Major spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet streamed The Boys’ Season 4 finale with an Amazon Prime subscription.
We’ve known for weeks that The Boys will wrap with a Homelander Vs. Butcher final season for its fifth outing, and the Season 4 finale (whose title “Assassination Run” was changed to reflect real-world events) put all the protagonists in dire straits to set up its eventual return. As Homelander put it, “A new age of superhero” is beginning, though there are obviously still some questions about how this martial law-stricken society will move forward, and how Ashley and Soldier Boy’s twists will play into it all.
Because whoa! Aside from the big deaths — Butcher killing Victoria Neuman, Ryan presumably killing Grace Mallory, the Seven murdering all questionable Vought employees — and their repercussions, two of the biggest shocks in the episode centers on Colby Minifie’s hyper-stressed Ashley and the return of Jensen Ackles’ highly controversial Supe that nearly everyone on the planet believed was dead after events in the Season 3 finale. Let’s discuss both!
Ashley Has Now Been Injected With Compound V
From the very beginning, Ashley's grasp of leadership within Vought has felt fraught and dwindling, even in moments where no one was actually mad at her about anything. But reality took an even harder left turn in Season 4, and with a new President stepping in to fill the void left by the imprisoned Dakota Bob and the ripped-in-half Neuman, all loose ends have to be tied off within the mega-corporation’s ranks. Essentially making Ashley private enemy number one, since she knows more dirt than anyone.
One has to assume she was really regretting not going away with A-Train when he asked, because the only option left to her in her panicked state wasn’t to run and hide, but to try and put herself on the Supes’ level by taking a vial of Compound V to the veins. But rather than instantly giving her a cool new power to defend herself with, it appears as if Ashley could be worse off than before.
After injecting the formula into her system, Ashley immediately expressed misery, with her wig coming off as she hit the ground in pain. Her scalp was a total mess, and I don’t think it was just from her hair-pulling fixation (though that certainly didn’t help). But what exactly was happening to her, and what will the end result be? Almost surprisingly, Minifie’s character isn’t seen again at all in the back half of the Season 4 finale.
It’s always a huge gamble for adults to take Compound V, which is proven to work far better the younger the person is. Butcher is currently going through some major health issues that were spurred along by his own V usage, and we all remember Hughie Sr.’s upsetting final minutes in the hospital after Daphne gave him the shot. The fact that we didn’t see Ashley burst into flames or pull her own head off indicates she’ll still be alive in Season 5, but to what extent?
The way she hit the ground like that, I fully expected a pair of freaky ass wings to burst out of her back. Or, because this is The Boys, the wings would be so massive that they'd rip her body to pieces, or the wings would be shaped like penises. Or both, really.
Homelander Discovered Soldier Boy Has Been Kept Alive
Speaking of still-living characters in the fifth and final season, The Boys thankfully paid off my theory that Soldier Boy would return (even if we didn’t get to see Maeve again just yet). Although I guess it’s actually still up in the air whether or not Homelander will indeed keep him alive until we see these characters again.
Once all the shit went down in Washington D.C. and beyond, it was the Speaker of the House who shifted up the pipeline to become POTUS, and he very quickly and publicly voiced his allegiance to Homelander and the Seven. It’s now perfectly legal for the government and others to go after other Supes, with Tek Knight’s prisons set to serve as internment camps for powered folks and their sympathizers. (Or Starlighters, if you will.)
While presumably familiarizing himself with everything the CIA kept hidden regarding Supes, the new Prez stumbled upon the gas-filled tank where Grace secretly stowed Soldier Boy after Maeve stopped his self-induced explosion from killing others. To Homelander and the rest of the world, both of the characters were thought to be dead, so finding out that Ackles’ extremely powerful Payback leader is still alive is no doubt a punch in the milk-filled gut. And if Ryan didn’t kill Grace already, the kid’s dad would no doubt do the honors.
Now that he knows Soldier Boy survived, it’s likely only a matter of time before Homelander continues connecting the dots to realize that Maeve is also likely still alive out there. And if he ever discovers that Ashley was responsible for fudging the documentation to make her look dead, then…oh wait, he already wants Ashley dead. So I guess it doesn’t matter if he learns that particular bit of info or not.
For all that I'm expecting these answers to come in the fifth season of The Boys, it's absolutely possibly (and even likely) that fans will be able to see some of the aftermath from this season in Gen V Season 2, which is now in production following a delayed start due to the death of co-star Chance Perdomo. Given the spinoff's Cate and Sam were seen helping capture Kimiko and Frenchie, I can definitely see that series offering more insight into this new world order when it returns.
Until that point, though, we'll just have to get used to wondering and waiting for both series to return to Prime Video. But there are still plenty of shows left on the 2024 TV premiere schedule to get excited about in the meantime.
