The Boys season 4 finale spoilers follow.
Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) is the best thing The Boys has done all season. Period.
We can all collectively agree that the fourth season of The Boys struggled to get off the ground, but the back half fought harder than a V-ed up Butcher (Karl Urban) vs Homelander (Antony Starr) to get our attention – and it worked.
The meaty finale delivered a stunning yet heartbreaking Butcher-betrayal twist while Homelander managed to land a game-changing win over the Boys – yet still, we stand by our statement.
Sister Sage's fleshed-out storyline takes the cake. Not the ice cream cake from episode four though – that depressing thing is long gone. The metaphorical, three-tiered, winners' cake, the icing on the top being the meticulous work she threw into securing Homelander ultimate political power at the end.
It was a sharp 180 from her position in the penultimate episode, when Sage was unceremoniously fired for mishandling the A-Train-mole situation.
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While she insisted it was all part of the plan, Homelander wasn't buying it.
"You're lucky I'm not sending you home in a bucket," he told her before she slammed down her sparkly notebook and stormed out.
To see the smartest woman in the world be dismissed like a gnat by Homelander was, to be frank, nothing more than we expected.
He is a restless child with a needy thirst for instantaneous results, too impatient to see the long game. Her surprise, however, was unexpected.
Shouldn't she have predicted this outcome? Made calculations for Homelander's Homelanderness landing them in this very predicament? It turns out she did.
In an Agatha All Along-type reveal (without all the sing-song), Sister Sage waited until the finale to announce that everything was to her making "with a few curveballs".
Her 'ta-da' moment came when she interrupted a sad-sack Homelander licking his wounds over what seemed like another defeat. His political puppet Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) was dead, the assassination attempt on Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) had failed, and even Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) had abandoned him.
The last thing he expected was for Sage to declare they'd achieved their goal. She set about unpacking how Neuman's death was intentional ("she would have made a terrible patsy, too many opinions"), and we see Sage's plan play out on television.
A secret recording of Robert Singer admitting to putting a hit on Neuman via the Boys (which in turn led to a manhunt for them) leads to Singer being arrested, leaving an opening for Senator Calhoun (David Andrews) as the next president. And who's that ringing Homelander? Only Senator Calhoun, wanting to pledge his allegiance.
As Sage predicted, Calhoun is the perfect patsy. The season ends with Homelander effectively in charge of an army of Supes who have full legal authority nationwide to do, well, whatever he wants them to do, because who's stopping them? Certainly not the new president.
For that, he has Sage to thank – and though his lips would quiver uncontrollably if he had to utter those words, there is deference in his eyes.
While her backdoor scheming is of note, that isn't even the most impressive thing about the Sister Sage storyline. The most impressive thing is that it exists. That she exists.
A Black woman raised to the highest level of intelligence in mainstream television is easy to overlook as trivial, but it's anything but. It challenges ingrained racial stereotypes that still view Black people as unintelligent, and the misogynistic ideologies that automatically land Black women at the bottom of the heap.
Sister Sage being allowed to flaunt her intelligence – especially in a professional environment where racial disparities are prevalent and women's voices are often placed on mute – shouldn't be progressive television, but it is.
Her power is purely mental (apart from the regenerative brain cells thing) and yet she wields it so deftly that she is able to get the racist, fascist narcissist Homelander – who once dared to claim that he was the wisdom to her brains – to concede.
The Boys' celebration of Sage is in some ways the antithesis of the way the show handled Hughie's (Jack Quaid) story arc in the back half.
Where one takes a step away from racial bigotry and sexism, the other digs deeper into toxic masculinity in its dismissal of Hughie's sexual trauma – not once but twice.
The first instance occurred when Hughie, masquerading as Webweaver, inadvertently ended up on the submissive side of a dominatrix situation. Often the butt of the joke, Hughie was this time made to endure unwanted sexual acts for the sake of black comedy.
The show later addressed his horror when he relieved the experience while talking to Annie (Erin Moriarty).
"Ashley (Colby Minifie) rubbed one out as she tickled my feet," Hughie told her, looking stricken. "She said so many horrible things," he croaked, and instead of sitting with that and exploring his feelings in an earnest way, the show quickly moved on to his grief over losing his dad.
Hughie's grief may have been raw, but acknowledging one shouldn't negate the validity of the other.
We get that this is The Boys – and yes, it does have the tendency to go to dark places as part of the show's style – but its ignoring his upset almost turned the moment into a gag which feels wholly inappropriate when talking about sexual abuse.
The show then seasoned this insult further in the finale episode when Hughie discovered he'd been having sex with a mind-reading, shape-shifting Supe masquerading as Starlight.
Annie was furious to learn that on top of becoming engaged to the imposter, Hughie had had sex with her "less than 20 times" in the 10 days she was absent.
Understandably Annie was beyond enraged, but to direct that anger at Hughie – who couldn't have known – is pure insanity.
Hughie was left fighting to defend himself while the larger issue of his sexual assault – once again – went unchallenged.
His pleas to be understood by Annie were met with a speech that basically reduced him to 'men are pigs' status.
"As long as you were getting laid, you didn't look too close. That's the Annie you want," she said. "Down to go down whenever. The perfect girl, not someone who is depressed or f**ked up or comes with any complications."
While we loved how the show made room to acknowledge her trauma, we can't help but recoil at how it left absolutely zero space to deal with the actuality of Hughie being violated or raped by deception.
Not only does it belittle sexual assault on men, it feeds into the problematic notion that as long as a guy is 'getting it', where's the harm?
Annie begrudgingly came around after some grovelling on Hughie's part but not before telling him: "You are getting tested for every single disease known to mankind, 'cause I'm not getting shifter syphilis."
And there it is – that inappropriate joke that follows Hughie's speech about forgiveness being an act of bravery, thus implying that Annie was being the bigger person here in letting go.
It victim-shames Hughie, and his smiling at her softening towards him might as well be the show co-signing his abuse.
The Sister Sage-ness of it all in no way makes up for The Boys' incredulous Hughie blunder, but it does show that the show can be socially aware when it wants to be.
We hope there will be learnings taken from this misstep that will transpire into a more thoughtful final season.
The Boys seasons 1-4 are available to watch on Prime Video now.
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TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.
