The final season of The Boys is not all that dissimilar from season four of The Boys. Or season three. At this stage of the game, I think everyone knows what they’re getting with this series – and if you’re on board, well, you’re going to have some fun with this final ride. Because, as has been the case with most shows that trade in extreme violence, the interesting twist on a final season is that finally, the plot armor that wrapped tightly around so much of the characters is finally gone. Which means there can finally be consequences for past actions. There are finally stakes to major clashes – beloved characters can fall before we even make it to the series finale. And that adds an extra bit of tension to a story that is hurtling toward the endgame we all know is coming: The final battle between Homelander and Butcher for the soul of the world.
Season five picks up right where season four ended. Hughie, Frenchie, and MM have been taken to an internment camp (the parallels to our current political climate in the US continue to be clear – and yes, for those who might be confused, Homelander, and all he stands for, is on the evil side of things). Butcher is trying to create a virus that will take out all the supes in the world – particularly Homelander. Starlight is still undergound, named public enemy number one and blamed for everything and anything that happens. And Homelander? Well, he’s still a complete narcissist who now has almost unchecked power. Because when no one can or will tell you no, well, you just do whatever you want damn the consequences. It’s looking pretty bleak for our heroes, and the supes aligned with Homelander are either too scared or too happy with their small slice of power to try to stop him. And when word gets out that there’s an early version of V out there that can, essentially, make a supe immortal? Well, the race is on to find it and either use it or destroy it so that Homelander can’t get it.
Season five offers everything you could want out of a season of The Boys. Lots of fight sequences – often including creepy CGI and/or elongated body parts that are super gross to fight with, plenty of creative swearing, and lots and lots of blood. In terms of character growth, well, there is some, but it’s clearly less important that pushing the overall series arc forward. Characters occasionally have mini-crises of faith, but they quickly come to terms with what they’re worried about. There’s a whole arc centered around a supe-mega church (with Daveed Diggs doing some great work as the lead pastor) that definitely leans hard into satirizing the focus with linking a figure so clearly not aligned with Christianity with the religion (again, the show is very not subtle this time around calling out just who the bad guys are in the show and in our world today) that doesn’t really need to be there, but is a fun diversion. But my one worry, having seen seven of the eight episodes, is that there’s both too much time spent getting us to the inevitable final battle (which I assume is where we’re headed) and not enough time spent getting our characters to reach the emotional peaks they need to for that battle to really hit.
The Hughie-Annie relationship has always been an issue on the series – with Hughie as our clearest audience surrogate, the show tends to ask us to empathize with him the most, which in turn can make Starlight into the villain when things aren’t going well for the pair. And it doesn’t help that at this stage of the game, Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty don’t really have much chemistry. Their characters have grown a lot over the series, and it would have made more sense for them to have grown apart, as Starlight has had to be the face of the resistance while Hughie has dealt with his own demons. And Butcher, well, he’s been on this same path from day one and there hasn’t been a ton of room for any real emotional growth as a result – which is always an issue for a character defined by a drive for revenge. Same for Homelander – when you’re a narcissist, with no desire to change, there’s really nowhere from the character to go from there. Except to become an even bigger psychopath, I guess?
So, while the story feels mostly on solid ground, the character beats don’t hit all that well throughout the season. It’s mostly an exercise in getting us to where we know the story needs to go. Which is all fine and good – The Boys was never meant to be The Wire – but it starts to feel a bit like empty calories after a while. If you’ve been on this ride for this whole time, I suspect you’re not about to get off now. And I certainly enjoyed swathes of the storytelling – Frenchie and Kimiko (Tomer Capone and Karen Fukuhara) have some great stuff and Paul Reiser pops in for a great guest arc – but I wasn’t fully drawn into the story as much as I hoped I would be.
The Boys premieres on April 8. Seven of the eight episode were provided for review.
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