The Boys Season 4: Now, Eric Kripke Has Us Overanalyzing Potted Meat

With Amazon & Showrunner Eric Kripke‘s The Boys currently filming its fourth season finale, we’ve become a bit more… “obsessive”… when it comes to trying to analyze anything about the fourth season that gets released. Even when that “anything” is a picture of potted meat. To be more precise, the image that Kripke posted shows a can of Vought Fresh Farms Potted Meat (“Amercica’s Favorite for Over 40 years”) sitting atop what appears to be an industrial cooking area (like in a restaurant). Accompanying the image, Kripke wrote the following: “Shot on set, the Season 4 finale. Everything a growing Supe needs.” Okay… that last part? Could we be reading too much into that? Maybe it’s a reference to Homelander’s (Antony Starr) crappy parenting skills in the mealtime department? Could someone have recently given birth? Or to go in another direction, is that what someone who’s imprisoned is being fed? But then again, to paraphrase Freud? Maybe sometimes a can is just a can…

Here’s a look at what Kripke had to share earlier today, followed by a look back at his previous thoughts on what’s to come:

Now, here’s a look back at Kripke’s tweet from last month confirming that filming was underway on the fourth season finale:

Taking to social media to post a look at the cover page of the script earlier that month, Kripke gave us the heads-up about the eighth episode: Episode 408 “Assassination Run.” In addition, the episode has some powerhouse creative talent behind it with “Herogasm” scribe Jessica Chou (Wu Assassins) & “Department of Dirty Tricks” scribe David Reed (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) penning the finale, with Kripke directing.

The Boys Showrunner/EP Eric Kripke Discusses Season 4 & Beyond

In July 2022, Kripke covered a ton of topics in his interview with Variety (check out the complete interview with a ton of other details here), with highlights focused on Butcher (Urban), Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Soldier Boy (Ackles), and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell):

So Should We Be Expecting Ryan to Go “Brightburn”? “Ryan is a really important piece of the story because he’s half Becca, half Homelander. If Butcher can figure out how to get his shit together and get the kid back, that could be the single best weapon they have against Homelander. But vice versa. If Homelander wins the kid over, that’s apocalyptic because then there’s two Homelanders. It’s like a child drama with apocalyptic stakes. It’s like ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ meets ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ So that will be a really rich story moving forward.”

How Will Butcher React to Knowing He’s on a “Crazy Ticking Clock”? “He’s got so much to do that he hasn’t done. And everything that he’s tried to do up to this point has exploded in the most horrible way. What we find fascinating about the question we’re asking about Butcher is, is he self-aware enough to realize that he’s causing his own misfortune? Is he self-aware enough to actually see if he can change? Those are some of the interesting conversations we’re starting to have for Season 4.”

Maeve’s Leaving Will Make Things Tougher for Starlight… at Least Until She Returns? “I don’t think ‘The Boys’ will end without Maeve showing up again… We needed a way to sort of gracefully get Maeve out of the show, let her head for the exit. Obviously, we didn’t want to kill her and fall into the tropes of gay characters and bisexual characters in shows getting killed. We wanted to do the opposite of that and send her off and give her a happy ending with Elena. The best way to do that was, well, take away her powers, and she’s not useful in the fight anymore. And we did that because Annie can’t really grow into her own until all the characters that are around to protect her are gone. It was important for her next step for her mentor characters and her protector characters to go away. And so it’s only up to Annie. There’s no one left but Annie. So what is she going to do?”

Black Noir Is Dead! Long Live Black Noir! “Without spoiling anything, I will just say this: When you have a silent character in a mask, he’s reasonably easy to recast… If you notice in the flashbacks of this season, it was a different actor [Fritzy-Klevans Destine], and perhaps the reason we did that is so that if we were to recast Noir, we could recast him with Nathan [Mitchell, the original Black Noir actor].

Just Because Soldier Boy’s on Ice Doesn’t Mean He Can’t Return… Right? “The old TV adage is like, never kill anyone unless you really, really have to. Never close a door, open a window. We’ll all have to wait and see, but I can’t imagine the series ending without Soldier Boy making another appearance.”