Fans have had much to criticize about Season 4 of The Boys, including much of Starlight’s characterization. The character has mostly moped and sulked all season, and her initial anger at Hughie for getting intimate with a shapeshifter that pretended to be her turned many fans against her. However, the longer scene where she is tormented by said shapeshifter definitively proved that Starlight actor Erin Moriarty has major acting chops and the show has essentially been wasting her talents.

Starlight In Season 4

In the most recent season of The Boys, Starlight’s character has suffered from the show’s increasingly on-the-nose political satire. Instead of being a superhero and a symbol of hope, she traded in the tights, temporarily lost her powers, and became a different symbol altogether: one of liberal resistance to Homelander’s conservative fans.

Much of the season’s plot has been about the “Starlighters” versus the “Homelanders,” and it turns out that overt political peacocking is just as annoying onscreen as it is online.

Many fans have unfairly blamed Erin Moriarty for some or even most of Starlight’s disappointing scenes this season. After all, her character mostly had two gears: sad and angry. The conclusion that much of the fandom came to because of this is that the actor behind the character doesn’t really have any range.

Starlight Vs. The Shapeshifter

All those doubts about her acting abilities went out the window towards the end of The Boys’ fourth season.

That’s when we find out a creepy shapeshifter had abducted the real Starlight and was sleeping with Hughie as part of a ploy to steal all the dirt the team had collected on Neuman, effectively destroying any leverage they might have had on her.

While we get some heartbreaking scenes with the shifter manipulating Hughie and even proposing marriage, the real drama kicks in when the imposter confronts the real hero, giving Erin Moriarty the rare chance to effectively act against herself.

Moriarty Proves Herself

It’s a scene unlike anything we’ve really seen in The Boys, and the difference between the two onscreen Starlights was like night and day. The real Starlight was mostly downtrodden and submissive, providing some token anger towards the villain who stole her identity in the most literal way.

But Erin Moriarty gave the shapeshifter such delicious malice, vividly taunting her prisoner with a mock song of “I’m Annie January and it’s not my fault!”

Proving Her Potential

Fans of The Boys who had been waiting to see some depth and range from Erin Moriarty ironically found it here, albeit with the actor playing an evil shapeshifter wearing her character’s face. On paper, the villain could have been very one-dimensional—someone who is simply evil and hates her victim.

But Moriarty shows how much glee the shifter finds in her malevolence, playing the character as a true sociopath who absolutely loves causing pain.

Honestly, even her twitchy little eyes betray the buoyancy of her madness, and it’s simply awesome to behold. A performance great enough to make even the most jaded fans say “oi” in amazement.

Here’s To Season 5

Obviously, this season of The Boys had many problems with the writing, but the actors did their best with the material. And we now definitively know that Erin Moriarty is one of the most talented performers in the cast, one who has been hampered by poor writing all season.

Here’s hoping the final season improves or we might hear those same writers unironically copying the shapeshifter’s chant in the face of angry fans: “I’m an Amazon writer and it’s not my fault!”