The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 recap: Homelander’s homecoming

The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 is a wild ride, with Homelander taking a trip down memory lane, Butcher hatching a new plan, and Firecracker’s campaign causing devastation. 

There was a lot going on in the first three episodes of The Boys Season 4, including new Supes forming political alliances (and divisions), a Vought on Ice rehearsal gone wrong, and a conspiracy theorist event ending in plenty of bloodshed (and a rather explicit Human Centipede homage). 

As for Homelander, he’s more unhinged than ever before as he looks set to shake his human side once and for all. At the end of The Boys Season 4 Episode 3, he made a decision: to go back to the start of it all by heading home.

You can expect this and plenty more in the new episode, which is streaming on Prime Video now. So, without further ado, here’s the full recap of The Boys Season 4 Episode 4, ‘Wisdom of the Ages’. Warning: Spoilers ahead and some may find this content distressing.

Homelander heads home

After deciding Homelander “needs to go home,” The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 opens at Vought’s lab, where the team notices the security cameras have gone black. The elevator starts pinging — whoever’s turned the cameras off is heading their way. 

The lab’s head Marty tells them to call Vought HQ but it’s too late. The elevator reaches their floor, the door opening to reveal Homelander… and he’s brought a cake. Everyone watches in stunned silence before Homelander breaks the tension by saying hello. 

“John,” says Marty, but he corrects him by insisting his name is now Homelander. “This is just so surreal, I never thought I’d be back here,” he continues. You could cut the tension with a knife; clearly something terrible went on here, and Homelander’s upbeat demeanor only makes the situation feel more sinister.

We cut to Butcher in the shower. He’s not looking too hot, and for good reason; the camera focuses on his back, where a worm-like parasite wriggles its way up his spine underneath the skin. As it reaches the top, Butcher’s eyes roll in the back of his head and he falls to the floor, hitting his head on the way down. 

As he lays on the floor spacing out, a vision of Becca comes to him and tells him to get up. “Butcher, the world doesn’t end just because your sh*tty life does,” she says, and he starts to pull himself together.  

Back at the hospital, Hughie’s arguing with his mom Daphne and a doctor, who intend on pulling the plug on Hugh due to his condition “indicating brain death.” Hughie tries to plead with his mom but she insists it’s “what he would have wanted.” 

Hughie’s expression goes from distraught to intrigued when he spots the tubes connected to his dad; clearly, he’s got an idea. 

Next up, we see a series of TV ads, including our first major Gen V crossover moment, as Tek Knight’s The Whole Truth promises an episode on the Godolkin University incident that unfolded in the finale. 

As we saw in Gen V, the blame is being placed on Marie, Andre, Emma, and Jordan, with the narrator saying, “The Godolkin Four have seemingly vanished into a large, gaping hole.”

The scene cuts to Robert Singer, who’s angrily watching Fox-esque news presenter Cameron Coleman calling him a deranged fascist for his anti-superhero legislation. Annie turns up, but Singer doesn’t want to hear it unless The Boys have found a way to kill his VP-to-be Victoria Neuman. 

She insists he needs her help. His supe control bill would mean supes are kept out of the military and policing, meaning Vought’s share prices would drop and they’d be buried in lawsuits. Which is good news for them — if it gets passed. But Annie doesn’t have much faith in his PR department. 

Annie proposes rounding up her followers and getting people on the streets demanding for the bill to be passed; she’ll even wear her Starlight costume if she needs to. In return, she just wants him to follow through and help her to “put Vought into the ground.”

Next, we see Frenchie and Colin post-hook-up, listening to music. Colin reveals that it’s a record from Ray Charles’ country-western phase, saying his father would always play it to him. But as we learned in The Boys Season 4 Episode 2, Frenchie’s harboring a dark secret: he was the hitman who killed Colin’s family. 

Colin starts to open up about his family to Frenchie, saying his mother was a federal judge who dealt with violent criminal cases. He explains that she was going after the head of a Russian mafia gang, who Frenchie knows to mean Little Nina. 

If that weren’t tough enough, Colin reveals he was there the day his family was murdered, hiding under the bed. All he could see from the assailant (aka Frenchie) was one of his ankles, which was covered in scars. Frenchie tries to act sympathetically but inside he’s freaking out. 

Firecracker takes center stage

Back at Starlight House, Annie goes to tell Colin and Kiara the news, but her plans are thwarted when she sees a Vought news crew setting up a stage outside. It’s going to be a live presentation of The Truthbomb with Firecracker for the Make America Super Again movement.

Sage is behind it, as she announces the plan of action to a team of employees and The Seven (minus Homelander) at Vought HQ. “VNN is handling the launch of Firecracker’s show,” she says, and the “troll farms are already digging up fringe anti-Starlight content and injecting it into the mainstream.”

The hashtags StarlightsProgressiveJihad and ArrogantWhiteFeminism are showing the most promise, she explains. If all goes as planned, the algorithms will find the most receptive users, who’ll blast the articles to the top of their social feeds until “100 million people are outraged by Starlight for reasons they can’t even explain.”

She tells everyone to get to work, brushing off Black Noir 2.0’s questions, as well as Deep’s advances (now that Sage’s brain is back in working order). 

Firecracker’s show begins, promising six hours’ worth of “truth about Starlight and her house of horrors.” Since the event’s taking place on their front doorstep, Annie helps the team to get out through the back exit, before talking with Mother’s Milk and Frenchie. 

Butcher makes an unexpected entrance, with MM explaining that they want to bring him back into The Boys. It’s a hard no from Annie, but MM reminds her that Homelander and Sage are planning some “end of world sh*t,” and they need to stick together more than ever before. She relents, and Butcher starts hatching a plan.

Back at the lab, the team tentatively eats cake before Homelander beckons over Frank, an employee who was involved in experimenting on him as a child. He invites him to a game of waste paper basketball, saying he learned how to play the game from Frank. 

Things take a sinister turn when Homelander reveals he saw Frank playing the game after turning up the temperature of the oven room he was in to see if he could burn his skin. “Fun fact: even though my skin didn’t char, still really hurt… I mean, a lot,” Homelander says. 

So, while a child Homelander was “screaming in agony,” the rest of them were casually watching this all go on, with no one intervening. The horrific torture Homelander was subjected to sounds similar to what his father, Soldier Boy, was made to endure. 

Frank, knowing where this is going, tries to say he was just doing his job. But Homelander proposes that he takes his last shot from inside the oven room. Although Marty tries to stop it, he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. 

“Get in the oven or your family goes in with you,” he tells Frank. Closing the door behind him, the incinerator is switched on and we watch Frank’s skin melting off his face before bursting into flames. The rest of the team look away in horror, no doubt worried they’ll be next. 

Meanwhile, Hughie brings Kimiko as his muscle for a meetup with a secret contact, who turns out to be A-Train. Hughie wants a vial of Compound V to try and save his dad. 

Although A-Train says it’s impossible given Sage is watching him closely, eventually he agrees when Hughie promises to forgive him for killing Robin and kickstarting this whole mess. 

When A-Train leaves, Kimiko tells Hughie it’s a bad idea. But their conversation is interrupted by Tala, the woman Kimiko fought while being held by the Shining Light terrorists. Tala and a gang of gunmen start shooting, with Kimiko managing to get Hughie into a nearby building. 

However, the only way they’re going to get out of the situation is by making it back to their van. Kimiko uses the room’s office supplies to fashion weapons, giving Hughie a shield (made out of the door of a filing cabinet). “You wanna save your dad? You either fight or die,” she says.

Meanwhile, Butcher and MM are round the back infiltrate Firecracker’s live event, with Butcher revealing his Vought source: Webweaver, The Boys’ messed-up version of Spider-Man. 

As they walk through the trailers out back, Butcher has a dizzy spell, stopping to steady himself. He asks MM a favor: if he dies before getting the job done, he wants him to get Ryan away from Homelander and raise him.

Firecracker heads off the stage and into her trailer, with Butcher and MM intercepting her. She remembers them due their last fight at Truthcon, where they killed her pal Splinter, aka the Human Centipede supe (IYKYK). 

Turns out, Webweaver had the goods, as Butcher reveals that he knows Firecracker’s darkest secret: when she was 28, working as a counselor at the Capes for Christ bible camp, she slept with a 15 year old boy. This is particularly hypocritical given the fact that she has been peddling fake conspiracy theories that Starlight House is a cover for a child trafficking ring.

Butcher’s even got photo evidence to prove it. Although she managed to get the statutory rape charges dropped, this info won’t go down too well with her evangelical audience. So, Butcher wages a deal: she tells them everything she knows about Sage and her master plan or he’ll drop the news on Twitter. 

Firecracker decides to go with option c by getting to the public first. Storming onto Ezekiel’s chat show, she confesses to her crime but twists it into a story of eternal salvation, telling audiences that she became born again Christian and her sins were “washed away.” And the crowd laps it up. 

When Butcher and MM arrive back at Starlight House, Frenchie tells them that their plan failed. However, what we didn’t know is that Butcher managed to swipe the keys for Firecracker’s trailer. He throws them to Frenchie, telling him to go see what he can find. 

Who’s the squirt now?

We cut to Homelander’s house, where A-Train’s on the hunt for some Compound V. After finding his secret drawer filled with his graying hairs, the Nazi photo of Stormfront, and an empty bottle of Madelyn Stillwell’s breastmilk, he finds the blue serum. 

However, he gets a shock when Ashley turns up. Turns out, she wants revenge for being edged out of her position as CEO, deciding to leave “a floater” in his toilet. Now she and A-Train have dirt on each other, they decide to call a truce. 

Back at the lab, the reunion is anything but jovial — and Homelander’s just getting started. He turns his attention over to assistant director Marty, recalling his embarrassing nickname. Homelander explains that as he got older, one time Marty walked in on him pleasuring himself. Instead of giving him his privacy, Marty laughed at the young supe and nicknamed him “squirt.”

As payback, he orders Marty to masturbate in front of his team there and then, urging the employees to gather round and laugh at him. Although he tries to apologize his way out of it, Homelander persists and Marty attempts to go through with it. 

Homelander’s laugh turns maniacal, saying it “looks like you’re shucking a little mushroom.” When Marty stops, saying it’s not working, Homelander tells him that either he gets hard or he’ll laser his manhood right off. 

Despite his best attempts, he can’t make it work. Homelander stays true to his word, blasting a hole right through his crotch. “That’s a f*cking squirt, Marty,” he quips as blood pours out of the lab boss.

In the background, a woman interrupts to say, “Stop it, John” — it’s Barbara, the lab director who Homelander had asked to see earlier. She’s clearly the only one he’ll listen to. 

She tells him to put Marty out of his misery, which he does… by stamping on his head like a watermelon. The pair head into Homelander’s old vaulted room for a one-on-one catch up. 

The scene cuts to Kimiko and Hughie, who take on the Shining Light gang. Although Kimiko’s able to take out the gunmen, Tala shoots at her with a weapon that splits her in two (meaning Hughie’s going to have to wait a while for her to regenerate). 

Hughie goes head-to-head with one of the men, managing to take him down using the training Kimiko gave him. He’s come a long way since his electrical store days. When he heads out into the hall, he finds Kimiko back in one piece, fighting Tala. 

They eventually stop, with Tala revealing what happened all those years ago. It turns out, Kimiko had kidnapped her for Shining Light and dragged her into the fighting pit, leaving Tala with the scars across her face. Kimiko looks devastated about what she’s done, with Tala finishing her speech by telling her, “I hate you.”

Back at Firecracker’s trailer, Frenchie’s found a sparkly gun case with a bottle of metoclopramide (anti-sickness meds) inside. He heads over to the star spangled bed where he finds a laptop with something that leaves him shocked. 

Before we see what it says, Firecracker reveals the secret on Ezekiel’s show: Annie had an abortion six months ago. Yes, the new supe managed to get hold of Annie’s medical records and now she’s presenting them to the world, declaring Starlight a “baby killer.”

This pushes Annie over the edge; she storms on set and punches Firecracker’s lights out. Just as it looks like she’s set to deliver a fatal blow, MM stops her and tells her to look — the Vought cameramen have caught the whole thing on camera, broadcasting it live to the world. 

It doesn’t take long to go viral, causing outrage towards Starlight’s cause. In other words, Sage’s plan is working perfectly (and she also enjoys seeing Firecracker beaten to smithereens after she called her “uppity” earlier on in the episode). 

Meanwhile, Ezekiel arrives in Firecracker’s trailer. Using his super-stretch abilities, he throws Frenchie to the side, but Butcher arrives on the scene with a fire extinguisher and what appears to be liquid nitrogen. He freezes Ezekiel’s arm before smashing it to pieces.

Using his good arm, the former Capes for Christ supe wraps it around Butcher’s neck like a boa constrictor. It looks like Butcher’s toast, with the parasite now traveling towards his brain. 

However, something unexpected happens — the screen goes dark, and we hear a scream and an explosion. When it comes back into focus, we see Butcher laying on the floor, alive and covered in blood… Ezekiel’s blood. Somehow, the stretchy supe has been blown to pieces.

MM and Annie turn up, wondering what the hell just happened. But with sirens blaring in the background, they don’t have time — they grab Frenchie and make a run for it. 

Picking up the pieces

Back at the lab, Homelander’s speaking with Barbara and she makes an interesting observation. Considering how powerful he was, he could have broken free from them at any time. But he didn’t, as he couldn’t stand the idea that the team would be disappointed. 

Ultimately, it was all part of their plan. Vought brought in the best psychologists to ensure that his need for approval and love would ensure that he remained obedient, with Barbara saying that he is their “greatest success.”

“Your need for love is so deep, it’s so human, you’ll never be able to overcome that,” she says, to which Homelander replies, “That’s where you’re so wrong. I’m not human, and neither is my son.”

At Starlight House, Frenchie can’t stand Colin being so nice to him after what he did. He confesses to killing his family, resulting in Colin nearly strangling Frenchie to death. He stops himself, telling Frenchie, “Come near me again, I’ll f*cking kill you.”

As for Sage, she gets a visit from Deep, who’s confused by her hot and cold temperament. She explains her predicament: while most people’s brains stop growing at around the age of 25, hers continues to regenerate. If someone stabs her in the heart, she dies, but if they stab her in the brain, it grows back. 

While it was teased in Episode 3, Sage confirms what she’s been doing to escape: giving herself a temporary lobotomy. She tells Depp she wants him to “put this inside me,” referring to the lobotomy tool, to which Deep says, “That’s the worst dildo I’ve ever seen.” Oh, Deep. 

“You give me a frontal lobotomy and I don’t have to be me for a couple of hours,” she says. Although he’s unsure, she entices him by promising that he can sleep with her while watching the Kim Kardashian sex tape. After a particularly sound-heavy procedure, the pair start hooking up. 

On the news, Victoria Neuman is denouncing Starlight after she attacked Firecracker. Meanwhile, at The Boys HQ, Kimiko throws away her speech therapy books, still cut up by her interaction with Tala. 

Annie returns, devastated, as Hughie tries to comfort her. He’s understandably furious, saying the abortion was a private moment between them and it’s a violation that Firecracker broadcasted it to the world. 

“I agonized over that decision. And you know I did, I just wasn’t ready. And now when people look at me, whether they’re supportive or judging or angry, I have to relive it over and over and over again,” she says. Hughie hugs her, telling her it’s no one’s business but her own. 

The incident has thrown in a spanner in the works for Singer’s campaign. He calls Annie, saying that the supe control bill would have passed if it weren’t for her outburst. “We might as well call it the psycho Starlight baby killer bill,” he says. She apologizes, but Singer says he can’t be affiliated with her anymore. 

Hughie tells the gang he’s going to the hospital to see his dad, but he’s secretly meeting with A-Train, who brings the Compound V. Hughie agrees to forgive him once, and they shake hands. Little does he know that Butcher was secretly listening into their conversation. 

Hughie tries to explain his plan to try and revive his dad, suggesting there’s enough of the serum to save Butcher too. However, in a shocking twist, Butcher reveals that he already took some, having nicked it from Frenchie four months prior. 

Rather than making him a supe, he claims all it did was speed up his deterioration. But that might not be the case, given how the incident with Ezekiel turned out — maybe Butcher’s got powers we don’t know about yet. 

At the hospital, Hughie looks at his dad and the Compound V, ultimately deciding to go with Butcher’s suggestion and let him die peacefully. But when Hughie leaves the room, his mom Daphne finds it and administers a dose. 

When Hughie returns, he doesn’t see the blue liquid making its way through one of the tubes. When it reaches his bloodstream, Hugh’s heart rate becomes erratic before he finally opens his eyes. 

Back at the Vought lab for the final moments of The Boys Season 4 Episode 4, Homelander waits for the elevator, covered head to toe in blood. Barbara stands there in shock, shaking in Homelander’s old room as she looks at the aftermath of his massacre. There’s blood across the walls, and the team’s body parts strewn about the floor.

As he stands in the elevator, Homelander cracks a sinister smile. 

The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 (and all the other episodes) can be found on Prime Video now. Find out when the next episode drops with our guide to the Season 4 release schedule. You can also check out the new TV shows heading to streaming this month.