This week, the The Boys finally returns after a college-bound hiatus for another season of violent satire. You remember what happened, right?
Polygon has seen the upcoming season of The Boys — look forward to lots more on that in the coming weeks — and in studying up to remember where things left off, a funny thing happened. We were kind of pumped at the idea of rewatching The Boys. For all of its ridiculous juvenilia, the series remains a surprisingly thoughtful dramedy, with breakneck pacing that actually rewards a rewatch. And with only a handful of eight-episode seasons, a rewatch seems extremely achievable.
But maybe you only have time for the new stuff, or just want a guided meditation on the things you should know. That’s what this piece here for. Think of this as a quick, spoiler-free syllabus on what to refresh yourself on, because with a show as propulsive as The Boys, it can be easy to miss the finer details in the constant rain of gore and other fluids.
Consider starting over from the beginning
Three seasons and a couple spinoffs across five years is a lot of ground to cover, even with streaming’s abbreviated episode counts. Even if you’ve got a solid-enough grasp on The Boys’ major narrative arcs, the show has reached a comfortable place where it’s built out its world enough that it can lean on its own history and remix it in interesting ways. Granted, the most important thing on The Boys will always be what’s happening this very moment, so you won’t be lost at sea without brushing up. It’s just cool to see how far we’ve come.
Gen V is kind of important
Without spoiling anything, there’s a bit of a mystery hiding behind the suped-up collegiate drama of Gen V. What’s at the bottom of it ends up being pretty vital to what The Boys season 4 gets into, so if you’ve been looking for an excuse to finally dive in, now’s your chance. Again, you won’t be lost if you skip it — we just think the show is really fun, and you’ll feel a little more informed if you’ve seen it.
The most important thing: There was a conspiracy at Godolkin University (if you can believe that a Vought-run organization would have a dark side) that resulted in a supe-specific virus that was capable of killing them.
Frenchie and Kimiko fans have a big season ahead of them
There’s some reshuffling in The Boys’ status quo this season, and the result is a renewed focus on characters outside of the spotlight — namely Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capone). The pair tend to have their own subplots running in the background in prior seasons, but here they’re front and center, and it’s worth recalling what you can of their history.
When we last left them: Kimiko and Frenchie kissed in season 3, and even talked a bit about getting out and running away together. But ultimately they had a more pressing problem (Kimiko briefly losing her powers).
Refresh yourself on Victoria Neuman’s political career
The Boys has always been a political show, both in the sense that it is written from a clear ideological perspective and in that the machinations of its fictional elected officials and unelected corporations have played a big part in the overarching story. The literal, governmental politics are a big part of season 4’s election-year setting, and an easy way to get your bearings is via The Boys’ rising political star, Vicky Neuman (Claudia Doumit), now a VP candidate. Remembering how she got there would do you a lot of good. Also important to remember: The Boys found out she’s a supe (along with some of their allies), but that information is not public.
Remember who dies and how
This is kind of a gimme, but on The Boys, death almost always signals a status quo shift. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, where shocking deaths rippled out to change the fate of the Seven Kingdoms or signaled how small its characters were in the grand scheme of things, death in The Boys is on a smaller scale, bodies to burn in an unlikely war of attrition between Billy Butcher and Homelander. While the show loves to revel in its gross-out violence, its writers are keeping score, and the bill may eventually come due — probably in a way none of us are expecting.
The Boys season 4 premieres with its first three episodes on Prime on June 13, with new episodes weekly.
The post The case for rewatching The Boys before season 4 appeared first on Polygon.
