The Awful Truth of The Boys' Ending

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Captain Midnight.

[00:00:06]>> So, here are a couple posters for The Boys season 5. Prime Video went big on marketing this season, and the message was clear. No more table setting. No more failed attempts at taking out Homelander just to see a mild status quo shakeup. This year, they were playing for keeps. Homelander was out in space looking on at a world in collapse. We have Butcher standing in the flaming wreck of Vat's war machine. It was big.

[00:00:33]It was bold. It was an event. So, of course, with the final season now come and gone, the first thing everyone wants to point out is that this isn't really what season 5 delivered. Now, I'm not entirely clear on how this happened, but this season looks noticeably cheaper than past ones. This is one of Prime's biggest shows, obviously. But from what I can tell, the budget did not increase all that much, while its cast has only grown more expensive, so people coming into this thinking you were going to get like The Battle of the Bastards or Blackwater, but with superheroes, are going to be sorely disappointed.

[00:01:08]Showrunner Eric Krypkkey, to his credit, was pretty upfront about this in interviews, telling SFX magazine, "There are not full battle scenes because we still don't have Game of Thrones budget." And he's right. The boy's budget is closer to like a night of the seven kingdoms than Game of Thrones season 6, but Amazon's marketing department was kind of happy to ignore that. I knew this show wasn't going to be at that level of production going into the season, and I'm very familiar with the first five seasons of Supernatural. Kryky's showrunning tenure on his other hit show and some 2000's TV I like a lot. So, I really didn't think I would have much of an issue going into this season. But unfortunately, I think that Prime Video's budget stinginess on this final run of episodes, when combined with some sloppy writing and what felt like unnecessary backdoor piloting of their prequel show right before the series finale, resulted in a final season that feels a little disjointed, predictable, and unsatisfying. There were some bright spots, especially when it comes to the actors, which remains the show's best asset. But yeah, this final season, I really don't think it gets back to the level of quality that the show was absolutely capable of in those early years. And that's what I want to get into this week.

[00:02:23]So, I will start this off with a compliment. I think episode to episode, The Boys season 5 is probably stronger than season 4. A lot of that is just I really did not like season 4. I do think it set up its finale well though. This idea of Homelander becoming the president of the United States and all but name and rounding up Starlight's supporters. Both were exciting concepts going into the final year. What would Homelander do with all that power? Well, the answer was more or less what he's always done. Stomp around his domain and be demeaning and scary to everyone while trying as hard as he can to maintain and build his public image. I think it would have been interesting to see a Homelander that no longer has to worry about that public image and is just completely unleashed. At the same time though, this need for public adoration is at the very core of who he is. And they did make an attempt at evolving that here by having Homelander take it to the next level. Having complete control of the media and government narrative aren't enough for him. Having an army of supporters isn't enough for him. I liked the little details of Homelander noticing how terrified the TV crew is when they have to deal with him.

[00:03:35]He understands on some level that this love isn't real. The more people get to know him, the more they see him for exactly who he is, even if their job depends on treating him like a god anyway. That's not enough for Homelander. Nothing ever is. And it leads him to his terrible solution.

[00:03:53]declare himself not only their savior but their god and cleanse the world of anyone who doesn't believe in their heart of hearts that this is truly the case. I like this setup quite a bit.

[00:04:04]It's over the top as the show always is, but it makes sense as the ultimate expression of what Homelander has always been chasing. Real unconditional love on his terms and with nothing expected from him in return. I think they really had something with that and it's a perfectly good place to take the character. Now, where the problem arises is that basically the entire season takes place during the planning process of this evil scheme when things are more or less business as usual instead of seeing any version of this through. Like I like the concept of the fifth episode oneshot where we see different short segments about different characters mostly revolving around a meeting with Homelander. But the momentum going into the finale, just a few episodes away, feels like it's nowhere to be seen. This is a short final season where we apparently have to cram in a setup for a prequel, and we're spending time with the Deep and the second Black Noir's like podcast beef. I want to like the standalone nature of this episode, but it doesn't feel like it generates the momentum that the final season needed to have. Devid Diggs from Hamilton is here playing O Father, a very cynical megaurch pastor soup in an arranged marriage with Ashley. And you know what?

[00:05:18]I think Diggs is really good. He brings a lot of personality and gravitas to this character that outside of one scene with Starlight feels more like a plot device for Homelander and Ashley story than a compelling character in his own right. That musical sequence is good.

[00:05:34]That's the saving grace of The Boys again and again. No matter how sloppy the writing and pacing can get at times, the actors really hold it down, squeezing the absolute most out of this material, even if where the story takes them is ultimately not all that interesting, like with O Father and Czechov's insanely convenient ball gag.

[00:05:55]Now, I'll talk about that finale more, but I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself here because I absolutely have to talk about Soulja Boy in that deeply strange penultimate episode. I enjoy Soulja Boy. Made a whole video about him. I really think he added something to the show, but his role in this season was so strange. I don't want to keep bringing up the prequel and ascribing every choice here as like a cynical ad for that show, but they've made it hard to not reach that conclusion with how they've wrapped up this story. That's not to say there's nothing of value here. The idea of Homelander being so thoroughly hated and emotionally rejected by both his father and his son before he finally snaps and makes a violent threat to the world that they better love him is a perfectly good one.

[00:06:41]But the Soulja Boy storyline, which sees him giving the gift of literal immortality to a man he despises because it's what Stormfront would have wanted, feels paper thin. I'll roll with the idea that her and Soulja Boy were deeply in love, I guess. But the fact that he sees this awful video of the state that she was in near the end of her life and immediately accepts Homelander's explanation for it despite the fact that again he hates this guy and has zero respect for him just does not ring true at all. You just have to accept that Soulja Boy is capable of a lot more sentimentality than we've ever seen from him. Now, this kind of breaks Sister Sage's brain. And you know what? She's right. It makes no sense with this character. And both this choice and his decision to try to skip town before Homelander just boxes him up once again is where the writing in this season shows it seems the most. Soulja Boy's choices here feel almost completely arbitrary. Serving the convoluted minations of what the writers need him to do to tell their story and maybe to promote his future show. Not anything that feels organic to the character that's already been established. It's a disappointing end for one of the shows breakout stars and it left a really bad taste in my mouth. And speaking of Sister Sage, what was this? Okay, so we get the reveal of her grand master plan to end the world and be alone with her books in a bunker. So I guess her ultimate dream was to be Henry Beis from the Twilight Zone, but like on purpose.

[00:08:15]>> There was time now.

[00:08:18]there was was all the time I needed.

[00:08:22]It's not fair.

[00:08:24]>> I will admit I am very far from the smartest person in the world and I am probably incapable of putting myself in their headsp space. But that's the plan.

[00:08:33]That's what this has all been leading up to for her. becoming one of the most evil people in human history and playing eight-dimensional socopolitical chess for the sole purpose of chilling out in a bunker and reading through the books of a now dead civilization. That just reads as really halfass to me. Maybe they could have built up to that motivation feeling right this season if they had gone out of their way to paint her as a antisocial and really really nihilistic person. And I mean, sure, I guess she approaches every horrible thing she does with a sense of gallows humor and detached irony, but that's also like 85% of the characters on this show. It feels tacked on and once again seems like the character serving the plot minations and not the plot serving the character. Unlike Soulja Boy, I don't think the writers ever had a handle on Sister Sage. just a total whiff of a character written off with a Universal Studios gag after she had served her undercooked narrative purpose.

[00:09:34]Let's get into that finale. The fall of Homelander, after so much buildup, was just kind of easy in terms of plans that the boys have concocted to get at the big guy. This was probably the simplest.

[00:09:47]And with a little help from Ashley, it just works like a charm. Oh, Father and the Deep are dealt with quickly with the Deep at least getting a death that's kind of fun if you don't think about it for too long. And then we finally get there, the big confrontation. Tapping into his supernatural roots, Eric Krypkkey gives us stakes that couldn't possibly be higher with Homelander being on the edge of maybe massacring more than half of the human beings on Earth.

[00:10:12]But it all really comes down to a few people having a conversation and a fist fight in a room. Now, I'm sure a lot of you saw that as hugely disappointing already, but I was very willing to go with it if that scene truly delivers.

[00:10:26]And I think on a performance front, it absolutely does. I love how Homelander's body language and voice changes after he realized he's been stripped of his powers in a split second, going from a potential atom bomb in every room he's in to a sad little man that's clearly in way over his head. The actual scene itself is not all that impressive though. I don't like to be the guy that's really like nitpicking superhero fight scenes. I think it gets boring kind of quickly. But come on, we have seen the speed and strength of Homelander's powers over and over again on this show. I guess he must have been having an off day here because he's pretty easily subdued and shows none of that crashing a plane with one blast of his eyes energy that he's had in the past. Still, this idea of a D-powered Homelander is the most memorable thing about this finale, and I kind of wish they had spent more time on it. Butcher takes him out like 40 minutes, give or take, into this episode, making that whole sequence seem a little more rushed than it really should have. And it gives way to a final confrontation between Huey and Butcher that, I'm sorry, just absolutely needed to be an episode of its own if they were going to make this work at all. The lengths that Butcher is willing to go to to end all soups has always been a tension simmering in the background of this show. And to try to wrap that up in a neat bow in like 20 minutes, that doesn't work. It feels like the show going through the motions as fast as possible, giving us this moment where Huey just finally has to shoot him. And despite the score really trying its best, this just doesn't land with the emotional gut punch that the scene needed. I think this one season finale needed to be two or three episodes to really work. And I get that this is a short season, but I don't know, maybe we carve out that whole subplot about the gang fighting off elderly soups who fight with their balls or basically everything to do with Soulja Boy in season 5. It's a season that felt like it was really in no rush for most of its run only to have to cram so much into these 60 minutes. I just don't get it. On top of that, it has to hit the expected beats of a finale. I enjoyed Ashley's ending as a completely failed president. I was happy with Kamiko's emotional sendoff, and I guess Starlight and Hueie getting their happy ending was nice, but there was no reason all this stuff had so little room to breathe. Also, uh, side note, was Hueie having this deep love of electronic stores always this important? And I'm just completely forgetting. Like, I get he worked there in the first episode and writers love to bring things full circle, but I never got the impression he was like deeply attached to that job.

[00:13:05]I thought it was just, you know, a job, like not that important. I I don't know.

[00:13:10]I thought it was strange. In the end, I think there's things to like about The Boy season 5. It wasn't the worst watch out there, but it feels sloppy and poorly planned out in the same way that season 4 did. I'm not that disappointed that it wasn't some massive War of the Superheroes epic, because that's never what I expected it to be. But even on its own terms, on this smaller scale that it set out for itself, it just doesn't stick the landing. I think there's a lot about this show that I'll look back on fondly. Character moments, fun or gruesome scenes, and great performances. But as it went along, it was never able to cohhere into a show that was more than a collection of memorable moments. Now, that's not nothing, but it's pretty far from what its potential felt like back in season 1.

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