With every new season of The Boys comes new characters. Some of these are brand-new characters who never appeared in the comics. Others have comic book counterparts, but the show expanded their role. It's always exciting for fans to see what's coming in the new season. Teasers for The Boys season 4 showed off a couple of new characters who stood on stage with Homelander and the rest of the villainous team, The Seven during a televised event.
One character was the red-headed Firecracker (Valerie Curry), who failed to exhibit her powerset in the teasers and the first couple of episodes that introduced her. The other, played by Susan Heyward, is Sister Sage. Homelander takes a liking to her almost immediately after seeking her out, because he's tired of being surrounded by sycophants like The Deep and Ashley (Vought's new CEO). But who exactly is Sister Sage, and what are her motivations?
The Boys: Homelander Feels Less Intimidating Than Ever
Homelander has always been a menacing presence on The Boys, however, the latest season makes him less intimidating than ever before.
Who is Sister Sage?
Sister Sage is the smartest sentient being in the world of The Boys — which would explain the bored expression that she exhibits so often. It's also why she's able to tell Homelander about himself down to the smallest details when he first visits her. In The Boys, Sister Sage was part of the teenage supe team Teen Kix during the '90s and early 2000s. After that team disbanded, she fell out of the limelight and retired to a dumpy little apartment where she kept to herself.
If anyone was to compare her intelligence to another comic book character, it would be on par with Reed Richards or Brainiac. Having her team up with Homelander creates an interesting dynamic, because then the two most powerful people in the world have the brains and the brawn. But who has the real power in this relationship? Is it Homelander, with his bevy of superpowers at his disposal? Or is it Sister Sage, who is a tactical genius on top of knowing just about anything in any text book and is now in charge of Homelander's sinister plot? She might feel like one of the weakest supes in The Boys, but that's only if the power of intelligence is undervalued. It's not Reed Richards' elasticity that makes him so powerful, after all.
Is Sage in the Comics?
Eric Kripke is no stranger to creating characters specifically for the show when it suits his purpose. That's precisely what he did with Sister Sage. This one is interesting in terms of comic books. As Kripke said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, this hyper-intelligent archetype is typically filled by "reedy white dudes," so he wanted to go in a different direction with Sage. Instead, Kripke and his team of writers portray her as a black woman. It's a commentary on how people in power tend to ignore marginalized people, even if they're the smartest minds in the world.
It's both commentary and satirical that you have literally the smartest person in the world that could cure all of society's ills, but she just can't get anyone to listen to her. So then she becomes a bitter misanthrope.
Why is Sister Sage Helping Homelander?
Homelander wants to remake the world in his image where supes are in a position of power everywhere, and normies are in their rightful subordinate place. Audiences also saw in season 2, after Homelander took a liking to Stormfront and her ideology, that he wants to create a fascist state where marginalized people remain marginalized and the bulk of humanity joins them. His brief appearance in Gen V solidifies his thoughts on humans and supe-on-supe violence when he subdues Marie Moreau.
Homelander is already the most powerful supe in the show, so it shouldn't be difficult for him to get his way, right? The problem is that he's not the keenest person when trying to manipulate others to do his bidding. He's more of a blunt object. Meanwhile, Sister Sage is surgical with her manipulations. She's the perfect supe to help Homelander with his schemes, but it begs the question: Why is she helping him?
Sister Sage, or just Sage as she prefers, doesn't agree with Homelander's belief system. What she does want, however, is to get backat the system that has cast her aside, allowing her to be forgotten and fade into mediocrity. Helping Homelander means that she will, in a sense, be in control of the most powerful being in the world. As some forgotten character from an old political thriller said:
Power is a lot like real estate. It's all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.
Sage being in charge of the shadow games means she's Homelander's right-hand person, which puts a lot of power in her hands.
There's also the possibility that she has an ulterior motive that the audience isn't privy to yet. She hasn't expressed interest in putting supes above humans. Other than the intrigue of manipulating people on a global scale, she hasn't explained what she gets out of executing these plans. For all anybody knows, she recognizes the threat that Homelander poses to the world and has a plan to end or neuter him. As the season finale approaches, it will be exciting to see if she does, in fact, have some underlying schemes of her own.
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