The Boys Season 4 Rotten Tomatoes Score Is a Franchise Low

The Boys Season 4 reviews have officially been released online, and the initial score on Rotten Tomatoes is 79% (at the time of writing this, with 30+ reviews submitted). While that score is still “Fresh” by the aggregate site’s scale, it’s also a franchise low for The Boys. 

Here are the scores for the other seasons of The Boys, for comparison: 

1. The Boys Season 1 – 85%
2. The Boys Season 2 – 97%
   
3. The Boys Season 3 – 98%
   
4. The Boys Season 4 – 78% 
   

So, the numbers don’t lie: The Boys Season 4 is a pretty significant drop from the near-perfect upward trend we saw with seasons 2 and 3. The low score becomes even more unfortunate with the recent announcement that The Boys Season 5 is the final season of the show. That’s only one more chance to regain some of the critical acclaim it’s lost. 

Why Is The Boys Season 4 Getting Bad Reviews? 

Based on a lot of the critical consensus, The Boys Season 4 is just not as “fun” as previous seasons of the show have been. ComicBook.com critic Adam Barnhardt’s review of The Boys Season 4 points out that it’s not so much the fault of the showrunners, writers, or cast – it’s just that Season 4 and its obvious socio-political commentary is actually saying something serious at a crucial moment:

The Boys Season 4 is nothing short of frustrating, but not because of the writers or actors associated with the show; it’s frustrating because the show does an impeccable job of examining the world we live in, putting a light on just how dangerous and alarming the rhetoric used by some of those in positions of power really is. It’s far from a feel-good television show, but that’s the point of it all: if it leaves you fuming, maybe you’ll be inspired to do something about it.

What Is The Boys Season 4 About? 

(SPOILERS)  The Boys Season 3 finale saw Homelander (Antony Starr) reunite with his son Ryan at a rally, where an anti-Homelander protester threatened Ryan, causing Homelander to vaporize him on the spot. Instead of being arrested or sparking terror, Homelander was embraced and even cheered on by the crowd. It was made clear that society has entered a new era – one where the strong man is celebrated as king, no matter what he did. Meanwhile, the Gen-V spinoff show revealed that there is a larger scheme at work within Vought and its Godolkin University for training new pro supes, to create a virus to kill all supes. Congresswoman (and closet supe) Victoria Neuman ended up getting her hands on that virus – a dire development that will kick off The Boys Season 4: 

“In our minds, it’s only a couple of days after whatever the events are of Gen V,” showrunner Eric Kripke recently told Variety. “We try to keep the timeline super simple because all that folding-in-on-itself timeline stuff that I think other comic book universes find themselves having to do is just bewildering for me as a viewer. So it’s all very modular. It’s like there’s Season 3 of The Boys, and then after that Gen V takes place, and then after that The Boys Season 4 takes place. And then after that, Gen V Season 2 takes place. It’s all more like cars on a train than it is a plate of spaghetti.”

The Boys Season 4 will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, June 13th.