The Boys has finally come to an end, and this was never just another show. I still remember watching that very first episode and being completely caught off guard. The gore, the unapologetic vulgarity, the characters, and the twisted portrayal of superheroes, it all felt radically different from anything mainstream superhero storytelling had attempted before (mind you, I have not read the comics). And when you follow a show from the very beginning, waiting week after week for new episodes and then waiting years for new seasons, you naturally develop a relationship with it.
You watch characters evolve, friendships break, people die, new faces arrive, arcs rise and collapse. At some point, you realise you have lived through an entire phase of your life alongside the show itself. So when something like that ends, it is natural for it to leave you emotional. Many long-running shows survive purely because of this emotional investment. Unfortunately, The Boys, this time around, left me with more disappointment than heartbreak, except for A-Train and maybe the final 10 minutes of the finale. Come, let’s unpack.
Season 5 picks up directly from where The Boys Season 4 and Gen V Season 2 left off. Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are trapped inside Vought’s so-called “Freedom Camps,” while Annie January/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) attempts to build an underground resistance movement. Homelander (Antony Starr), meanwhile, has effectively taken over America. But he does not merely want political power; he wants worship. He wants to be seen as the “first coming” rather than the “first citizen.” The season establishes a fascist, Supe-controlled America so blatantly that it becomes almost impossible not to notice the real-world parallels, but that discussion is probably for another article.
Antony Starr as Homelander in a still from The Boys Season 5
And then, of course, there is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), still operating in his eternal “I will kill Homelander by any means necessary” mode. Armed with the Supe-killing virus — a storyline that began in Gen V and slowly bled into The Boys — Butcher spends much of the season trying to test whether the thing even works. One entire episode practically revolves around that dilemma alone. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), who finally spoke during last season’s finale, gets more dialogue this time around and honestly, hearing her actual accent after years of silence was more shocking than half the gore in the season itself (not being racist).
Structurally, the season still follows the familiar The Boys formula: the gang devises plans, loses battles, regroups, and hopes to eventually win the war. Homelander and his ecosystem continue functioning exactly as expected, manipulating public perception, feeding off devotion, demanding absolute belief. But this is where the season’s first major crack appears.
In the opening stretch of Episode 1, Annie releases the footage of Homelander abandoning a crashing plane full of civilians alongside Queen Maeve. It should have been devastating. Instead, Firecracker (Valorie Curry) dismisses it as AI-generated propaganda, and suddenly the public chooses to believe her. That is it. Narrative changed. Crisis managed. Honestly, not even The Boys universe is safe from the “it’s AI bro” defence anymore. But the issue is not the satire, the issue is consistency.
Back in Season 3, we literally watched Homelander murder a civilian publicly while his supporters applauded him with cult-like enthusiasm. That terrifying political fanaticism surrounding him was one of the show’s sharpest ideas. Season 5, however, seems oddly uninterested in fully exploring it further, almost as if it introduces threads only to quietly abandon them midway. And that becomes the defining problem of this final season: for the concluding chapter of The Boys, it feels surprisingly underwhelming.
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The curse of “losing the plot in the final season” — the same plague that infected shows like Game of Thrones and, Stranger Things — catches up here too. If nobody told me this was the final season, I genuinely would not have guessed it. By Episode 6, the narrative begins to drift dangerously close to filler territory. Very little feels urgent. Very little feels final. Characters move around the board doing things that would have comfortably fit into literally any other season of the show.
A still from The Boys season 5
Even Homelander, arguably television’s most terrifying superhero villain in recent memory, feels strangely toned down. Across previous seasons, Antony Starr crafted Homelander into a psychotic, narcissistic, emotionally stunted man-child version of Superman, a character so consistently horrifying that WatchMojo genuinely has a “Top 20 Worst Things Homelander Has Ever Done” video on YouTube. And those are just the Top 20. During the promotional run for Season 5, Starr even appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show and declared, “The worst thing I have done is yet to come.” I am sorry, Starr, but the writers betrayed your character there because nothing Homelander does this season would even crack WatchMojo’s Top 10.
The uneven treatment of characters becomes even more frustrating when you look closely. By far the strongest character arc in the entire series belongs to A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), the very man whose actions triggered the story in the first place. His redemption arc remains one of the few emotionally satisfying aspects of the finale. But then you have Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), who is essentially revived just to throw a few punches, insult Homelander, and crawl right back into storage again. At some point, the writers also appear to completely lose interest in The Deep (Chace Crawford), whose existence in the show now feels almost philosophical. He serves no purpose — not to the plot, not to Homelander, not to marine life, not even to himself.
But perhaps the harshest treatment is reserved for the Gen V characters.
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By 2026, it is impossible to ignore how every successful piece of entertainment eventually gets stretched into a “universe.” Spin-offs, interconnected storylines, franchise expansion — the machine must continue. Gen V was introduced as a companion piece deeply connected to The Boys, and its characters were clearly positioned as future players in Homelander’s downfall. Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), especially, was framed as someone potentially powerful enough to challenge him. Yet when Season 5 finally arrives, these younger Supes are reduced to glorified props who barely appear until the penultimate episode. Years of setup ultimately lead to very little payoff.
The emotional arcs suffer similarly. Whether it is Hughie and Annie or Kimiko and Frenchie, the relationships feel inserted merely to provide breathing room between the chaos. The problem is: the chaos itself no longer delivers the adrenaline rush the show was once known for. Everything lands softer than it should.
The Boys season 5 trailer:
And occasionally, the writing slips into something oddly melodramatic, almost Bollywood-coded. There is a death scene in Episode 6 where Homelander kills a certain character (avoiding names because spoilers), and if you know Homelander, you know subtlety is not exactly his thing. This is a man who vaporises people mid-sentence and crushes skulls like soda cans. But here, he conveniently leaves someone alive long enough to bleed out slowly, say emotional goodbyes, and even share a final kiss. Very cinematic. Very emotional. Very unlike Homelander.
And maybe that is what hurts the most about The Boys Season 5. Not that it is outright bad television — because even a weaker season of The Boys remains more entertaining than most superhero content being released today — but that it no longer feels dangerous. This was once a show that thrived on unpredictability. A show where anybody could die, anything could happen, and every episode felt one step away from complete madness. It was chaotic, fearless, politically charged, juvenile, sharp, disgusting, hilarious, sometimes all within the same five-minute stretch.
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Season 5 still carries flashes of that brilliance. You see it in A-Train’s conclusion, in certain Butcher moments, and especially in the final minutes of the finale where the show briefly remembers what made it special in the first place. But those flashes are not enough to sustain an entire final chapter.
The Boys Season 5
The Boys Season 5 Cast – Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Karen Fukuhara, Chace Crawford, Jessie T. Usher
The Boys Season 5 Director – Phil Sgriccia, Shana Stein, Karen Gaviola, Catriona McKenzie
The Boys Season 5 Rating – 2/5
