Mohsin Lag 
Steel Ball Run Episode 4, “The Devil’s Palm,” is the episode where the race stops being a race and starts being a war. The Boomboom family’s trap closes around Johnny, Gyro, and Mountain Tim, the word “Stand” finally enters our trio’s vocabulary, and Johnny Joestar’s dead legs do something they have no business doing. Let’s break it all down.
The Trap: Magnetism You Can’t Outrun
The Boombooms don’t fight fair, and this episode makes that their whole identity. Wounded by the family’s Stand, Tomb of the Boom, Johnny, Gyro, and Mountain Tim discover their bodies have been magnetized — pulled toward each other, toward bullets, toward anything iron. It’s a cruel little ability, and the episode stages it like a horror movie: the desert itself becomes the enemy, and every piece of metal nearby is a compass needle pointing at your corpse.
This is also where Mountain Tim earns his place as the best kind of JoJo side character: the guy who explains the rules while the house is on fire. His Stand, Oh! Lonesome Me — the power to split his own body along his rope — gives the trio its first proper lecture on what Stands actually are, and the show smartly lets the explanation breathe. If you’ve been waiting for SBR to formally introduce its power system, this is the episode.
Johnny’s Body Reacts: Tusk Stirs
The heart of the episode is Johnny. Caught in the magnetic pull, his paralyzed lower body still useless, his fingers move on their own — the Saint’s Corpse answering through him. The show keeps it restrained, almost terrifying: this isn’t a power-up with a fanfare, it’s a body remembering something its owner hasn’t learned yet. Manga readers know exactly what this is pointing at, and the anime’s restraint makes it better: Tusk is at the door.
The Boomboom Bill Comes Due
By the end, the family that turned the desert into a killing field is broken from the inside. Benjamin succumbs to his wounds — the episode adds a scene of him reaching L.A. before he dies — and Andre falls as well. Only L.A. Boomboom rides away, retired but breathing, and if JoJo teaches anything, it’s that a surviving enemy is a debt, not a resolution.
The Stand of the Week
Tomb of the Boom. Magnetism as murder is a simple idea executed with total commitment, and it’s the perfect first “real” Stand battle for this part: no grand speeches, just physics doing cruel work. Oh! Lonesome Me wins the lore prize — a cowboy who can unravel himself along his own lasso is exactly the kind of cool JoJo does better than anyone.
What It All Means
Episode 4 is the pivot the 2nd Stage was building toward: the race now has corpses, Stands, and chosen. Johnny is no longer a passenger in his own story, Gyro is no longer the only one who knows the rules, and the Corpse is no longer a rumor — it’s picking people. The desert has spoken.
The Little Details That Make It JoJo
Keep an eye on the saddles: the anime’s crew let a Boomboom saddle number slip onto Slow Dancer for a couple of shots, and the wiki detectives already caught it — the kind of beautiful nerd trivia this franchise breeds. More importantly, notice how the episode handles silence. The desert scenes stretch just long enough to make the magnetism feel inevitable, and when Johnny’s fingers finally move, the sound design drops out completely. No music, no speech. Just the Corpse, knocking.
Gyro’s face during that moment says everything the script doesn’t: he recognizes what’s happening. He’s seen the Spin answer before. And for the first time since the race began, the man who knows everything looks genuinely unsure whether that’s good news.
Next: Episode 5 (October 16)
Steel Ball Run drops new episodes every Friday on Netflix through the 3rd Stage finale on December 4 — our Steel Ball Run episode schedule hub tracks every date and time. If this is your first JoJo, don’t start here: our JoJo watch order roadmap will get you to 2026 the right way. And if the manga itch is real, the Steel Ball Run manga is where the legend began.
Disclosure: BakaBuzz may earn a commission from purchases made through our Amazon links, at no extra cost to you.
