The Boys – Season 1 Episode 4 “Female of the Species” Recap & Review

The Plane Crash

Episode 4 of The Boys begins with Butcher going about his morning routine after dreaming of his ex-flame. He then goes back to the FBI and speaks to Agent Raynar, promising to be able to bring down the supers.

Meanwhile, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie and Hughie all infiltrate the noodle operation in a bid to find the V serum. However, on the way they come across a strange girl in a cage and they let her go. Unfortunately, this backfires and the girl slaughters the guards who show up. Butcher appears soon after to do damage control but Hughie gets a message from Starlight and leaves.

The Deep starts to have regrets about his involvement with the seven and the lack of substance with his role. However, Madelyn refuses to let him go and do a mission himself. Meanwhile, A-Train sees the crime scene and immediately goes to Popclaw and confronts her, telling her to pack her bags and leave before Homelander finds her.

Hughie and Starlight have their scheduled date soon after and he learns that Translucent had a kid which sends him reeling. The team then work on tracking down the female while the date continues. Frenchie finally finds her in an audio shop but goes off-script and tries to rationale with her instead of simply knocking her out. It works for a little bit before she dashes out the shop.

Up in the air, Homelander and Queen Maeve set out to stop terrorists in the midst of hijacking a plane but run into problems along the way. After stopping the hijackers, Homelander kills the controls to the plane thanks to his laser eyes. Deciding it’s futile to carry on, he leaves the passengers to their fate and flies away with a remorseful Maeve in tow. As Homelander and Maeve look over the wreckage of the flight after its inevitable crash they refused to stop, Homelander uses this as an opportunity to further his claim for them entering into military operations.

On the ground, our ragtag group of heroes catch up with The Female in the underground but not before A-Train arrives and begins smashing her head against the wall. Thankfully, the group band together and save her before eventually knocking her out and taking her away.

With The Female on the run, seeing the dysfunctional group and A-Train collide feels organic and certainly brings these two worlds together. There’s a lot of interesting moral questions raised this time around too, with issues on equality, what it means to be a hero and the cost of all this called into question too. The plane crash is shocking but the aftermath and ensuing advantageous position Homelander takes is equally as surprising too. Homelander’s position as the main antagonist of the series is certainly a nice play on his character too and it works really well here in the context of the show.

A strong episode this one, The Boys continues to impress with its latest slice of superhero action.