It should come as no surprise that The Boys remains one of the most shocking shows on television, but Season 4 may have already raised the bar too high with just how many eye-popping moments it’s had.
Previous seasons didn’t hold their punches, such as the shocking Season 3 moment where Termite burst out of his boyfriend’s penis or when Hughie exploded Translucent in Season 1.
However, The Boys Season 4 has already made those events seem tame by comparison. Even the simplest moments this season have been shocking, vulgar, and often downright gruesome.
Here are the hands-down most shocking moments from the new episodes of The Boys so far, if you’ve got the guts to stomach them.
6. Butcher’s exposing e-mail
It feels so quaint now, given everything else that happened this season, but Billy Butcher‘s e-mail has to be brought up as a shocking moment in Season 4. Early on in the season, fans expected Butcher to betray The Boys and send Victoria Neuman the Red River files she desperately wanted.
Neuman’s response echoes the fans when Butcher sends what is instead a frankly upsetting close-up of his own butt cheeks spread wide open. It’s even better when you learn that was actor Claudia Doumit’s real reaction to seeing the image for the first time.
5. Vought on Ice gets messy
Episode 3 saw Hughie and Mother’s Milk attempting to spy on a meeting between Homelander and Neuman at an ice rink. It’s here that a musical on ice about The Seven saving Christmas is being rehearsed. But Hughie is found out by Homelander, leading to chaos.
It starts when the actress playing Queen Maeve is lasered in half. In the ensuing panic, multiple ice skaters are mutilated by their co-stars’ razor-sharp ice skates, painting the ice red with blood. It’s a shocking bloodbath that largely flew under the radar thanks to all the moments in other episodes released on the same day.
4. Splinter’s Human Centipede
The Boys Season 4 made waves with its disgusting take on The Human Centipede. The moment comes in Episode 2, when The Boys are infiltrating TruthCon while tracking down Sister Sage and end up fighting the unhinged conspiracy theorist Supe, Firecracker.
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Frenchie and Kimiko follow Firecracker’s right-hand man, Splinter, and find that he’s a Supe who can duplicate himself, which he uses to create an upsetting orgy with multiple versions of himself while looking at a picture of Firecracker. It’s a moment that’s stuck with fans even as Season 4 has grown increasingly more grim.
3. Sister Sage gets a Deep lobotomy
The smartest person in the world is sure to have some quirks, but The Boys’ Sister Sage proved hers are right at home in the bizarre and grisly world of The Seven. Fans were confused as to why the typically acerbic Sage suddenly came onto The Deep, but the answer wasn’t anything anyone really wanted.
Sister Sage reveals that her brain is constantly healing and regrowing itself, so she periodically lobotomizes herself to unwind. This culminates in her allowing Deep to lobotomize her and scrape her brains out in a moment that’s played off as upsetting and erotic at the same time.
2. Hughie goes undercover
Episode 6 promised to give Herogasm a run for its money, and it more or less delivered. The episode sees Hughie go undercover as a Spider-Man parody, Web-Weaver, under the guise of auditioning to be Tek-Kinght’s sidekick.
It goes terribly. Tek-Knight straps Hughie to a bench, and he’s assaulted by both Tek-Knight and Ashley. It’s a grim moment that’s played somewhat for laughs, something which didn’t sit well with fans. The episode winds up being shocking not just for what happened but for how the show treats it.
1. Homelander’s homecoming
Homelander’s trip “home” was so shocking that it could have filled this entire list. Returning to the Vought Black Site, where he was experimented on. Fans immediately picked up on Homelander’s empty stare and knew that nothing good was going to happen.
They were right. Homelander immediately begins a reign of terror, burning one man alive in an oven and firing his laser vision through another’s genitals after forcing him to masturbate for the room. The episode ends on a haunting note, with the facility’s lead scientist welded shut in a room with the dismembered bodies of her fellow scientists, presumably with no hope of rescue.
The Boys Season 4 Episodes 1-4 are available to stream on Prime Video now. While you wait for the next episode, check out how the Gen V timeline ties in and the Season 4 theories. You can also find more TV shows streaming this month, as well as the best TV shows of 2024 so far.
