There’s just one episode left in The Boys season 4, and the penultimate episode just ended on a massive cliffhanger with a huge twist. All season has been a race for both sides, with Homelander and Sister Sage preparing for a hostile takeover when Robert Singer is inaugurated as President, while The Boys themselves actively work to stop this from the sideline. The latest episode of The Boys reveals a major key to how Homelander and his troupe plan to pull this off, and naturally it comes at the expensive of one of our protagonists, with Starlight herself now kidnapped by a nefarious new supe.

Early in Episode 7 of The Boys season 4, the team becomes aware of a suspicious character that may very well be the “Oswald” (as in Lee Harvey) of Homelander and Sister Sage’s plan to get rid of Robert Singer. After investigating his home they find a woman trapped in a closet who claims to be his wife, but what becomes clear very quickly is that the woman in the closet IS the suspicious character. When she attacks Hughie and darts out of the apartment it’s revealed that The Boys are dealing with a shapeshifter, albeit one whose powers aren’t as simple as Mystique’s from the X-Men. This new shapeshifter on The Boys has to completely remove the skin they’re currently wearing in order to transform into the person they want to become, meaning they leave behind flat and tattered sheets of flesh in their wake as they escape.

Later in the episode, Annie, MM, and Butcher are at a bar, unsure about their next move, when a woman approaches Annie to get a selfie. It seems innocuous enough until the closing minutes of the episode confirm that the person in this encounter was the shapeshifter from before, and in that minutes following that encounter they kidnapped Annie January and have begun to impersonate her; they even got into character by sleeping with Hughie. They even used that as a means to make sure Hughie wasn’t conscious so they could break into his safe and steal the incriminating evidence he has on Victoria Neuman. As the episode concludes, Annie January pulls on the chains that have her bound to the wall, the floor around her covered in the husks of skin that the shapeshifter has discarded while getting ready for their new look.

There’s one episode remaining in The Boys season 4, and we don’t know how but we’re going to guess Annie January has a clever plan to get out of this trap. The real trouble of course will be what place the shapeshifter has in Homelander’s plan, and what effect that will have on Annie January moving forward when people think she was involved in the plot.

In The Boys season 4, Karl Urban stars once again as Billy Butcher, leader of The Boys, which also includes Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Laz Alonso as M.M., Tomer Capone as Frenchie, and Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko Miyashiro. Some of the “supes” featured in the series include Antony Starr as Homelander, Jessie T. Usher as A-Train, and Chace Crawford as The Deep. Other stars of The Boys include Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, CEO of Vought International, and Claudia Doumit as Victoria Neuman.

The world is on the brink. Victoria Neuman is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the muscly thumb of Homelander, who is consolidating his power. Butcher, with only months to live, has lost Becca’s son as well as his job as The Boys’ leader. The rest of the team are fed up with his lies. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it’s too late.