The review embargo is up for season 4 of The Boys, which premieres tomorrow night with three episodes before it switches to weekly. I’m not going to do a full review of all of it, but I do want to comment on what I think is one of the biggest issues with the series, and one that is only being amplified in season 4 here:

Its politics.

Okay, hang on. Let me stop you right there. If you don’t know me, know I’m probably not going to say what you think here. Yes, The Boys is an unabashedly liberal show villainizing right wing extremism and creating stand-ins for real life fascist forces in American. This has led to a few different situations where A) some viewers are turned off by this, to which creator Eric Kripke says “Go watch something else.” Or B) people unironically hold up Homelander as some sort of hero, rather than the series’ cautionary tale.

I am very liberal. I agree with all points the series is making about how these forces are becoming, and already are, extremely dangerous in America. My issue is that I think the satire here is…just not very good. It was a bit too on-the-nose before, and now? It’s going way, way overboard in terms of mirroring exact real life events in a way that can just feel goofy.

The obvious comparison before this was Homelander as Trump, right down to the red hats and the equivalent of “shooting someone on Fifth Avenue” and still being praised for it. But now?

The Boys is going full Qanon this season, diving deeper into the far right movement in a way that…just…come on, man. They do Pizzagate. Like literally Pizzagate. Starlight is accused of being a “Groomer” and her at-risk youth shelter a place for abusing kids. A guy shows up with a gun to try and “free the kids” that are (not) being abused there, a situation that exactly mirrors a real-life, dangerous instance of a man showing up to the pizza place in question with a weapon.

Firecracker, the new supe, barely seems to have powers at first but her ability to operate as a mouthpiece to lambast Starlight and all Homelander’s enemies is her true strength, and part of a master plan to manipulate the public to the Seven (and Homelander’s) will, a strategy executed by new Seven member Sister Sage, the world’s smartest person.

Often the way this plays out can feel like an SNL skit when it comes to the political parodies. Again, I fully support the politics of the show as they align with my own. I too think fascism is bad and conspiracies like Qanon and Pizzagate are dangerous and unhinged. But I think it gets just way too caught up with this allegory. I get that The Boys is not exactly drowning in subtlety, but this also bothered me last season and it’s only escalating.

The rest of the show is fine so far. Butcher deals with the ramifications of his Super serum for last season. Homelander struggles with connecting with Ryan. I really like Sister Sage a lot. Weirdly, Hughey seems like he’s being given the least to do of anything, when he formerly led the show. But it’s fine.

Being political is totally fine and a part of all media, essentially. But I think there are good ways and bad ways to execute those concepts, and The Boys just continually comes off as goofy with the way they’re trying to mirror actual news events in real life now.

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