Fans horrified by The Boys’ latest graphic scene: ‘The worst thing I’ve seen’

How does it just keep getting worse? Even this show’s hardcore fans were repulsed by the graphic nature of this scene.

Just when you think Prime Video’s satirical superhero series The Boys can’t get any more gruesome, a “lobotomy foreplay” scene in this week’s episode tops every shocking bit of violence depicted in previous seasons.

And yes, that includes the squelching human centipede in Episode 2 and the sneeze-triggered-penis-explosion from back in Season 3.

The episode may have kicked off with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) rebuking The Deep’s (Chace Crawford) advances, but she later invites him back to her room for some good ol’ mindless fun, complete with fast food and trash television. Whether she finds him “repulsive” or not, she needs him to do a favour for her.

Just before things get gruesome.

The favour in question? Perform a frontal lobotomy and “scrape” her brain so that she can take a break from her superpowers.

“It’s temporary, you give me a frontal lobotomy and I don’t have to f**king be me for a couple of hours,” she tells him. While The Deep initially seems hesitant about it, the promise of sex is enough to get him on board.

Crawford approaches the scene with the hilarious levity that only a dimwit like The Deep could muster. After Sage presents him with the orbitoclast (the pick that he’s meant to drive into her eye socket), he says that it may be “the worst dildo” he’s ever seen.

If you’re squeamish, look away now.

They then show the entire lobotomy from start to finish, and, to the credit of The Boys, it’s unbelievably graphic and hard to watch. Though just a trickle of blood leaks from her eye afterwards, the image and sounds of The Deep driving a pick into her eye and then scraping her brain matter at her urging will make even the biggest horror fans cower.

“Oh my god the frontal lobotomy in The Boys is actually the worst thing I have seen,” tweeted one horrified fan.

“That lobotomy scene is one of the grossest s**t I have ever seen on TV like why tf did they film it up close like that,” asked another.

“I couldn’t even look at The Deep giving Sister Sage a lobotomy. That was disgusting as f**k,” another complained.

One fan gave their decisive verdict: “The lobotomy scene is the worst thing The Boys has ever done.”

The superhero series is graphic, gory and at times very explicit. Picture: Panagiotis Pantazidis

To his credit, The Deep at least has the grace to look like he’s not enjoying this bit of foreplay as she instructs him to “scrape my f***ing brains out.” Sage, however, appears to be enjoying it very much. As director Philip Sgriccia gives the viewer a front seat view of Sage’s eye bulging out of her eye socket, she’s loudly moaning as The Deep scrapes her frontal lobe.

The scene proves that Deep is Sage’s perfect foil and their partnership, for better or for worse, is a delight to see on screen. For all his flaws, The Boys writers understand that The Deep’s obliviousness lends him a sense of peace that Sage will never have. His ego and casual misogyny ironically make him the perfect play thing for Sage; not only is he dumb enough to perform a lobotomy on someone else with zero medical training and no questions asked, but his shallowness also makes him the perfect candidate for a casual situationship as she plots with Homelander.

Showrunner and series creator Eric Kripke recently explained that the writers wanted Sage to have a way to decompress from being the smartest person in the world. While they pondered having her huff paint, the lobotomy made the most sense visually since “people just get so weird about eye stuff.”

For Heyward, the lobotomy represented Sage’s desperate need for peace.

Fans were horrified by the grisly scene.

“Kripke and I talked a lot about Sage’s sense of isolation,” Heyward said. “How her brain is a blessing and a curse because she’s trapped among all this information all the time and she can never really escape and just be. And so I think [the risk of losing her eye with a lobotomy] is worth it, for her sanity, because if she doesn’t get a break from her brain, she’s gonna go even crazier than she already is.”

She added that it was “really fun to shoot” with Crawford, who admitted it was definitely a “squeamish” scene.

“It was a technically challenging little bit and we were shooting all of it until that moment,” Crawford said. “Just doing it was so intense. Truly phenomenal, very weird kink though.”

It may be too early to deem Sister Sage’s lobotomy as the grossest scene on the show. With four episodes left in the season, there’s certainly still time for The Boys to top that one.

New episodes of The Boys air Thursdays on Prime Video.