The Boys Season 4 Sister Sage Lobotomy Twist Explained by the Series Showrunner and Star
The wildest part of “The Boys” is its brazen interest in how superpowers can impact a person’s sex life. Because so much of popular superhero media is meant to be at least somewhat family friendly, this was a topic rife for exploration, and showrunner Eric Kripke took full advantage. From an Ant-Man ripoff crawling inside his lover’s urethra to an Aquaman knockoff having sex with a squid, “The Boys” has never been afraid to get weird with it.
Has this quality of the show always been well received? Not quite; “The Boys” has often been accused of overindulging in shock value and gross-out humor. And after its recent extended BDSM sequence with Hughie (Jack Quaid) in season 4, it’s been accused of treating the sexual assault of male characters way too flippantly. The show also has a growing reputation for being oddly sex negative; almost any kind non-heteronormative sex is treated by the show as a sort of visual shorthand for depravity. 90% of the time, if a “Boys” character’s having sex, that either means they’re evil or something horrendous is about to happen to them.
Still, there are plenty of storylines where the show’s willingness to go NSFW pays off. A big recent one is the romance (well, “romance”) between the Deep (Chase Crawford) and Sister Sage (Susan Heyward). **The Deep finally finds a human woman who wants to sleep with him; the only catch is that she has to temporarily lobotomize herself in order to be okay with it.**
**Why does Sister Sage lobotomize herself in The Boys season 4?**
As the smartest person in the world, Sister Sage is the rare supe whose body is just as fragile as any regular human’s. The only super part of her body is her brain, which is not only hyper-intelligent but can regenerate from any sort of trauma inflicted upon it. **Sage explains to the Deep that by sticking a metal rod through her eye socket, into her brain, she could give herself just the right amount of brain damage to enjoy having sex with him.**
**Did The Boys team have any alternatives for Sister Sage’s lobotomy kink?**
The most important factor inspiring the ice pick sequence, it seems, was how gross it all was. “People just get so weird about eye stuff and so I knew that that would be one where people are really going to cover their eyes watching,” Kripke said. “The fact that it’s as disturbing as it is is all the credit to the visual effects department.”
This, combined with the awareness it subtly spread about the medical world’s shameful history of lobotomies, made the ice pick an easy choice for the writers. **When asked if there were any other options they considered, Kripke answered, “No, it mostly involved huffing things.”**
**The lobotomy twist also lead to one of the funniest moments of the season**
Perhaps the most consequential event of the original ice pick scene is the punchline of the Deep finding out about his coworker Black Noir’s affair with Sage in the finale. After Noir returned with a chattier supe under the mask this season, he and the Deep developed a fun (if chaotic) buddy-cop routine over the course of the season, with Noir being the reluctant straight man to the Deep’s cartoonish villainy. **This friendship hits a hurdle, however, when the Deep finds out that not only has Sage been sleeping with Noir, but she hasn’t been lobotomizing herself at all beforehand.**
What do you think about this storyline in The Boys season 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
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