Episode 8 Trailer Just Ruined The Boys Finale

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]All right, so the episode 8 trailer just dropped and I like I want to be excited. I really do.

[00:00:06]This is the finale of one of the best superhero shows ever made and I should be hyped out of my mind right now. But instead I'm sitting here and I'm just worried. Actually worried is too light of a word. I'm genuinely concerned that what we just saw in this trailer is confirmation of everything the fans have been fearing all season long. First, let's just talk about the overall feeling of this trailer [music] because I think before we even get into specific shots and specific characters, the vibe of this trailer alone should tell you everything. When you watch a finale trailer for a show that has been running for 5 seasons, you expect to feel something. You expect your jaw to drop at least once. You expect to see something that makes you think, "Oh my god, they actually went there. They actually did it. This is going to be insane." And this trailer just doesn't give you that feeling at all. It [music] feels like any other episode trailer from this season and that is genuinely the most damning thing I can say about it because episode 7's trailer felt the same way. Episode 6's trailer felt the same way.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> Everything this season has felt like it's one level below where it needs to be. And now we're at the finale and the trailer still feels like that. That's a massive problem. The Boys built its reputation on shocking you, on making you feel genuinely unsafe watching it because anything could happen at any moment. And right now watching this trailer, I feel completely safe. I feel like I already know exactly how this is going to go and nothing is going to surprise me. And that should never be how you feel going into a series finale.

[00:01:34]Let's talk about Homelander because this is the big one. So, Homelander has V1 now. He's essentially immortal. He's supposed to be at his most powerful and most dangerous that he has ever been in the entire run of this show. Five seasons of build up to this moment. And when you watch this trailer and you look at how they're presenting Homelander, I'm just not seeing that threat level on screen. Think back to earlier seasons.

[00:02:01]When Homelander was on screen, you genuinely felt uncomfortable. You felt like anything could happen. Remember when Black Noir showed up? And you literally thought there was no way the boys are getting out of this. That tension was real. It felt dangerous.

[00:02:15]Now, look at the trailer. Homelander is doing his poses. He's doing his speeches. [music] He looks powerful, sure.

[00:02:23]But he doesn't feel threatening. And that is such an important distinction to make.

[00:02:27]This entire season they've been telling us Homelander is more powerful than ever. He took V1. He's immune to the virus. He's literally unkillable. But they keep just telling us that and not showing us. And the trailer continues that exact same problem. Where is the scene of Homelander doing something that makes your stomach drop? Where is the moment that proves to us as an audience that yes, this man with V1 is a completely different level of threat? I don't see it in this trailer.

[00:02:55]And if the trailer isn't showing it to hype us up, then I have very low confidence that the episode itself is going to deliver it either.

[00:03:03]And here's what really gets me. They spent this entire season building up Homelander getting V1 as the biggest possible threat. The boys entire plan fell apart because of it.

[00:03:13]Butcher's whole strategy collapsed. We went back to square one. And the payoff to that in the trailer is just Homelander standing around looking smug.

[00:03:22]That's it. That's the big V1 payoff we've been waiting for. The Kimiko situation and what the trailer is telling us, okay, so Kimiko has Soldier Boy's depowering ability now. This is supposed to be the Chekhov's gun of all Chekhov's guns. The entire finale essentially hinges on this. And what does the trailer show us? It shows Kimiko preparing to use her blast. And honestly, the way it's being framed already tells me exactly how the final fight is is to go. And it's not going to be satisfying.

[00:03:53]Here's my fear, and the trailer is basically confirming it. The final fight is going to be Kimiko hits Homelander with the blast, depowers him, and then Butcher finishes him off. Done. That's it. One-two punch, and the show is over.

[00:04:09]And I've been saying this for weeks now that this is my worst nightmare for how this fight ends, because it's just so clean and so anticlimactic for five seasons of build-up. Like, think about what this fight should feel like.

[00:04:22]Butcher versus Homelander has been brewing since literally episode one of this show. These two characters have been on a collision course for five years.

[00:04:31]The scorched-earth battle they've been teasing, the conversation where they sat across from each other face-to-face.

[00:04:36]All of that build-up deserves a finale fight that takes your breath away, and last long enough for you to actually feel every moment of it. My nightmare is that the whole thing wraps up in like 2 minutes, and the trailer is doing nothing to convince me otherwise.

[00:04:53]And another thing, where is the moment in this trailer where the fight feels genuinely lost for The Boys? Because the best fights in this show were the ones where you thought they were done.

[00:05:04]You thought it was over. Where is that moment here? Everything in the trailer feels too controlled, too planned. It doesn't feel dangerous, and it doesn't feel like anyone we care about is actually at risk. Ryan, and the complete waste of his character.

[00:05:18]I need to talk about Ryan, because this is one of the things that genuinely upsets me the most about what I'm seeing in this trailer.

[00:05:26]Ryan shows up. Great. He's there. But the way he's being used, based on what we're seeing, is exactly what I was afraid of. He's there to shoot some laser beams and look conflicted. And that's basically it.

[00:05:38]Ryan is the only naturally born Supe in the entire world. That is such an insane concept, and the show has done almost nothing with it for multiple seasons now. His relationship with both Homelander and Butcher is one of the most emotionally loaded dynamics in the entire show. Homelander wanting a son, Butcher trying to protect him for Becca, Ryan being torn between these two father figures. That is genuinely compelling television when it's used properly. And this season Ryan basically got replaced by Soldier Boy as Homelander's focus, which is a whole other conversation. But now, in the finale trailer, we see Ryan show up late, and it just feels like he's there to shoot a laser beam at the right moment and help depower Homelander or something like that. He's not a character in this finale.

[00:06:27]>> [music] >> He's a plot device, and that is such a waste of everything they built with him.

[00:06:33]If Ryan doesn't have a genuine emotional moment with Butcher before Butcher dies, then the show has failed one of its most important character relationships.

[00:06:43]Full stop. The trailer is not giving me confidence that this happens.

[00:06:47]Soldier Boy and the elephant in the room. We have to talk about this because it is genuinely one of the most baffling creative decisions I have ever seen in a television show. Soldier Boy is not in this trailer. He's not in the finale. He got choked out by Homelander and thrown back in the freezer, and that is literally how his character ends in the main show.

[00:07:07]The showrunner confirmed it. That's it.

[00:07:09]That's his ending.

[00:07:11]One of the most important characters introduced in the entire run of The Boys, and his final scene is getting choked out and frozen again so they can use him in Boys Mexico and Vought Rising. And what makes this even worse is that when you watch this trailer and you think about everything they need to wrap up in one episode, you realize how much time Soldier Boy absorbed this season for absolutely nothing. Seven episodes of Soldier Boy flip-flopping back and forth between hating Homelander and helping Homelander, and then giving him V1 for reasons that were never properly explained, and then getting thrown in a freezer. That's the arc. That is the complete arc of one of the most powerful characters in this universe.

[00:07:52]>> [music] >> And now the finale has to wrap up everything without him. The virus storyline, the final fight, every character death, the epilogue, Ashley's redemption, Ryan's arc, Butcher dying, all of that in one episode without one of the characters who was eating up screen time all season.

[00:08:11]The math just doesn't work, and the trailer is showing us a finale that is already stretched incredibly thin. The virus, and what the trailer is not showing us, this is a big one. The virus has been building for basically two full seasons if you count Gen V. We watched an entire separate show dedicated to setting up this weapon that could kill supes. Frenchie spent this whole season working on it, and in the trailer I am not seeing the kind of virus payoff that this build-up deserves.

[00:08:40]The virus has to go off in a meaningful way in this finale. It has to kill supes, multiple supes, in a way that feels like the payoff to everything Gen V was building toward, and everything Frenchie sacrificed himself for. Because if the virus gets used once or twice in a small way and then the show moves on, that is an enormous betrayal of two seasons worth of storytelling. But here's the problem that the trailer is quietly confirming. Homelander has V1.

[00:09:06]He's immune to the virus. Soldier Boy also has V1. He's not even in the episode. So, who exactly is the virus going to be used on that actually matters? Because if the virus doesn't touch Homelander and doesn't touch Soldier Boy, then what was the point?

[00:09:21]What was all of that for?

[00:09:23]The trailer should be showing us at least a hint that the virus is going to have a massive impact. And I'm just not seeing that confidence in what they're presenting. Ashley in the redemption arc they keep forgetting to write. Seven episodes.

[00:09:37]Seven full episodes of Ashley doing basically nothing except hovering around Homelander in the White House being scared.

[00:09:44]Every single episode they tease her redemption.

[00:09:47]Every single episode Bashley shows up and has this conversation with her about doing the right thing and then the episode ends and nothing happens.

[00:09:56][music] Rinse and repeat.

[00:09:58]Now we're at the finale and based on the trailer, Ashley is going to have her one redemption moment and it's going to have to carry the weight of seven episodes of build-up in probably like one scene. And that is just not going to land.

[00:10:10]>> [music] >> It cannot land. You cannot neglect a character arc for an entire season and then expect one scene to pay it all off emotionally. Ashley has been in this show since season one. She has survived everything. She has worked her way from being Homelander's assistant to being Vice President of America.

[00:10:29]That is an insane journey for a character and the show has genuinely interesting things to say about how someone like Ashley survives in a system like Vought. But this season they just stopped writing her. And now the trailer is confirming that her payoff is going to be rushed and incomplete.

[00:10:46]The Deep and the screen time problem.

[00:10:48]Look, I'll be honest.

[00:10:50]The Deep dying by sea creatures is probably going to be darkly funny and somewhat satisfying on its own.

[00:10:55]Fine. I'll take it. But here's the issue. In a finale episode that has to wrap up Butcher's death, Homelander's defeat, Ryan's arc, the virus, Ashley's redemption, and about 15 other things, we are going to have to watch The Deep subplot eat up screen time. And his entire storyline this season has had nothing to do with the main conflict.

[00:11:17]Nothing.

[00:11:19]Homelander disbanded The Seven.

[00:11:21]The Deep is completely irrelevant to everything happening with V-one and the final battle.

[00:11:26]And yet the finale has to resolve his character because they've been dangling this ocean revenge subplot all season. That is screen time that should be going to Butcher and Homelander.

[00:11:38]That is screen time that should be going to Ryan. And instead, we're going to cut away from the most important fight in the show's history to watch the Deep get attacked by fish.

[00:11:48]The Gen V problem. And what the trailer confirms, Marie [music] and Jordan are in the trailer. Great.

[00:11:55]But based on everything I'm seeing, they are going to do exactly what did with them, which is show up, do something minor, and then fade into the background while the main characters handle everything important. And what makes this genuinely insulting is that they actually retconned Marie's character this season. They had Starlight say that Marie can't control her powers when at the end of Gen V season 2, she absolutely could. She could revive people from the dead. That is an insane ability that has obvious applications in a finale where major characters are going to die.

[00:12:30]But no, let's just say she can't control her powers >> [music] >> and use her as a cameo. If you watched two seasons of Gen V because you thought it would matter for The Boys ending, you got played. And the trailer is the final confirmation of that. What this trailer needed to show and didn't.

[00:12:47]Here's the bottom line.

[00:12:49]A good finale trailer should make you feel like the show has earned its ending. It should show you glimpses of emotional payoffs you've been waiting years for.

[00:12:56]It should make you feel like every major storyline is going to get the attention it deserves.

[00:13:01]This trailer does none of that. It shows us action. It shows us Homelander being Homelander. It shows us The Boys looking determined.

[00:13:10]But it doesn't show us the emotional weight that this finale needs to carry.

[00:13:15]It doesn't show us Butcher's death being treated with the gravity it deserves. It doesn't show us Ryan getting a proper moment with Butcher or Homelander. It doesn't show us the virus having a massive impact. It doesn't show us Homelander being genuinely terrifying with his V1 powers.

[00:13:34]And I think the reason it doesn't show us any of that is because [music] the episode itself isn't delivering those things either. Because if those moments existed in the episode, they would be in the trailer. That's how trailers work. You put your best stuff forward to get people excited. If the best stuff they could find for this trailer is what we're seeing, then I think we all need to start lowering our expectations significantly. The Boys deserves a finale that feels like the culmination of five seasons of incredible television. The trailer is showing us something that feels like just another episode.

[00:14:07]And after everything this show has meant to so many people, that is genuinely heartbreaking to say. I really hope I'm wrong. I want nothing more than to come back next week and make a video about how The Boys finale was one of the greatest endings in television history.

[00:14:21]But based on this trailer, I am not confident that's the video I'm going to be making.

[00:14:26]Let me know in the comments what you guys think. Am I being too harsh? Or do you agree that this trailer is raising more red flags than it is green ones?

[00:14:34]And as always, make sure you are subscribed and have liked the video.

[00:14:38]I'll see you guys next week for the finale.