If there’s one thing you can rely on Prime Video‘s The Boys to deliver, it’s an absolutely over-the-top gross-out scene every episode. And while the Season 4 premiere had a worm face ripping off arms, and the third episode featured a massacre on ice… Season 4, Episode 2 “Life Among The Septics” delivered perhaps the raunchiest, most gross-out scene of the entire series. But is The Boys Season 4 sauna scene, aka the Splinter (Rob Benedict) Human Centipede actually the grossest scene ever? Forever ever?
To figure out whether the sauna scene is indeed the high watermark — or low watermark, depending on how you look at it — of the series, we’re going to compare it with some of the grossest, most outrageous scenes in The Boys history. But before we do, a little bit of a recap, as well as some medical advice about pink eye.
What Happened In The Boys Season 4 Sauna Scene? Splinter’s Human Centipede, Explained:
Generally speaking, I try to keep this site PG. Or PG-13 at worst. But it’s incredibly hard to talk about this without getting graphic, so a bit of a language and content warning here. Also, I made a GIF of what happens, which you’re about to scroll down to. So, warning there too!
In the episode, we meet Splinter, a Supe who has the power to duplicate himself. He’s working as a roadie for Firecracker (Valorie Curry), a fringe nutjob conspiracy theory peddler with a semi-popular podcast. He’s also clearly in love with her, and whether she reciprocates or not is TBD. Or rather, it’s probably not TBD, because Splinter is dead by episode’s end.
We meet up with both of them at TruthCon, a convention all about conspiracy theories, where Firecracker is giving a three-hour lecture/panel on “Starlight and the Hollywood Pedophile Cult.” It’s unhinged and insane, but it gives Splinter plenty of time to take a relaxing “me time” break in the middle.
As he walks through the con, snapping selfies with fans and shaking hands, he’s followed by Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), who want to know more about him, Firecracker, and why they’re of such interest to Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the smartest person in the world… And a new ally of Homelander (Antony Starr).
The duo tracks Splinter to the hotel’s locker room, where they hear grunts and moans. Slowly, they approach the door to a sauna off the locker room, and when they open it up they see… Well, they see six completely naked dupes of Splinter, eating each other’s a**holes in a Human Centipede-style line, while the one in the front masturbates to a headshot of Firecracker. The punchline to this is one of the Splinters spits out a hair, and then the one in the front says “This isn’t what it looks like!”
Which, of course, it’s exactly what it looks like.
Rob Benedict Would Like You To Know He Studied Shakespeare
If you’re not watching The Boys with Amazon’s X-Ray feature turned on, you’re missing out. The feature offers casting info, music info, and much more — as well as trivia throughout the episodes. And the bit of trivia that popped up during this particular scene is a pretty great joke. Here’s the text, if you did miss it:
“Actor Rob Benedict wants us to remind everyone that he studied Shakespeare at Northwestern University. There is no contractual obligation for us to carry out this request. This is merely a kind gesture.”
I believe there was a similar scene to this one in Twelfth Night? But I could be wrong.
Can You Get Pink Eye From, Uh, Tossing Salad?
Before we get into the scene comparison, a little medical note from your friends at Comic Book Club. Later in the episode, as Splinter and Firecracker try to kill The Boys, Frenchie notices Splinter — and all his dupes — are rubbing their eye. He realizes they got pink eye from tossing each other’s salad if you will.
So can you get pink eye from eating butt? The answer is: yes, absolutely. Pink eye is a general term referring to any bacterial or fungal infection in the eye that turns it pink. If it’s, uh, not clean enough down there, and you stick your eye near it, or rub your eye without cleaning your hands… Yeah, chances are you could get pink eye.
Score one for Dr. Frenchie, I guess. Okay, on to the comparisons.
Sauna Scene Vs. The Termite Scene
In the Season 3 premiere, “Payback,” Termite (Brett Geddes), blows up a dude’s penis. Or, more specifically, the shrinking Supe gets high on cocaine, crawls inside the man’s penis, and stimulates him from the inside. But when Termite sneezes, he grows to regular size, blowing up the guy’s shlong — and the rest of him, of course. But mostly the shlong.
While this is more traumatizing from a human perspective, in terms of graphic content I’m going to give this to the Sauna Scene. I also just don’t understand how someone crawling inside your urethra would feel good? But hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Sauna Scene Vs. Popclaw’s Head Pop
In Season 1, Episode 3 “Get Some,” Popclaw (Brittany Allen) has an, er, interesting way of paying for her rent. Specifically, she sexually pleases her landlord — or rather, lets him sexually please her. Unfortunately for him, she’s a Supe and he’s not. So while sitting on his face, she orgasms and crushes his head with her legs. Whoops!
We were still early in the show, so while this was pretty shocking back in our younger days, it was just a precursor for what was to come.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Sauna Scene Vs. Love Sausage
This isn’t so much a scene as the whole character of Love Sausage (Andrew Jackson in Season 2, Derek Johns in Seasons 3, 4, and Gen V). He comes straight from the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson and has an enormous, snake-like penis he can control like a tentacle. All apologies to MM (Laz Alonso), who is horrified by Love Sausage, but this pales in comparison to the sauna — mostly because the whole prehensile penis thing is wildly over the top, and veers into comedy.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Sauna Scene Vs. Homelander’s Whole Mommy Milky Thing With Madelyn Stilwell
In Season 1 it was revealed that Homelander has a whole infantile regression thing related to Madelyn Stilwell (Elisabeth Shue), the CEO of Vought. In Season 2, we discovered he was keeping samples of her breast milk to drink when he got sad, despite having lasered her face off in Season 1.
Homelander’s milk obsession has become a running joke on the show, including an encounter with a cow in Season 3, and multiple instances of milk drinking in Season 4. But his clear obsession with breast milk and turning into a baby man around Stilwell is disturbing — particularly as it veers into semi-sexual territory given he’s a grown, 30-something-year-old man.
That said! This is also very much based in Homelander’s obsessive need for love, his lack of strong parental figures, and the fact that he had no real childhood. So while it’s disturbing, it also helps develop his character — which levels out the “ew” factor a bit.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Sauna Scene Vs. Homelander’s Doppelgangbang
Following directly up on that, in Season 2, Episode 4 “Nothing Like It In The World,” it’s revealed that Homelander has been keeping a Supe named Doppelganger (Dan Darin-Zanco) in a cabin, and making them pretend to be Stilwell. But then Doppelganger gives Homelander what he really wants, by turning into… Homelander, and allowing him to engage in a little self-incest. While this whole scenario continues to be disturbing, again it’s a natural extension of Homelander’s narcissism. RIP Doppelganger, but you were right, that was exactly what Homelander wanted.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Sauna Scene Vs. The Deep And Ambrosius
You may notice I haven’t included “Herogasm,” Season 3, Episode 6 of the series here. That’s because, despite the promise of the title, the whole thing was a surprisingly tame superhero orgy. That said, we’d be remiss to not include the scene where Starlight (Erin Moriarty) discovers The Deep (Chace Crawford) having sex with an octopus. It later turns out this is an octopus named Ambrosius, who is voiced in Season 4 by Tilda Swinton. But while a lot of things we’ve noted here are on the side of “weird superhero kink,” this is the only act that is completely illegal. Do not have sex with animals!
Still, the scene is again mostly played for comedy, versus being raunchy or disturbing.
Winner: Sauna Scene
Verdict: Is The Sauna Scene The Raunchiest Thing The Boys Has Ever Done?
You may not be surprised to hear the answer is: yes: the Season 4 sauna scene is the raunchiest thing The Boys has ever done. And I would argue the reason is that it’s there for shock value, not out of any character extension. Yes, it sets up the pink eye that allows The Boys to briefly get the advantage in their fight with Splint and Firecracker. But as a visual, the whole Splint Human Centipede — Human Splinterpede? — is perhaps the closest the TV show has come to the comic, which also featured some of the most depraved, over-the-top sequences you’ve ever seen. Yes, way worse than the TV show.
And in fact the TV show has successfully skirted the line with this content since the very beginning, smartly infusing the spirit of the comic while forging its own path. Here, they didn’t necessarily cross a line — but they definitely skirted it. Unless, of course, Splinter was telling the truth and it wasn’t what it looked like.
The Boys Season 4 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The Boys season 4 will officially premiere on Prime Video on Thursday, June 13 at 3 am ET / 12 am PT. The season will be eight episodes long, with three dropping on premiere day.
Here’s the full list of episodes in The Boys Season 4, with expected premiere dates:
- Thursday, June 13, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 1 – “Department of Dirty Tricks”
- Thursday, June 13, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 2 – “Life Among the Septics”
- Thursday, June 13, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 3 – “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here”
- Thursday, June 20, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 4 – “Wisdom of the Ages”
- Thursday, June 27, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 5 – “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son”
- Thursday, July 4, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 6 – “Dirty Business”
- Thursday, July 11, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 7 – “The Insider”
- Thursday, July 18, 2024: The Boys, Season 4, Episode 8 – “Assassination Run” *Season Finale*
Ok! We get it. There are gay people in the world.