Spoilers below for anyone who still hasn’t watched The Boys’ Season 4 finale via Amazon Prime subscription, so be warned!
Fans are in the thick of the long wait for The Boys Season 5 to arrive, with showrunner Eric Kripke telling CinemaBlend the big Homelander Vs. Butcher battle is coming, so expect the theory free-for-all to last quite a while following that wild and twisty Season 4 finale. What exactly will happen to all the Supes and non-Supes rounded up martial law-style? How sick will Firecracker get before she quits the milky meds? And is Sister Sage really helping Homelander, or is she actually setting him up?
We kinda know where Black Noir’s head is at, but answers are largely unclear across the board for everyone else. However, The Boys star Susan Heyward shared some of her lower-case sage insights into how closely her brainiac character’s ideals align with Homelander’s, and what her overall goals actually are in this universe. And I’m pleased that some of her thoughts line up quite nicely with my theories about Sister Sage’s gameplan.
When speaking with TVLine, Heyward was asked if Sage actually shares Homelander’s opinions and agenda regarding Supes being a supreme species, and she wasn’t exactly agreeable on the matter. As she put it:
To me, dubious. Mostly because she’s the one introducing him to this level of thinking. His level of thinking was to take over Vought and be in charge of that capitalist entertainment conglomerate, and I think Sage is the one who’s thinking on a higher level that she’s taking him to. So I would not lean towards their endgame being the same because she’s the one who’s kind of introducing him to a new landscape.
I love that Sage is so smart, she knows exactly how to lead the horse to the water, as well as how to make it drink as if it was dying of thirst. Because she’s also capable of convincing the horse that a giant puddle of poison is actually water, without the animal ever being the wiser ahead of its death. And that’s kind of what I think Sage’s true goals are here, but more on that below.
As far as whether or not Sage and Homelander’s endgames are one and the same, the actress couldn’t say definitively, as the upcoming episodes aren’t yet available for her to dig into. But she can see a future where Sage goes in either direction, though she seems to have more hope for the character’s humanity shining through. In her words:
There’s definitely a part of me that hopes, for Season 5, we find out that it’s all been an act, and she actually is egalitarian and wants to protect humanity, as well. But it’s also really fun to get a different supremacist ideology, even a fictional one, because in the real world, the supremacist ideologies are pretty depressing to listen to. So at least this one is fake and can give us some entertainment.
Heyward went on to share the three different versions of events to come that she presumes are the most likely for Sister Sage, depending on where the writers land with it.
In a very Sage-like way, I have all of these different versions in my head. I have the version in my head where she goes for world domination. I have the version in my head where she flips and shows herself to be a champion of humanity, and she’s been just positioning herself to protect humanity this whole time. I have a version in my head where she’s a complete agent of chaos and just likes to keep pushing the table over. All of those sound fun to me as an actress.
Now we might as well dive into where I think things are going, so that I can agree with Heyward's thoughts in better context.
My Theory For Sister Sage's Gameplan
While I don’t necessarily believe that this has been Sage’s endgame from Day One, I essentially think she’s setting up a Supes vs. Supes genocide situation where as many powered-up citizens as possible are killed off, and presumably with all remaining access to Compound V destroyed in the process. If that’s because she’s fully sided with humanity, or because she’s just sick of Homelander & Co. ruining the country and world little by little, I’m not sure.
But whichever way it goes, I can’t imagine a future where a Vought-run country leads to anything but chaos, and while Susan Heyward would be down with Sage drinking up all that turmoil, I don’t believe the smartest person in the world would truly be content with that. Rather, I think she’s helping give Vought and The Seven the upper hand now so that they have farther to fall once all of their sins and foul deeds can come to light. (Not that Truth Con attendees would ever listen to reason or logic.)
Sage isn’t the kind of person who enjoys the limelight, and would prefer to make an impact from behind the scenes, so I won’t be surprised in the slightest to learn that she wants to be a legitimate government advisor at a time when the country is mostly eradicated of Supes, both good and evil. And I’ve no problem believing she could figure out the most convincing way possible to tell the POTUS and others that she should be spared from being killed with the rest.
Then again, maybe Sage is smart enough to realize that humanity will be its own downfall no matter how many trial runs we go through. Maybe we’re just not worth saving in the end. Except for Frenchie and Kimiko. They deserve to have their newly established love story thrive.
The Boys Seasons 1-4 are currently available to stream in full on Prime Video, but be sure to check out these other awesome superhero TV shows outside Marvel and DC, as well as everything else hitting the small screen soon with our 2024 TV premiere schedule.
