The Boys was genuinely shocking when it first made its debut in 2019. There was an exciting energy to it that was practically unprecedented in live-action superhero storytelling at the time.
It was edgy, angry anarchy that’s now just the status quo. With two spin-offs and two more on the way, The Boys has increasingly resembled the very thing that it was lampooning. And yet, despite its baggage and diminishing returns, it still punches above its weight – and below the belt – and proves itself as the unmissable series that helped Amazon Prime Video solidify its standing in the streaming wars.
The final season is rich in exaggerated action, character-driven drama, and superpowered spectacles. It gives its bloodthirsty audience everything they could want and plenty of things they’d never imagine. However, behind The Boys’ infinite machismo and thinly-veiled critique of America, this season dares to dig deeper and unpack what’s left when those flashy superpowers are gone.
As The Boys says goodbye to its extreme world, it explores whether a little carnage and death are sometimes worth it. If the end can ever truly justify the means, or is just an extended exercise in hypocrisy. The Boys celebrates courage, values, and the importance of family – both found and real. There’s also a whole lot of hyperbolized bloodshed and shocking displays of what the fuck that have become The Boys’ specialty.
Eric Kripke and his teamdeserve credit for ending the series after five seasons at a point where it still has something to say. It’s very easy to picture The Boys continuing indefinitely for several more seasons and completely draining itself of any remaining cultural cache. The sheer fact that this is the final season helps these concluding eight episodes hit extra hard and make a strong final statement that’s likely to stick with the audience more than any Herogasm massacre or cinematic universe satire.
The Boys’ final season also benefits from a very clear mission that’s set up from its start and doesn’t unnecessarily overcomplicate its storytelling. There is still the occasional pacing problem, but not to the same extent as The Boys’ previous two seasons. These episodes don’t waste time and make sure that everyone has something to do and contributes to the greater whole, which is also something that’s previously been lacking. The titular team of outcasts still experiences their share of relationship problems and interpersonal drama. However, they also truly function as a team, which is paramount as The Boys comes to a close and attempts to rapidly underline all its themes.
The Boys has never been a series that struggles to create over-the-top action setpieces, and some of the series’ most entertaining work is on display in these final episodes. The season kicks off with an excellent heist that subverts expectations and keeps its audience guessing, while still greedily indulging in extensive gore and cathartic conflict.
Granted, there are several moments this season that go a little too far with The Boys’ signature shock value creature comforts. There’s a digger supe who utilizes his power through an unusual orifice. Prehensile gonads become a valuable combat tool. There’s lava ejaculate and mountain pornography. Everything is just a little extra, which can work, but also elicits plenty of eye rolls when these instincts aren’t reined in.
It’s also become increasingly difficult for The Boys to parody and poke fun at a world that feels like a caricature of itself. Subtlety has always been The Boys’ Kryptonite, and this season doesn’t hold back when it comes to chilling real-world parallels and Homelander’s ludicrous attempts to “reboot the universe.”
This season features “freedom camps,” deepfakes and AI conspiracies, the elimination of DEI programs, rampant media manipulation, and casual references to Musk, Epstein, and Thiel. Politics and religion are intrinsically married together as Jesus gets knocked off his pedestal. The Boys is astute and scathing with this commentary. It’s just hard to laugh at these developments when so much of it is hardly hyperbole anymore. It’s a little chilling that Homelander operates with greater scruples than how the actual President would respond in the same situations.
This farewell season also floats the disturbing thought that superheroes are just the current boogeyman du jour. Even if Homelander and his whole situation are mitigated, there will just be something else that follows because corporations still need to increase profits and push their thumbs down on the scales a little more. It’s a depressing, albeit realistic, perspective that steeps everyone’s mission with melancholy and raises the question of whether the world is too far gone to truly be fixed.
Alternatively, The Boys also argues that this is okay, even if the people who are pulling the strings are doing so with razor wire. Superheroes can fade into the sunset and become relics of the past as long as there are people out there who are fighting the good fight and doing what’s right. It’s a perspective that’s important now more than ever.
The Boys reaches the brink of the apocalypse and highlights the heights of supe strength. It’s also a season where its humble human relationships are its greatest superpower. Every single relationship gets tested and put through its paces. There’s proper tension surrounding Butcher and whether he can be trusted or is potentially a bigger hurdle than Homelander. Ryan is also a fascinating wild card who is an atom bomb that could go off at any minute, and another complication to worry about through this final season’s free-floating anxiety. The season’s strongest material unsurprisingly involves Homelander, but not how one might expect. He reckons with his loneliness and vulnerabilities, even if he’s the most powerful person on the planet. His ego reaches terrifying levels of delusion where he believes that true Godhood is the only way to achieve ultimate, universal praise.
There’s a lot that this final season does right. That being said, there’s still a formulaic and generic nature to it all as it goes through the motions. This is a very traditionally structured season with developments that are simultaneously harrowing and darkly hilarious, but they’re also pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
The Boys still finds ways to surprise on an episodic level. It just doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to the final act of this saga of good versus evil.
The series faces a tall task with its aggressive swan song. These episodes feature plenty of self-aware discussions about finales, final seasons, and the inevitability of a fandom’s disappointment. Endings aren’t easy, and a series like The Boys is definitely going to ruffle feathers on its way out. Nevertheless, The Boys ends about as well as it possibly can and arguably trumps its source material’s conclusion.
Another season of supe-driven terrorism and oppression would be exhausting. Thankfully, The Boys pulls the ripcord at the perfect moment so that empathy, understanding, and forgiveness can shine through the darkness like a guiding beacon.
Season five of The Boys premieres on Amazon Prime Video on April 8 with two episodes, with weekly episodes to follow.