despite Homelander’s possible forgetting about Stormfront by this point, he hasn’t.
Furthermore, he continues to believe that his father hates him for inadvertently killing his lover. However, Homelander just cherished Stormfront while she served her purposes. As soon as it became clear to him that all she really cared about was the Aryan agenda, he abandoned her and only came to see her for his own birthday; yes, she’s an abhorrent Nazi, but her suicide does have a flimsy layer of tragedy attached to it, because she killed herself out of the realization that all he cares about his himself.
And that is also true in this interaction he has with Ryan because he only zones in on the family after he finds out that Soldier Boy is his dad. You can really see how desperate Homelander is to have a family, and that is precisely where his views intersect with Ryan’s. Because unlike Stormfront, Maeve (pronounce: May-v), Madelyn or anyone else in the world, Soldier Boy and Ryan are the only two people that Homelander shares a true relationship with. Blood is thicker than water, and he believes in this phrase implicitly.
And more than that, he is also painfully aware of the kind of isolation that Ryan feels because of his powers. Homelander grew up in a lab with doctors all around him and a set of powers to unstable to control for a toddler. In the comics, he killed every doctor in his birthing room with his laser eyes on accident, something even M.M. acknowledges as being a mistake, because you can’t teach a minute-old baby right from wrong.
And while Ryan hasn’t done the same thing to anyone so far, he did kill Stormfront with his eyes by mistake, and that is something Homelander truly understands. He forgives his son that mistake and threatens Grace to drop her phone before flying off with Ryan- where, we don’t find out now. The scene cuts back to Butcher & Hughie at The Legend’s place, and turns out, Soldier Boy let the cat out of the bag to them as well; before locking himself up in a bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and drinking milk cola to calm himself down. Like father like son, eh?
Or like son, like father; either way, we’re trying to say that Soldier Boy gave Homelander his creepy milk addiction, alright? Getting back to the point, Hughie is concerned that S.B. over here is not going to play ball because Homelander is his son, after all, but Butcher is surprisingly convinced that they’ll have no problems. He goes so far as to say that Homelander isn’t really Soldier Boy’s son and he knows that; something he confirms at least 2 more times throughout the course of the episode with the boy himself.
But we see him get on something of a redemptive path when he, Hughie and Soldier Boy stop at a gas station for supplies; because after telling Hughie that he really is a spitting image of Lenny, like his aunt Judy did in Season 2 episode 5, he knocks him out and locks him in a closet, effectively saving Hughie from using the Temp V and risking death again. S.B. picks up on Hughie’s absence but given the fact that he thinks the wee lad guzzles ejaculatory fluid for fun and also the fact that Butcher assures him he has an in, he just goes right back to sleep with nary a care in the world.
Which should tell you exactly what kind of a dad Soldier Boy would be, but don’t tell Homelander that, because he has plans to win over daddy dearest, he does! Black Noir shows up at Vought Tower after making up his own mind to kill Soldier Boy and he tells Homie the same thing, albeit with his signature visual aid. Homelander appears delighted at first, and even hugs him, saying he knew Noir would be back.
The Deep completely fails to read the room, as usual, but Ashley hurries him out of there because she knows exactly what is going on. And this is also probably the first time we see Noir’s feelings towards Homelander because when Homie hugs him, we can see animated hearts fluttering all over the place, showing us that Noir did consider him his best friend after all. But then he ends up dying at the hands of his best friend because he failed to consider just how important family might be to him; oh, and also the fact that he kept his father’s existence hidden from him for literally decades.
There is an Easter egg for the comic book version of Black Noir in this confrontation as well, because while Homelander recounts all the ways in which his existence was de-mystified for Big Homie, he brings up Noir’s crooked old smile. And if you’ve seen the comics, you’ll know that that was his permanent expression there. But Noir’s death is- spoiler alert- the only one that occurs in this finale episode, which is what has left us feeling so deflated because given the action that takes place later, they really could have given us more.
But speaking of more, we find out that Queen Maeve has escaped from the armoured truck transporting her away from Vought and joined up with The Boys; this is why Ashley and Deep went to Homelander in the first place. Maeve is just as shocked as we were when she finds out that S.B. is Homie’s father, but she doesn’t exactly agree with M.M. and Frenchie’s plan to knock him out with the Novichok they’d acquired for around $10 million; or the price of 3 Bugatti Chirons.
Because Maeve is agrees with Butcher and wants Homelander gone; permanently. So when The Boys crash Butcher Soldier Boy’s drunken reminiscing party, she chucks the bottle with the nerve agent outside the window and assists Butcher and S.B. in locking them up. The 3 depart for Vought Tower, where we meet Ashley, The Deep and A-Train all assembled in a room, waiting on Homelander for a meeting.
Oh, before we talk about this particular instance, we should add that earlier in the episode, A-Train visits his brother Nate and gets kicked out of his house because Nate put two and two together and figured Reggie killed Blue Hawk; and he does not want a murderer around his kids. Jessie T. Usher continues to win our hearts with nothing but pure facial expression, as his anticipation turns to trepidation and then downright anguish in a space of 5 minutes.
He knew, deep down, that he killed Blue Hawk for his brother’s approval, but he failed to see that what he was doing made him no better than the racist Supe. So A-Train’s redemption arc isn’t your typical trope in play; it’s a realistic depiction of the consequences of vengeance, but it doesn’t look like A-Train is going to stop there.
Because the reason that Homelander called for the meeting to even take place was that he wanted to send a message; he put Noir’s helmet in front of the three and when Deep inevitably asked him where Noir was because you know, he can’t read a room to save his life, Homelander simply replied that he was lying and keeping secrets from him, the clear implication being that they too would be dead if they crossed him.
The Deep immediately goes into grovelling mode and asks how he can prove his loyalty to his “family patriarch”- because that is what Homie sees himself as- but what he gets asked to do is literally tantamount to treason. And you’ll find out why in a bit. But after Deep leaves and Ashley is made to reveal the consequences of her own disturbing condition, Homelander turns on A-Train and talks him down for killing “one of his own kind”, referring clearly to Supes and Blue Hawk.
But while Homelander continues ranting, we get a quick shot of A-Train sneak a peak at Black Noir’s mask, which worked as a metaphor on so many levels. First, Noir was actually A-Train’s kind; in that they were both African-American men. And second, Homelander was nothing but a hypocrite, because he laid all that crap on A-Train after killing a Supe himself.
The last shot we get of A-Train is him with a conflicted and frustrated face, and we think that is going to come into play next season. But getting back to the good stuff, Butcher, Maeve and S.B. arrive at Vought Tower to confront Homelander in a dramatic show-down that goes off the rails as expected; but not quite in the way we expected it to. Because Homelander doesn’t want to fight; he actually just wants to talk for once.
And it is here that Antony Starr’s best work as an actor comes into play because you can see the desperation for family and connection clear on his face. He even brings out Ryan, to the shock of Butcher, and introduces him to his “grandpa”, confirming our 3 Generations of Supes theory. And for a heartbeat, it does seem like Soldier Boy is going to team up with his family and take down “the others” in a bloodbath of a family activity.
But surprisingly, Soldier Boy turns on Homelander instead, and calls him an effing disappointment, and we have to give props to the writers here because they did hint at this all throughout season 3. Think about it; Soldier Boy is a man from the 40’s whose idea of a “real man” is drastically different from what we have today, or even Homelander had growing up in the 80’s. Do you really think he would be proud to have a son who literally begs him for affection in not so many words?
I mean, he recalled the way his dad treated him, and the statement he used to describe Homelander as a son is one he had heard his entire life himself. Even after becoming a superhero, his father only told him that he took a shortcut. This is a continuation of the theme of sons turning out like their fathers in this story.
Butcher turns out like Sam, Soldier Boy turns out like his own father, and Ryan might turn out like his biological father in the end as well, and we’ll get to that too. So Soldier Boy tries to kill Homie, Ryan blasts him with his eye lasers, and he sends him flying away, calling him an effing little turd. And this marks an odd turning point in our story because Butcher attacks Soldier Boy and is briefly joined by Homelander out of their individual desires to protect their son Ryan. Because try as he might, Butcher can’t make himself truly hate Ryan, and he does care for him like a son.
But so does Homelander, and we see his feral dad instinct kick in after he checks on Ryan and then goes to kill Soldier Boy alongside his archenemy. That’s when Maeve steps in for her own pound of flesh, and to his credit, Homelander tells her they’ll finish their business after he’s done with Soldier Boy, but she keeps hitting him so they end up fighting as well. Their fight is more evenly matched than even Maeve first thought.
There’s a cool Wonder Woman Bracelets of Submission homage when Maeve deflects Homelander’s eye beams with her own bracelets. She manages to punch him hard enough to make his nose bleed and actually manages to stab him in the ear with a metallic rod but in the end, Homelander puts out her right eye and might have also killed her had it not been for the fact that Soldier Boy was about to go nuclear on everyone.
Because while the super-exes were off having their tiff, S.B. wrecked Butcher and was only stopped with the combined forces of Starlight, Kimiko and M.M., who managed to slip the Novichok mask Frenchie made into him while confirming that Soldier Boy was, indeed, a racist. But the latter’s PTSD went out of control and he was on the cusp of exploding everyone in the vicinity when Maeve charged at him and jumped out of the window with him.
The blast eventually left 3 entire floors of Vought Tower completely demolished while the rest of the building lost its beautiful glass façade. With the fight concluded, Homelander leaves with Ryan in tow in a scene that directly mirrors the ending of Season 2, where Ryan chose Butcher over his own father. Butcher collapses on the ground after seeing this and wakes up in a hospital where he finds out he’s only got a year to live, thanks to the Temp V.
Annie joins The Boys after helping a de-powered and one-eyed Maeve hide and recuperate enough to seemingly ride off into the sunset alongside Elena; and a later shot of Ashley deleting the footage of Maeve’s survival also seems to confirm this happy ending for Queen Maeve. But we’ll see how that holds up.
The penultimate scene of the episode, we see that the Deep’s loyalty task was to kill the current prospective Vice President of the USA so Victoria Neuman could take his place as Dakota Bob’s running mate. And in the final scene of season 3 of The Boys, we see Homelander arrive at the protests that have been running since Annie leaked his homicidal side to the media in the last episode but to meet the Stormchaser faction instead of the populist one.
A rebel Starlight fanatic throws something at Ryan and calls Homelander an effing fascist and before he has time to think, Homie just straight up lasers him. But rather than getting persecuted for this very public murder- perhaps the first in the view of American civilians- Homelander gets cheered by none other than Todd, and we hear the same ominous violin music that cues up every time Homie is literally losing his mind; except this time, the camera pans in on Ryan and we see a faint smile on his face as the screen cuts to black. How does this set up season 4? Well, let’s break it down.
A-Train might become the last mole for The Boys and suffer Queen Maeve’s comic book fate
Every fibre in A-Train’s body must be churning at the sheer pile of human agony that he has become. All of us started off The Boys hating this guy’s guts and lumping him in with the likes of Homelander. But it’s been 3 seasons, and we don’t feel nearly as much sympathy for Homelander as we do for A-Train as the audience.
Because at least A-Train can make an effing apology; Homelander went on a televised rant about he can’t be wrong because he is simply better than puny humans, whereas Herogasm showed us that A-Train at least has enough humanity left in him to recognize his mistakes, however late he might be to the party. But we see that even his most-redemptive act- killing Blue Hawk, a legitimately problematic Supe- is tinged with the umpteenth amount of personal anguish.
Because not only is A-Train alive thanks to Blue Hawk’s heart, his brother Nate- the only reason he even recognized morality in the first place- now hates him for being a murderer. It’s a reality check that would have sent Reggie spinning into a rage and accusing Nate of being stupid enough to provoke Blue Hawk or something if this was season 1 but A-Train simply left his brother’s home after being told to leave.
And let’s not forget the look he gave Homelander when he saw what he did to Black Noir. Here’s the thing: racial commentary might not have started out as a serious motif when the show was pitched, but it is taking centre stage in the story at this point, and that means that the black community will eventually need a Supe to represent them too on-screen. Homelander has already because the alt-right poster boy in the show whether he knows it or not; he just cares about the people who love him.
Whereas A-Train is being put through the ringer and really being made to understand the weight of what it means to represent the hopes, wishes, dreams and fears of an entire community by being constantly denied the praise he so clearly longs for. But where A-Train in season 1 would have just swallowed your molar accidentally whilst killing you for disrespecting him, season 3 A-Train is taking the hits on his chin and managing to stand his own ground.
And here’s the other thing, in the comics, The Boys didn’t win because they managed to blow up The Seven; they won because they got the c-words on tape. Queen Maeve was the person who they used for this in the comics; she bugged the Seven’s HQ out the wazoo and The Boys were able to leak all that info to the public and turn popular opinion against Homelander, thereby prompting his killing spree and coup plot to come into being.
But Maeve is gone now, and Hughie already tried bugging Vought Tower in Season 1; that didn’t work out so well for him, and he ended up killing Translucent to make up for it. So the role of being the final mole could very well go to A-Train now. He already has an in with The Boys and his relationship with Starlight and Hughie- though tenuous at best- hasn’t always been uncooperative. He brought them the Stormfront files and helped expose her in Season 2.
Planting bugs in Vought Tower would be a piece of cake for the fastest man alive, especially now that the entire Crime Analytics department is just The Deep. And he could also suffer the same fate as Maeve from the comics, because while she got something of a happy ending with Elena in this episode, in the comics, Queen Maeve died trying to protect Starlight from a homicidal Homelander; and got her head plucked off her shoulders as recompense.
Homie didn’t even flinch while doing this; he simply informed her that her sword was a metal prop and proceeded to dismantle her with ruthlessly. If A-Train is caught installing the bugs or he comes into Homelander’s crosshairs by mistake, it’s game over for him, because we know Homie is at least as fast as him, if not faster.
For reference, go watch the season finale of The Boys Presents: Diabolical. Double finale homework for you guys. But that being said, it’s pretty much guaranteed that A-Train will die in the next season, given just how unhinged Homelander has become; the only question is how.
Vic the Veep is either going to help Homelander stage the coup or expose him, leading to the coup
It was great to see Vic the Veep make his debut in the show finally! We’re only kidding, of course, but seeing Victoria Neuman step into the spotlight that was bestowed upon her frankly oafish comic book counterpart was the piece of the puzzle that we needed to enter the endgame. Because if you haven’t read the comics, the entire Homelander coup conspiracy started at Herogasm, which was also attended by Vic the Veep; and do you guys want to guess who his President was?
We’ll give you a hint; it rhymes with Lakota Rob. But how is that relevant to this video? Well, you’d think that the character currently on track to become the first female President of America in the Kripke-verse would need a way to get there; and that’s where Vicky comes into the picture.
We’ve drawn a lot of parallels to the comics so let’s step away for a second and look at two things that make Victoria Neuman different from Victor Neuman: 1) Victoria is a Supe, more specifically the head-popping Supe and 2) she isn’t nearly as stupid as her comic book counterpart, which she proves by making this play for Vice Presidency.
You’ll recall that in the previous episode, Vicky turned up to Homelander with a piece of paper that we now know had Ryan’s address on it. She told Homie that all she wanted was a transactional relationship, and turns out, his end of the bargain was assassinating the Vice President of the United States; which makes sense because Victoria Neuman is the embodiment of a ruthless politician.
She got her adopted father locked up just to serve her own interests, so make of that what you will. But we have a sinking feeling that Vic won’t remain the Veep for too long, because if her Senate head-popping fiesta was anything to go by, then all she needs to do is bide her time and assassinate Dakota Bob at the right place and the right time and she will become the strongest person on planet Earth; politically, of course.
From here, there are two ways in which things can go; 1) Vic plays Homelander like a fiddle and risks imminent destruction as a result, or 2) she gives him the keys to the kingdom by signing over executive power to him in an unprecedented political disaster. There is a third possibility, of course, and that is that Homelander simply kills her and takes over the White House by brute force; but that only worked out in the comics because he rallied enough of the Supe community into backing him.
We haven’t even seen that many Supes in the TV show in the first place, so a coup being carried out by a group of Supes is highly unlikely. What is likely is that Eric Kripke and his talented actor friends give us their own rendition of January 6th– maybe use footage from that black day as well- and the mob that Homelander’s rantings gathers is what enables the coup.
The show down between him and Vicky will be a short one, rest assured; but what we really want to know is are the show-runners willing to cross that line and give Vicky the same ending as her comic book counterpart? Because THAT, ladies and gentlemen, would be disturbing to say the least. But either way, she will be the reason that Homelander is able to even get into the White House in the first place, and you can quote us on this one.
Butcher will become the final antagonist of the series
This was pretty much confirmed by the way Hughie told Butcher that he wanted him to pull a Lenny and save Butcher from himself. Because if you’ve read the comics, you’ll know that Hughie says these exact lines- minus the Lenny bit- to M.M., Frenchie and the rest of The Boys just as they figure out what Billy’s true plan has been all along. Because while he wants us to think that revenge is the only thing on his mind, it’s far more than that.
In season 3 episode 4, right before Maeve and Butcher get it on, he tells her that his problem isn’t really Homelander; it’s Supes in general. This is perhaps the only time we’ve seen Billy’s full conviction, and it is scary, because he doesn’t appear this convinced of something even when he “saves Hughie” from the Temp V. Because what he did there was an admission of guilt in effect; Mindstorm’s nightmare visions had essentially made Butcher realise that he did view Hughie as his little brother and he therefore felt somewhat responsible for him.
But the “you’ve all gotta bloody go” he said to Maeve was the real him. And we know this, because in the comics, right after he kills Black Noir, Butcher also kills 150 other Supes using a special variant of Compound V that makes the target’s head pop. Homelander dies in issue #65, and The Boys has 72 issues in total. Those last 7 issues have Butcher as the main antagonist of the series, and there are more than enough hints that his live-action counterpart will end up following the same trajectory.
Who puts Butcher down, in the end, is a question that remains unanswered simply because there are so many possibilities at this point; it could be Hughie, it could be Ryan, it could even be Annie. But the point here is that Butcher will eventually go after every Supe in existence, and it might even start out with Kimiko, because she’s the closest to him physically.
He might even pay Maeve and Elena a little visit at their prospective farm, mirroring what Butcher did to Love Sausage in the comics, where the latter was a long-time ally of The Boys and ended up dying because he figured out Butcher’s true intentions. And if you guys think that he is going to turn his life around, then you guys are not as into the show as we are, probably, because they showed us Butcher’s cancer diagnosis for a reason.
The maximum amount of time that he can live for is one year according to the doctors, and in that entire calendar year, Butcher needs to get his affairs in order. It will start with Victoria Neuman, move on to Homelander, and then the rest of the Supe community before Butcher himself is either killed by a person or the cancer. And as we all know, Butcher doesn’t leave loose ends, which is an ill omen for pretty much anyone who meets him in the series, including Little Nina.
Hughie and Starlight might become mentors to a new generation of heroes with Ryan at the helm
Our final prediction is that at the end of Season 4, Hughie and Starlight will become the ones who will usher in a new era of Supes and actually show them how to be heroes for a change. And there is some foreshadowing for this in the form of Red River Institute, because if you take a cursory glance at even infant/toddler Supe we’ve seen so far, their powers have shockingly similar features to The Seven.
Teddy Stillwell is a speedster, like A-Train, and Ryan is basically Homelander 2.0; except he might be way stronger than him. It’s not too far of a stretch of the imagination to guess that someone will try to take control of these living WMDs after Vought invariably collapses, and that someone might just be Hughie and Annie.
Starlight’s entire character arc has been about being a hero and teaching others how to be one themselves. It would make a lot of sense for her to become the mentor figure of a team of Supes who know how to differentiate between good and evil for a change, and we don’t say this because we think that the world needs superheroes.
Not at all. On the contrary, we agree with Butcher when he says that Supes are too dangerous for society. But here’s the thing; once something as revolutionary as Compound V is revealed to the world, there will always be people out there who will try to replicate it. We saw this kind of domino effect most notably in Iron Man 2, where the entire world started trying to replicate Tony Stark’s armour because it was quite literally the best weapon a soldier could ask for.
Well, if you swap out V for the armour, you’ll have pretty much the same scenario unfolding in the TV show as well. And not to mention, it is possible that only Homelander was involved in the distribution of V to terrorists as A-Train’s role as an accomplice is under doubt from Jessie T. Usher himself. But the point is, now that Vought had let the cat out of the bag, the world would never be the same. And to protect this new world, a new team will be required. Who better to guide them than the two people who know how tough it is to stick to your guns when the entire world tells you to throw morals away?
Marvelous Verdict
You might have noticed that we have spoken about these 4 major predictions in rather certain terms, but that’s only because we think that the next season of The Boys will be the last one. And that isn’t because we’ve got an insider scoop or something; far from it.
We say this because the trajectory of the show presents it to us in such a way. So far, it has been impossible to tell how far along the way we are in the story if you are simply a comic book fan because the chronology has been jumbled up quite a bit.
The Comics has a lot of stuff the show doesn’t- out of necessity, of course- but the order of events is also jumbled to such an extent that it makes it unpredictable to guess where the story will go from here. But the fact that Neuman is running for VP and that Homelander got cheered for essentially committing a blatant war crime on domestic soil tells us that the boiling point is coming pretty soon, and the kettle might tip over finally in the next season.
Sure, Eric Kripke can stretch it out for 2 more seasons, and get to that neat 40-episode mark, but The Boys has always been about giving the fans what they want; just not how they expected it. So dig your trenches and strap in for a long, long wait, you guys, because if Varsity drops next year, then it is possible we might not even get Season 4 in 2023. But till then, we will be waiting right here, keeping an eye out and both ears wide open.