In the previous episode of The Boys, Annie and Hughie’s diabolical plan panned out — the secret of Compound V was finally leaked to the world. Meanwhile, the Boys’ mission to deliver Kenji to the CIA was a disaster of epic proportions due to the intervention of the NYPD, The Deep, and The Seven (R.I.P. Lucy the whale). Stormfront showed her true colors as she killed and displaced many innocent bystanders while chasing down Kimiko and her brother, the latter of which she murdered at the end of her pursuit. Keep reading to find out what happened in episode 4, “Nothing Like it in the World.”
WARNING: The Boys contains mature subject matter, potentially triggering events, vulgar language, violence, and gore. Those themes may appear in the following recap.
The episode opens with what appears to be a brief clip of a girl sitting in on an interview about relationships.
At the Boys’ hideout, Frenchie approaches Kimiko, who’s crying as she watches a news report about Kenji. Frenchie tells her that her brother’s death wasn’t her fault and kisses her, but she shoves him away.
In the conference room at Vought, Homelander angrily sits and watches a news report about Stormfront. He takes off, leaving the tower and arriving at a cabin. In an absolutely wild turn of events, out walks … MADELYN STILLWELL? She’s wearing lingerie and carrying a glass of milk, which she proceeds to give him (what’s with this man and milk, honestly?) before he kisses her.
Butcher meets up with Mallory at a memorial for the lives that were lost during Stormfront’s rampage. She hands him the paper shown in the previous episode with the photo of Liberty, a second-tier Supe that was active back in the 70s. Mallory tells him that she was all over Raynor’s private server, and there’s an address on the back. Before they part ways, she hands Butcher another slip of paper with directions to a Vought facility that’s armed to the teeth — she thinks that they found Becca.
Back at the cabin, Homelander is watching a movie with Stillwell. He lies his head down in her lap, she begins petting his head … and oh my god IT’S DOPPELGANGER! “I can only hold a shape for so long before it really hurts,” he says to an absolutely furious Homelander. Talk about a sick coping mechanism (but I can’t say that I’m surprised).
Meanwhile, Butcher announces to the Boys that he’s going after Becca alone and he puts M.M. in charge.
Annie is minding her own business in the Vought elevator when Homelander joins her. He stops the elevator and begins to choke her, accusing her of being involved with Hughie because she disobeyed his orders and hesitated when he told her to kill him. Annie tells him that she’s not with Hughie, he broke her heart. And although part of her wants to blast his face off, she’s not a murderer. Homelander accepts that she isn’t lying and he lets her go.
Black Noir is off on his own mission, as he approaches a Vought employee and asks her to track down Butcher. Not quite taking his request seriously, she shows him where they last saw him — they lost him in the tunnels. He settles down in the chair beside her, indicating that he wants her to continue the search right then and there.
Annie meets up with Hughie in a park and tells him that she feels like things are worse now that the Compound V secret is out; she’s reaching her breaking point with The Seven. Hughie, meanwhile, gets a call from M.M., who announces that they’re taking a trip to Raleigh. To M.M.’s displeasure, Hughie convinces him to let Annie join them. Despite the fact that she’s chipped, Vought won’t be suspicious because she has a second cousin near where they’re headed, anyway. And it’s safer to have a Supe with them when they’re going to march up to another Supe’s front door, right?
A-Train is less than impressed to see Shockwave hanging around at Vought tower, and Ashley attempts to run damage control. Homelander interrupts, informing A-Train that he’s kicked out of The Seven because his heart issues are making them look bad.
What’s Butcher up to? Not much, just scaling the wall of the Vought compound on his way to track down his wife.
Frenchie shows up at Cherie’s, lonely and upset after Kimiko turned him down. Cherie scolds him, explaining that he thinks that by saving Kimiko, he can make amends for the people he’s hurt, and for the children that Lamplighter burned (Mallory’s grandchildren).
Hughie, M.M., and Annie stop at a diner, and the latter two finally bond a bit as they have a heart to heart about their dads. When the group goes to get back on the road, a tractor trailer smashes into a station wagon. Annie is distraught as she’s forced to walk away instead of getting involved.
Becca looks out of a window facing her driveway to see that the door of her car is popped open. When she goes outside, she finds Butcher laying in the back seat, and he asks her if there’s anywhere that they can go without cameras. She motions to the Vought surveillance camera outside of the house that she’s going for a smoke, and they drive off. Becca apologizes to Butcher for letting him think that she was dead because she wasn’t allowed to call anyone. Butcher firmly tells her that he’s going to get her out of the compound. Becca says that she needs to head back, explaining that Vought will get suspicious if she’s gone too long.
M.M., Hughie, and Annie stop at a motel for the evening, and unfortunately for Hughie, M.M. insists that the two of them share a room. This doesn’t last long, as Hughie is quick to sneak out once M.M. begins to snore like a freight train. He meets up with Annie at the vending machine, and they proceed to discuss her terrible taste in candy bars before going back to her room.
Becca checks in on Ryan and then drives back to where Butcher is still waiting for her. They have sex in the back of her car, and then breach the awkward conversation about the fact that she now has a son. Butcher explains that he doesn’t hate kids, he just doesn’t think he’s a very good role model. They discuss what Butcher has been up to since she disappeared, and Butcher laments that he wasn’t there for her after all that she’s gone through.
Meanwhile, Homelander and Maeve are on a talk show being interviewed. The host brings up the topic #heroessowhite, and the fact that 92% of heroes are Caucasian, 6% are African American, 1% are Latin, and 1% are Asian — why doesn’t Vought want diversity? This leads to Homelander outing Maeve as a lesbian with a Hispanic girlfriend. When they exit, Maeve begins to freak out, asking him where Elena is. She attempts to continue denying their relationship, but once she realizes he’s figured it all out, she admits that they’re together. Homelander ominously tells her that he wants her to be happy.
Stormfront is holding a rally, basking in the anger that people are feeling over the Compound V news and hyping them up to believe that they need to mobilize against the “Super Terrorists.” Kimiko weaves throughout the crowd, on a mission, until Frenchie stops her.
M.M., Hughie, and Annie arrive at the address that was on the back of the photo of Liberty. After some initial back and forth with the older woman that answers the door, who says that she “took their money” and “signed their papers” and has “kept her mouth shut,” M.M. manages to convince her that they’re not with Vought. We learn about his personal background with the twisted company, as he explains that his father was a lawyer who went after Vought and ended up dead at 55, hunched over his typewriter.
The group settles down in the woman’s living room. She recounts a story from 48 years ago — she was 11 years old, asleep in the back seat of a car while her brother was driving. At one point, he came to a stop, got out of the car, and was met by a Supe, Liberty, who was waiting in the road. Liberty said that his car was involved in a robbery that evening and tells him to “just confess.” She then proceeds to attack him, making a grossly racist remark before killing him.
After revealing that her family took the (terrible) cash settlement that Vought offered them instead of going to the police (doubting their ability to win a case in the South with the word of a young Black girl versus a white Supe), she asks them not to tell anyone — Liberty will kill her if she finds out she opened her mouth. Hughie, confused, states that she’s probably dead by now. The woman laughs, and the other shoe finally drops. She brings over a newspaper that shows them that Liberty is alive and well … SHE’S STORMFRONT.
Homelander angrily confronts Stormfront, demanding to know who she thinks she is, undermining him and trying to steal his team. She explains to him, matter-of-factly, that he doesn’t need 50 million people to love him, he just needs 5 million people pissed. Emotion and anger sell — Homelander has fans, but she has soldiers.
Becca meets back up with Butcher, who’s confused because she didn’t bring Ryan with her for their great escape. She tells him that she’s not coming, because she knows that he doesn’t want Ryan to come with them, he will find a way to get rid of him. Butcher, caught, admits that Vought will never let the child go, but the two of them have a chance. Becca remains steadfast, knowing her son will grow up to be a repeat of Homelander if he’s raised without a mother. Butcher puts his foot in his mouth as he calls the boy a Supe freak. Whoops. Upset, Becca exclaims that after Homelander raped her and she found out she was pregnant, she went to Vought because she was terrified knowing that Butcher would seek revenge if she told him. She hugs and kisses him goodbye before driving off.
Black Noir is still camped out beside the Vought employee, many cans of Red Bull later, when they finally come across the surveillance footage of Butcher scaling the wall of the compound Becca’s being held in.
As their road trip comes to an end, Annie parts ways with Hughie, telling him that their motel escapade can’t happen again. They can’t afford to feel good, safe, or let their guard down.
All of the brief, odd clips with various women discussing love and relationships throughout the course of the episode are finally explained, as another clip is shown and then the camera pans out to reveal The Deep and Carol. They’re picking a wife for The Deep from the Collective so that he can fix his image.
Homelander returns to the cabin once more, and Stillwell a la Doppelganger is there to greet him. He’s angry, and Doppelganger asks if he wants him to be someone else. Homelander says that he doesn’t need anyone else, which prompts the shapeshifting Supe to transform into a lingerie-clad Homelander. We’re subjected to Homelander propositioning himself (please no) as Doppelganger gets down on his knees. Before things can get too wild, Homelander lifts Doppelganger up so they’re face to face and snaps his neck.
The episode closes not with a song, but with the peaceful crackling of the cabin’s fireplace.
Episodes 1-4 of season 2 of The Boys are now available on Amazon Prime Video. And don’t forget to watch Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys, the official after-show. Episode 5 will premiere on Friday, September 18. Check out all of our recaps for this season here.
