Things get kinky in the latest episode of The Boys, and there’s a major revelation. Here’s our The Boys episode 6 review.
Spoiler warning! These reviews will be spoiler-free for the week in question, but will discuss previous seasons and episodes in detail. Heavy spoilers for The Boys season 4 episode 5 follow.
Before we dive into this week’s episode of The Boys, let’s talk about last week’s positively deranged episode.
In episode 5, Hugh Sr (Simon Pegg) woke up to new superpowers, thanks to a dose of Compound V which was administered by Hughie’s mother Daphne (Rosemarie DeWitt). While things looked good for a minute, Hugh Sr quickly began to deteriorate as his new powers, which saw him able to phase through things at a remarkable speed, hit him.
Unable to control them, Hugh Sr ended up going on a grisly, gory rampage through the hospital. Among other things, he found himself in someone’s guts, literally, having phased right into a patient lying on a hospital bed. Ouch. On top of all that, Hugh Sr’s memory started playing tricks on him as he didn’t recognise his now-adult son.
It was a wacky, thoroughly entertaining episode with a bittersweet ending as the family decided Hugh Sr was, frankly, better off dead. Parental death is nothing new in the world of The Boys; Homelander famously killed his mother during birth and in Gen V, Marie Moreau also accidentally killed her parents when her powers kicked in for the first time. But Hugh Sr’s death was different. It was a peaceful and non-violent way to go, falling asleep surrounded by family, something that feels like an anomaly in Eric Kripke’s shows in general.
This week’s episode finds Daphne and Hughie spreading Hugh Sr’s ashes during a Maid In Manhattan walking tour as the two bond further. We also get a glimpse of Annie and how she’s doing after Firecracker told the public she had an abortion in episode 4. As we see in this episode, she can barely cross the street in peace as people spew hateful words at her. The Boys has, admirably, positioned itself as a pro-choice show and I have to applaud that. Later in the episode, Hughie heads over to a very formal supe party organised by Tek Knight, only to find himself in a, shall we say, compromised position.
If the last two episodes have prioritised action and the inherent wackiness of The Boys, episode 6 juxtaposes the violence with heaps of comedy. Poor Hughie is forced to masquerade as Webweaver, The Boys’ version of Spider-Man, only to find himself at Tek Knight’s sex dungeon. These scenes are naturally mined for comedy, but the episode also includes someone inserting drugs into their anus, so if, somehow, you were still under the impression that The Boys was high-brow entertainment, episode 6 will extinguish all of that very quickly.
The episode’s final 15 minutes are an emotional rollercoaster as Homelander and Firecracker grow closer and not necessarily in a romantic way. Meanwhile, Butcher comes to a shocking realisation that course-corrects his weak storyline this season. Season 4 has really drawn more parallels between Homelander and Butcher, two men who are willing to do anything to reach their goals, but who are convinced they’re doing the right thing.
Butcher especially is slowly but surely starting to emerge as a more complex character. He’s always been morally questionable, but season 4 pushes that into a whole new stratosphere. Fuelled by desperation, Butcher is quickly reclaiming his title as the best character in the series. The make-up department have also stepped up their game as Butcher is visibly getting weaker, appearing more and more ghoulish each week.
With only two more episodes remaining, the season’s endgame is still a little unclear. This season has been incredibly entertaining and there have been some really amazing, bloody and diabolical episodes, but we’re not entirely sure where this is all going at this point. We’re excited to find out, though.
The Boys is now streaming on Prime Video with new episodes premiering weekly.
