This article contains spoilers for The Boys.
Throughout this season of The Boys, we’ve known that Sister Sage — the smartest person in the world — has had a grand plan to assassinate the President so the Supe-friendly Victoria Neuman can take over the oval office as Homelander’s political puppet. Up until now, we weren’t really sure how they were going to pull it off without it getting pinned on any of the power-players they needed for their new ideal America, but this week’s episode finally gave us a glimpse of how Homelander, Sage and Neuman might accomplish this extremely worrying task. Delightfully, it involves showrunner Eric Kripke getting back on his shapeshifter bullshit.
But amid the shapeshifter shenanigans of Season 4, Episode 7, “The Insider,” there was also the not minor matter of Homelander (Antony Starr) firing Sage (Susan Heyward) from The Seven. Did the psychopathic Supe just ruin his own plan?
About midway into the episode, Annie (Erin Moriarty), Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Butcher (Karl Urban) encounter a shapeshifter while searching for the would-be presidential assassin. The moment the shifter touched Annie before running away after the three discovered her in the closet, Sister Sage’s (Susan Heyward) plan became pretty clear: the shapeshifter would be the one assassinating the President, and she’d be doing it in Annie January skin. Even fans of The Boys who aren’t familiar with Kripke’s shapeshifter proclivities (more on that in a sec!) likely suspected said plan by the time Not Annie™ puts on the Starlight suit and has deeply weird Not Annie™ sex with Hughie. But the end of the episode puts the final nail in the coffin when we see Not Annie™ steal the Neuman evidence that Hughie has been holding above the VP-elect’s head, while the real Annie is revealed to be chained up in a dark basement trying to figure out how the hell she got there.
The real question is how does Sage continue to finish her scheme after being ousted by Homelander and Firecracker (Valorie Curry)? Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is in on a good hunk of the plan, but her begrudging connection to Hughie makes it unlikely that she’s involved in the part that involves framing his girlfriend. Homelander has made it abundantly clear that he has neither the brains (nor “wisdom”) to implement anything close to a plan that doesn’t just end in lasering people to death, and Firecracker is a wildly dangerous tool, but a tool isn’t any good if someone doesn’t know how to wield it.
After Homelander tells her to pack her bags, Sage points out that literally everything has gone according to plan up to this point (unsurprising) and leaves behind a notebook to prove it. But will Homelander kill her if she tries to get involved again? Is her coup important enough to risk it? Or does she even need to remain involved at this point now that everything is so far in motion?
The future of both Sage and Annie are very much in question by the end of the episode, but one thing is absolutely sure: Hughie isn’t going to have to worry about the shapeshifter stealing all of his evidence on Neuman and framing his girlfriend once Starlight finds out that he and Not Annie™ had sex…
But about that Kripke/shapeshifter thing. Of course, fans of Kripke’s former show, Supernatural, likely pegged the shapeshifter immediately after it sprinted away from Annie, Hughie and Butcher. Shapeshifters came up many times in Supernatural’s 15-season tenure (of which Kripke ran five), and in earlier seasons often led to some pretty serious woes for main characters Sam and Dean Winchester. Obviously, this isn’t the first time Kripke’s paid homage to his former show and its fandom (lovingly dubbed the SPN Family). President Robert Singer is played by Jim Beaver who, on Supernatural, was the brothers’ surrogate father Bobby Singer (a nod to fellow SPN showrunner, you guessed it, Robert Singer). Meanwhile, Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester) came onto The Boys for Season 3 as Soldier Boy, and his character remains very much alive in the series’ universe, while the other Winchester brother actor, Jared Padalecki, has all but confirmed he will be in The Boys Season 5.
So will Kripke’s latest shapeshifter shenanigans be the first step in the downfall of Homelander now that the hot head has removed the brains of the operation? With only one episode left in the season, we might start to get a better idea of where this is all going next week…
Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia
source https://www.ign.com/articles/the-boys-did-homelander-just-unintentionally-screw-up-sister-sages-plan