Who’s the Grossest on The Boys This Week?
Every episode of The Boys, Prime Video’s ultraviolent, savagely satirical superhero series, offers an abundance of gross moments. Some involve violence. Others involve sex. And others still feature characters crossing moral, personal, and ethical boundaries. But even in a series in which no one’s hands are ever fully clean — literally or figuratively — some characters behave worse than others.
This week’s episode, “Wisdom of the Ages,” has a hard act to follow after last week’s simultaneous premiere of the first three episodes, a triple-punch of grossness that opened with a murderous tentacle kid and got worse from there. Yet episode four packs a lot of grossness into a single hour. Let’s count it down.
Mother’s Milk
Once again, Marvin T. Milk seems like the member of The Boys who most has his act together. He’s making difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions, like bringing Butcher back and attempting to guide the team cautiously, as when he (futilely) tries to stop Starlight from attacking Firecracker. And Butcher is right: He really does seem like a great dad. Can this last? There’s a lot of season left.
Hugh Campbell Sr.
Hugh Sr. spends the episode in a vegetative state until the end. Whatever effect Compound V has on him seems like it could raise his potential to be repellent and/or commit repellent deeds. But for now, he’s just a guy in a bed. Get well soon?
Colin
It’s a rough week for Colin, who opens up about his parents’ death to Frenchie and then learns, oops, it was Frenchie who killed them. He tries to kill his boyfriend (understandable) but ultimately can’t go through with it, despite Frenchie’s encouragement (commendable). Again, rough week, but Colin remains one of the series’ least-vile characters.
Fudgie the Whale
Sure, Fudgie’s technically an inanimate object, but he — and Carvel’s website makes his pronouns clear — also raises a question central to this episode. He looks disgusting after melting into a puddle, but that’s not really his fault. So, is Fudgie the gross one or should we place the blame on those responsible for his distasteful condition? The latter seems fair. So let’s add him to the very bottom of Homelander’s offenses this episode.
A-Train
Yes, we are also shocked to find A-Train so low on this list, but he honestly seems committed to doing the right thing and genuinely concerned about earning Hughie’s forgiveness. But what kind of deal does he strike with Ashley after being caught stealing Compound V from her? He might not have a permanent place this low going forward.
Ghost Becca Butcher
The spirit of Butcher’s dead wife reappears to offer him encouragement at his most desperate moments, and, on the face of it at least, she seems like a solidly positive influence. But there’s also something weird going on with Butcher’s brain cancer, which he might have accidentally superpowered when he took Compound V in an attempt to cure himself. Could she be connected to that?
Victoria Neuman
Because she’s limited to a short TV appearance this episode, Victoria wouldn’t even qualify for this list if it weren’t safe to assume she was exploding heads off-camera.
Cameron Coleman
Similarly, we only see VNN’s sleazy provocateur briefly, but it’s enough to conclude he’s up to no good.
Unnamed Vomiting Lab Worker
This moment is really gross but, again, it’s not really her fault. You’d probably vomit if you saw your boss’s head stomped in, too.
Black Noir II
Black Noir II belongs here not for his actions, which are limited this episode, and more for his overall needy-for-approval vibe.
Daphne Campbell
This is another vibes-based placement, but there’s clearly something off about Hughie’s mom (or maybe Hughie’s “mom”). She can barely conceal some kind of hidden agenda involving taking Hughie’s dad off life support. Does she want him dead? Or is she manipulating Hughie into doing exactly what he does? There’s no concrete offense to pin on her, but she doesn’t seem trustworthy.
Hughie
Hughie acts purely in self-defense when he slashes his attacker to ribbons with a box cutter. But it’s still pretty gross.
Starlight
Starlight’s assault on Firecracker isn’t technically self-defense, but it’s pretty close to it after Firecracker devotes most of her VNN show — the parts where she’s not duetting with The Deep on “Up Where We Belong” or, apparently, welcoming special guest Kanye West — to attacking Starlight’s character and revealing private medical information. It’s a bloody and violent moment, but, again, kind of understandable under the circumstances. Still, we also learn she’s willing to hide bits of her past that make her look bad, namely her relationship with Firecracker and the full story of her first heroic deed. What else isn’t she talking about?
Kimiko
Apart from holding her own against the Shining Light, any vile acts committed by Kimiko are confined to flashbacks. Still, it seems like she was in some ways involved — presumably against her will — in a few of the Shining Light’s “recruiting” efforts.
Frenchie
Similarly, Frenchie has committed many misdeeds in the past, but he’s trying to atone for them. He confesses to Colin, then seems prepared to pay the consequences for his actions. Both deserve credit for their efforts to escape the awful actions of their youth.
Ashley
It says something that Ashley leaving a “floater” in Homelander’s toilet doesn’t look all that unsavory in the context of this episode. (Mercifully, The Boys does not show said floater, which might have changed the math.)
Billy Butcher
It’s not unusual for Butcher to be the grossest of The Boys’ heroes, but that wormlike creature crawling beneath his skin and the bloody death of Ezekiel secures him the berth this episode. But if it really is a murderous brainworm he’s dealing with, then the worm might need a spot of its own going forward.
Bob Singer
Throwing Starlight under the bus after the worst day of her life? Classic Singer.
Barbara
Barbara is an interesting case. Sure, she was complicit with Homelander’s mistreatment as a child, but the picture she paints in her lab’s defense — one of Homelander layering his way out of the womb, then hovering in the air with umbilical cord dangling above his dead mother — doubles as a pretty compelling argument for doing whatever necessary to control the superpowered kid. Was breaking him down into a needy, homicidal psychopath the best solution, however?
Assistant Director Marty
Again, we have to look to Fudgie the Whale to explain this ranking. Apart from his role in tormenting young Squirt, er, Homelander, Marty did not ask to be forced to masturbate in front of his co-workers and then have his genitals lasered off and head crushed when he failed. But what happens to him is still pretty gross.
Frank
Same as above, but substitute “skin burned off body while he screams in torment” for the other stuff.
Ezekiel
You almost have to feel sorry for Firecracker’s superpowered accomplices, who keep meeting bad, grody ends. Then again, Ezekiel’s equating Stargirl with the Antichrist on national television is its own type of grodiness.
The Deep
The Deep is one of this show’s grossest characters just by virtue of being The Deep. But let’s be evenhanded about his behavior this week: Ultimately, he just wants to eat fried garbage and have sex with Sage (and cheat on Ambrosius in the process, but let’s put that aside). Let’s not kink-shame him, if any of that even qualifies as kink. Yet it’s hard to overlook the fact that doing so requires performing a low-tech lobotomy. The Deep also gets docked a few extra points for playing Joe Cocker to Firecracker’s Jennifer Warnes on the aforementioned “Up Where We Belong” duet. Speaking of …
Firecracker
Firecracker offers a pu pu platter of grossness this episode (beyond that duet). She reveals she used to consider Sage “uppity” but now considers her “one of the good ones.” She dubs herself “The Children’s Freedom Fighter” on the debut episode of The Truthbomb With Firecracker. We also learn she had sex with a minor (ew) in the parking lot of a Florida Buca di Beppo (ewwww). Revealing Starlight’s secrets is just one of her many offenses, if likely to be the most consequential.
Sage
Too high? Maybe. But Sage is running a sophisticated disinformation campaign designed to make “a hundred million people outraged by Starlight for reasons they can’t even explain” and generally seems to be up to no good. (Unless she’s got a secret plan we just don’t know about yet. Can’t rule it out.) But it’s that lobotomy scene that makes her tough to beat (even if it doesn’t bring her to the top of the chart this week). And, again, she should not be shamed for her sexual activity or her preferred viewing material, including her preferred viewing material during sexual activity, as detailed in this episode’s most memorable line. But she’s doing all that with The Deep. Gross.
Homelander
Homelander begins the episode with an unnerving smirk on his face and ends it covered in blood. The humiliation, mind games, and sexual and physical abuse he commits in between plays like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with a cape and tights. No one else comes close this week, and that’s saying something.
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