In Season 4 of The Boys, Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban) crew is desperate for solutions. They want to bring down Vought International, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They keep secrets from one another, and ego gets in the way. This promotes a lack of communication and infighting, which ultimately harms the long-term aim.

However, they have one smart tactic, which is to bring Jesse T. Usher’s A-Train into the mix. The villain seeks forgiveness, and as his quest progresses, another opponent may become a spy and friend of the Boys.

The Boys’ A-Train Gets Exposed

A-Train has been experiencing an existential crisis in The Boys Season 4. He has been feeling guilty about all his sins with Homelander’s Seven, and how he let down the Black community. He wants to atone and show his family he can be a hero, but he’s stricken with fear. Having an evil Superman with super-hearing as a boss tends to do that. Still, he has helped the heroes out. He provided riot footage to exonerate members of the Starlight movement from a slew of murders.

Now, Hughie asks him to steal some Compound V in the hopes it will heal Hughie’s comatose father. A-Train reluctantly accepts. This is A-Train’s way of making up for accidentally 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing Hughie’s lover, Robin, in Season 1. However, as he gets around Homelander’s suite, he finds the former Vought CEO, Ashley. She has been Homelander’s lackey since the show began, but after her demotion, she is bitter. She can’t stand that Sister Sage has replaced her.

Ashley is also using Homelander’s toilet in ways she shouldn’t and a digusted A-Train blackmails her. If she reports he’s stealing, he’ll sell out what she has been doing. As actor Antony Starr has illustrated since the show debuted, Homelander won’t have a problem executing both of them on the spot. Ashley hesitates, but accepts the deal. She can tell A-Train feels like he has nothing to lose again. As a result, she falls in line as he speeds away.

The Boys’ A-Train Finally Settles the Hughie Rivalry

A-Train offers the vial to Hughie, thinking that he’ll be blackmailed again, but Hughie is genuinely appreciative. So much so, he lets A-Train off the hook. This is the last thing he’ll ask of the speedster. They shake hands and A-Train departs, though this doesn’t mean A-Train is done. Mother’s Milk has taken over the crew from the incompetent Billy Butcher. He tapped up A-Train to work with them, so he could call on his services again.

Notably, Butcher arrives out of the shadows in the alley to chide Hughie. His words fall on deaf ears, however. Hughie will do anything to save his father, even if it means endangering the man’s health with V. Butcher is annoyed because he sees Hughie like a son, not to mention the serum has messed with Butcher’s body and mind. He keeps warning Hughie this won’t help his father’s mortality problems. A pensive Hughie opts not to inject the man, but his mother, Daphne, finds the vial.

Daphne injects Hughie Sr. with the substance and brings him back. Unfortunately, they have to put him down later after the serum backfires. Through these moments, however, Hughie truly has lost his malice towards A-Train. He lets bygones by bygones. However, A-Train has problems to deal with. Sister Sage is trying to find out who’s the mole in their team. Sage is power-tripping and going as far as to intimidate Ashley after taking her CEO spot. A-Train needs help, so he decides to enlist Ashley’s aid. He wants her to help him out because if he gets caught, he’ll snitch. This creates tension back at Vought Tower.

Ashley doesn’t like being manipulated. But she is tired of aligning with Homelander and Vought. She has been culpable for many crimes, but she wants to make amends.

The Boys’ Ashley Has Become A-Train’s Unwilling Ally

Ashley makes her first move by planting false evidence on Cameron Coleman, the media shill at Vought’s news station. This takes heat off A-Train and ends with the Seven 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing him. Ashley hated Cameron for dumping her, but deep down, she knows removing him from the equation is a big part of hurting the Vought empire. In the past, he helped discredit Starlight’s footage that tried to paint Homelander as evil. It’s ironic that Valorie Curry’s Firecracker is now pushing out fake news as well to complement Cameron’s work.

This sets the stage for Ashley to keep hitting the company on a corporate and industrial level. Ashley can produce finances, corrupt contracts, details of scientific experiments, and other data from the many war crimes they were part of. They have also been tinkering with the government through Vice President, Victoria Neuman. Simply put, there is a lot of evidence for The Boys to weaponize; they just have to get it. Ashley is the means to do so. Part of her wants to safeguard America from a civil war, and she wants monsters like Homelander and the Deep brought to justice or 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed. After all, Homelander had her pull off her wig, so the Seven could make fun of her trichotillomania. That’s how little they respect her.

A-Train showed remorse, even though he didn’t participate. He was repulsed, and he could leverage this and bargain with Ashley to do more work together rather than a one-off. They both want to be freed from Vought slavery, so cooperation is the best bet. Apart from information, she could help him steal the last of Compound V. That could give Butcher and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Joe Kessler a means of creating new heroes for the upcoming war. Ashley might even take the serum herself to gain powers to survive the civil war to come. Neuman gave her own daughter, Zoe, the serum and turned her into a super-soldier. Therefore, Ashley might realize she needs to fight fire with fire.