The Boys Season 5 has been heavily criticised by fans for being too uneventful and not the epic final season they were hoping for. Early posters for the Prime Video series showed Billy Butcher standing amid the rubble of Vought Tower and Homelander hovering above a devastated Earth.
With one episode remaining, none of that has happened. Soldier Boy has talked a lot about the various people he's had sex with, and Homelander has become a full-blown parody of the far-right. It's also set up the upcoming Vought Rising spin-off, and spent several episodes exploring the hunt for The Virus before pivoting to giving Kimiko Soldier Boy's power-sapping abilities.
Love or hate how things have played out in the show, this new poster is very cool. Homelander is shown flying above a battle-damaged White House, with countless Supes behind him. Meanwhile, only a crowbar-wielding Billy Butcher stands between the villain and his planned Godhood.
The question is, is this representative of what we'll see in next Wednesday's final episode of The Boys? That remains to be seen, as this poster is paying homage to the comics.
"It’s like an hour and five," The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke previously said of the finale's runtime. "We’re not doing that huge, super-sized 90-minute thing. I don’t know if we would have had. I think the audience might have ended up getting bored had we gone that long. But no, we’re like an hour five, an hour six max, I think? But yeah, they’re all jack-packed, these episodes."
He later added, "If we stiff it, they will definitely say, 'Well, that show wasn't as good as we thought it was...' And it's the first finale I've ever done, too – so it's not like I have any experience with it."
It's going to be tough for The Boys to stick the landing, especially with so many dangling plot threads. When that was recently put to Homelander actor Antony Starr, he replied, "Life is messy. Nothing ends up tidy."
Check out this new poster for The Boys' series finale in the Instagram post below.
In the fifth and final season of The Boys, it's Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie, Mother's Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a "Freedom Camp." Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found.
But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. It's the climax, people. Big stuff's gonna happen.
The Boys stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Cameron Crovetti, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jensen Ackles, and Daveed Diggs.
The series is based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, who also serve as executive producers, and was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke.
The Boys Season 5 is now streaming weekly on Prime Video.