Fans expecting The Boys to get even crazier in terms of action in its final season may have to face the realities of budget constraints.
As The Boys prepares to release its fifth and final season in April, fans expect Prime Video’s superhero saga to go out in grand style. It’s all set up, as Vought International rules America, Homelander (Antony Starr) is ready to crush all in his path, the Boys themselves are either in jail or on the run, and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is prepared to use a virus to kill all Supes.
Don't expect big battle scenes in The Boys season 5
So, fans naturally are prepared for the show to go out in a bang with some epic fight scenes. However, while talking to SFX Magazine (per Games Radar), creator and showrunner Erick Kripke said that while the show will have a great conclusion, it won’t be able to deliver the scale fans would want, as they lack the budget of a certain fantasy series epic.
“I mean, there are not full battle scenes because we still don’t have Game of Thrones‘ budget, but there are a lot of very direct confrontations; a lot of the people that you want to see smashing into each other smash into each other. I hope it’s cathartic and emotionally satisfying, but I’m a tiny bit terrified,” Kripke shares.
Some may be surprised that Prime Video isn’t ponying up the money to bring one of its biggest hits to the best finale possible.
The original comic book series culminated in a huge battle at the White House before the final issues became more low-key and personal to bring the saga to an end. While The Boys hasn’t done many fights on a big-screen scale, the idea that we don’t get the ending fans might want because of budget is annoying.
Can The Boys work better as a low-stakes finale?
Kripke has compared this coming season to World War II, when the French Resistance took on the Nazis. Indeed, the opening story arc is likely going to see the captured team members try to escape a prison camp, likely with the aid of the characters from Gen V. From there, they have to lead a revolt against the Seven.
The Boys has always rested on its characters and outrageous humor more than big-budget stuff. That’s funny considering it’s partly a satire of the MCU and other big-screen comic book movies. Kripke is used to being economical for the storyline with Supernatural, so he can make a lower-key final season work.
If anything, it’d be more fitting that rather than an all-out war between Supes in the streets of New York, the series has a couple of showdowns like Butcher and Homelander but save the rest of the finale for character beats. That likely would include a couple of key character deaths to give it more pathos. Too many TV shows make the mistake of thinking flashy special effects scenes are better than good writing and storytelling and The Boys want to avoid that mistake (see quite a few MCU TV shows).
We’ll have to see how it all ends up. The Boys seems set to offer fans a worthy and heartfelt ending rather than pure CGI action, but it’s sure to still be wild.
The Boys season 5 premieres April 8 on Prime Video.