The Boys S4 trailer brings us more bloody mayhem and “Homelander on Ice”

Last summer’s Hollywood strikes delayed a number of releases, among them the fourth season of Prime Video’s The Boys. We’re longtime fans of this incredibly violent, darkly funny anti-homage to superheroes, and thus are thrilled to see there’s finally an official trailer for S4. It’s filled with the bloody mayhem we’ve come to expect from the show, as well as a tantalizing glimpse of the chief villain, Homelander (Antony Starr), performing in what appears to be an ice skating extravaganza.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below, especially S3.)

As I’ve written previously, the show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Boys is set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real but are corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, which created the supes with a substance called Compound V. The Seven is headed up by Homelander, a violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All-American hero. Homelander’s counterpart as the head of the titular “Boys” is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-appointed vigilante intent on checking the bad behavior of the Seven—especially Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher’s wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), unknowingly fathering a son, Ryan, in the process..