Forget Homelander, ‘The Boys’ Season 4 Proves There’s a Much More Dangerous Supe To Worry About
"This was so much fun!"
The Boys has officially wrapped up its penultimate season on Prime Video, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) is playing the long game here—making her even more of a threat to Homelander (Antony Starr) than we initially suspected.
Spoilers ahead for The Boys season 4.
What was Sage’s plan for Homelander?
After a season-long guessing game, Sage’s true intentions have come to light in The Boys’ season 4 finale, titled, well, “Season 4 Finale.” There’s a lot to unpack here, but the short of it is that the titular team accidentally puts Homelander’s aspirations of invoking the 25th amendment and casting aside President-elect Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) into motion after Butcher (Karl Urban), in a fit of Comp V-induced rage, kills Vice President-elect Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit). But was this really a case of right place, right time? Or just a necessary step in Sage’s plan ensure Homelander’s rise to political power?
It’s an absolutely brutal way to end off the season (tentacles included), but really, we should’ve known that it was Sage All Along. Although Homelander kicked her out of The Seven, this was merely a setback, and didn’t stop her from capitalizing on Neuman’s assassination, carefully maneuvering Vought’s allies and enemies alike. If anything, she’s been carrying out her master plan this whole time just to prove that she could. Plus, we don’t even know what horrors she has in mind for “Phase 2.” Either way, having Homelander in the White House opens the door for a whole lot of scary s***, but now that Sage’s grand scheme has proven successful, it’s clear that he’s not The Boys’ biggest headache after all.
We should all be terrified of Sister Sage, actually
Although Homelander was the one who recruited Sister Sage in the first place, it sure seems like The Boys is going to make sure his federally sanctioned Supe takeover backfires by the end of the series. We’ve already seen hints of a growing resentment between the two, ’cause let’s be real: Sage clearly thinks Homelander is an idiot. She’s one-upped him time and time again, and if there’s one thing Homelander hates, it’s being proven wrong. So even though he seems to value Sage’s input, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him, oh, push her off a roof or something in season 5.
You see, Sage has one thing that makes her more powerful than Homelander could ever hope to be: patience. Yes, Homelander may be the physically stronger of the two, but he also tends to abandon all rationale at the drop of a hat. You don’t need me to explain that he thinks with his muscles, not his mind. At his core, Homelander is unstable, emotional, and brash—basically, the very antithesis of Sage. This has gotten him into trouble before, and the ever-cerebral Sage knows exactly how to use this to her advantage.
Plus, Homelander is going through something of an existential crisis in season 4 (how about those gray hairs?), proving that he is, in fact, able to die of old age. He’s not completely indestructible, and now that Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and the others are in possession of the Supe-killing virus, it’s only a matter of time—fingers crossed that the bio-weapon is actually potent enough to kill someone as beefed-up as Homelander.
I mean, Sage is one hell of a tactician, strategically setting up the dominoes to fall. From ensuring A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) was the Vought mole to enlisting a shapeshifter to impersonate Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Sage is always two steps ahead. Again, Homelander could, at any given moment, whip out his laser eyes and slice her in half, but what he can’t do is reverse the damage she’s already done by carefully pitting Vought—and half the country—against each other. Weirdly enough, the season 4 finale seems to suggest that she actually wants Homelander in charge of the US government, and in the end, the two seem closer than ever. She even says as much: “Thank you! This was so much fun.” Aww.
Although she’s had pretty limited interactions with The Boys this season, Sage does have another thing working in her favor: her levelheadedness. On the surface, beyond her snarky, know-it-all personality, Sage actually comes off as a reasonable person despite her belief that “humans are animals”—a rarity in The Boys universe. While the crew certainly doesn’t trust her, if it ever comes down to it, Sage could probably talk her way out of a situation to make it seem like she’s actually been fighting against Vought and Homelander all along—she’s sneaky like that.
Hell, I’m even kind of rooting for Sage here, purely because it’s so satisfying to watch the pieces of her plan come together—and it’s a damn good plan. That conversion she had with Homelander at the beginning of the season about the collapse of Rome? Some serious foreshadowing. And in this equation, Homelander = Caesar. His new Supe enforcers will reshape American society and put all the anti-Supe naysayers into internment camps. Because ultimately, Sage isn’t much different than Homelander. Just like him, he’s sick and tired of not being listened to, and has a deep distrust for the the world around her—look how she absolutely clocked The Deep (Chace Crawford). Seeing her talk down to Vought’s most powerful executives like they’re children never gets old, TBH.
What’s next for Sister Sage?
Although we don’t really know exactly what her endgame for “Blonde Ambition” is yet, Sage is definitely playing 3D chess while the rest of the world is playing checkers. So even if she has a penchant for Taco Bell and recreational lobotomies, she should absolutely be taken seriously, maybe even more than Homelander himself. Aside from Sage, the only other Supe really I see potentially becoming dangerous is Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) or Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), who’s being groomed by his father to become Vought’s next unhinged weirdo. And the season 4 finale really seems to cement the fact that Ryan is traveling down a dark path.
Obviously, The Boys is building up to a climactic showdown between Homelander and the titular team, which I’m 100% sure is how the fifth and final season will end. I mean, duh. But regardless of how he finally goes out, it’ll be interesting to see Sage’s role in what’s next to come, as it’s pretty much impossible to outsmart, well, the smartest person in the world. One season left to go, folks!
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