The series finale of The Boys premiered on Prime Video this morning, and showrunner Erik Kripke has been doing the rounds to discuss all the biggest moments in the Season 5 closer.
It's been a tough couple of months for the show, as many fans have turned on it for featuring too much "filler" and a noticeable lack of epic action. Not helping matters were posters for the series that promised post-apocalyptic stakes for this final batch of episodes.
Ultimately, it was a mostly satisfying send-off for The Boys, and one that saw us bid farewell to Homelander in suitably brutal fashion. Depowered, he pleads with Butcher for his life before having a crowbar jammed through his skull.
"It was really important to us for Homelander to at least experience a little bit of time powerless," Kripke told Deadline. "People have asked me, 'Well, why don’t you send him out in the world powerless, wouldn’t that be the ultimate punishment?' I’m like, it would, until he gets his hands on some more Compound V, and then you’re back to where you started."
"So, he cannot walk out of that room alive, but we can spend time with him powerless to really reveal what everyone’s been saying all season, which is, 'Take away those powers and you are nothing,'" he continued. "And he’s so cowardly and blubbering and pathetic, as are most strong men when you remove their power, and they’re faced with their imminent death, they rarely handle it bravely."
The Hollywood Reporter asked about the decision to show Homeander pleading for his life, to which Kripke said, "It’s like Saddam Hussein getting pulled out of that spider hole and Hitler in the bunker. Any authoritarian — once you really take away their power — is automatically and almost immediately pathetic and cowardly, and begging for their lives."
"We’ve done the homework. It’s pretty accurate to how they respond when they’re actually facing real death," he added, before the conversation shifted to how things end for Billy Butcher.
Heading to Vought Tower with The Virus in hand, Butcher plans to kill every Supe on the planet. He's dealt with Homelander, been rejected by Ryan, and even had to say goodbye to Terror, leaving him with little else to live for.
Kripke explains, "Outside of Robin getting run over in the first episode, it’s about as faithful to the comics as we get. And I always love that last moment of, it all comes down to just those two characters, and so we had a target we were aiming for. One good thing about Butcher is, he knows he’s a sociopath with no conscience, and so he brings in an external conscience."
"And Hughie’s goal from the beginning was to be his little brother and to stop him when he finally goes too far. And so, for me, my favorite scenes of the episode and the season, that one is right up there, because from the writer’s perspective, it was so satisfying to bring together threads that we’ve been planting for seven years now. It’s really the emotional heart of the show, those two in their relationship, in so many ways, so it was really satisfying to be able to finally cap that off."
Was he really planning to pull the trigger, or did Butcher want Hughie to put him out of his misery? "What’s great about what Karl did in that scene is that it’s open to interpretation," the showrunner mused. "I have my own opinion, and maybe I should not share them as much. But I 100 percent believe he would have done it. But I think the fail-safe he’s built into his life from the pilot is Hughie."
Kripke also stands by the decision to kill Terror. Shortly after Homelander is defeated, Butcher discovers his beloved dog has seemingly died from old age, following his narrow escape after eating chocolate earlier in Season 5.
"I’m not passing the buck. I own that decision," he noted. "But that was in the comics as well, and it had the same result — where Butcher went completely off the deep end after Terror died. I always felt like that was a perfect trigger. That dog represented the last of his humanity, and so if that dog was going to die, Butcher’s humanity was going to die with it."
The Deep also dies in The Boys' series finale after being blasted into the ocean by Starlight. Surrounded by sharks, the aquatic hero is brutally killed by an octopus for his role in the genocide that killed billions of fish (which, in reality, was orchestrated by Black Noir).
"That was just The Deep, being The Deep, who I would just like to point out, had so many opportunities to make the right decision over and over and over and over again. And even at that last moment, Annie was like, 'Just take responsibility for yourself, just once.' And he did that Braveheart scream, 'No!' And so, to the last [scene], that guy consistently makes the wrong choice, and he pays for it."
Over to Variety, and Kripke told them that what seemed like a largely meaningless opening scene featuring characters from Gen V was meant to set the stage for a Season 3 that saw them coming to grips with a world that had rejected superheroes.
The plug was pulled on the series after The Boys Season 5 had begun streaming, explaining why they only had a brief role in the finale (and why Marie Moreau never got to test her powers against Homelander).
"Had we done more 'Gen V,' we were very clearly signaling in the finale that the torch was being passed from Annie to Marie for the good supe you’re following. I would love to find a way to continue that story. We’re in the very embryonic stage of seeing if there are any ideas that we’re really loving. It’s like all these loose nukes. You have Stan Edgar basically disavowing relationships with superheroes, and so these people who have been coddled and protected this whole time are now suddenly out in the wild."
"Who tries to be Jessica Jones, and who tries to be a super villain? It leads to some really fascinating places that I would love to see, and the hope was we were going to put the 'Gen V' kids in the middle of all that. But hopefully we still will, and we can bring some of those characters into some of these stories that we’re talking about. The plot challenges they would have had to deal with were almost this metaphor of being a young adult, which is like you’re out in the world and there’s no infrastructure or jobs anymore. How do you build a future for yourself, and how do you deal with certain superheroes are just choosing to be villains?"
The Boys Season 5 is now streaming on Prime Video in its entirety.