'The Boys' somehow manages to be even more messed up in its fourth season

'The Boys' was always reliably shocking in its use of violence, gore, sex, satire, and straight-up buffoonery to make its point.

The idea of delicate subtlety was never on the table - not once in its three seasons, so why should we expect any different now? If anything, America itself has lost any notion of subtlety or self-awareness, so it'd make sense for 'The Boys' to reflect that in its own way. For much of Season 4, the Boys are now firmly working on a single plan - assassinate the Vice President, who is in fact a closeted Supe and is working hand-in-hand with Homelander. Again, subtlety was never on the cards, and so it goes that the new members of The Seven include a far-right extremist broadcaster called Firecracker.

If that's not enough, there's an entire episode set inside TruthCon - a far-right conspiracy theorist convention which holds stalls that worship Stormfront as a race-purifying martyr, believes Soldier Boy is being kept in a CIA prison, and plenty of other whack-a-doo beliefs that aren't a million miles away from the kind of bullshit espoused by some followers of the current frontrunner for the US presidency. What 'The Boys' makes clear is that for Firecracker, played with real aplomb by Valorie Curry, has nothing going on that could be construed as genuine beliefs. It's a calculation based on the prevailing winds and packaging a story that puts the most dangerous people in the centre of a make-believe war where they're the army of light. There are precious few shows out there that would make a point of going right at the problem like 'The Boys'.

Karl Urban's character, Billy Butcher, has an edge of vulnerability to him in this season as he struggles not only with trying to wrest his estranged son away from Homelander's influence, but also is dealing with his own terminal illness. Likewise, Jack Quaid's character Hughie must learn to deal with the reappearance of his mother, played by Rosemarie DeWitt, as his father, played by Simon Pegg, falls ill. 'The Boys' has always been clever in how it portrays superheroes as having celebrity as their superpower, and si to goes on here. Homelander is beginning to show signs of aging and is trying to grapple with his son replacing him. Starlight pushes and pulls with her own celebrity and her platform, while A-Train finds himself crushed under the weight of spectacle and how his life has been effectively scripted from the start.

All this complex drama aside, 'The Boys' is as brutal and f*cked-up as ever. There's a particularly bizarre fight sequence involving a self-cloning supe fighting naked inside a themed bat mitzvah and pink-eye plays a part in the whole encounter. The Deep's octopus girlfriend is voiced by a particularly well-known British thesp. Will Ferrell turns up as himself at one point in a starring role in an in-universe movie that bears uncomfortable resemblance to 'The Blind Side' with Sandra Bullock. Flying farm animals and impervious super-chickens feature at one point. Hell, the entire plot of this whole season is about a CIA plot to assassinate the Vice President and wipe out Supes entirely. You might say this was ever thus for 'The Boys', but it feels as though the guardrails have come off in more ways than one this season.

Snarling, angry, acidic in its satire, indiscriminate in its targets, the fourth season of 'The Boys' makes no qualms about trying to piss off anyone and everyone it can. It's an acquired taste, yes, but once you get a hit, there's no coming back.

'The Boys' Season 4 begins on June 13th with three episodes and runs for a further five episodes week-to-week afterwards.