The Boys creator wants to end the show right: "So many series finale suck"

The fourth season of The Boys is in the can, with one more to go. In 2026 (sorry about the wait), the fifth and final season of Erik Kripke's violent, gleefully subversive superhero show will air on Amazon Prime Video, and Kripke is doing his damndest to make sure it's legendary. "That’s the fun of the final season. You can blow the doors off it," he told GamesRadar. "There’s no guarantee who’s going to survive because you don’t have to keep [the cast] for another season. So you can have really shocking, big things happen all the time. The writers, as we’re starting to cook it up, we’re really enjoying that."

At the same time, he knows he's on dangerous ground. "So many series finale suck. It’s really hard to land the plane," he said. "I feel lots and lots of pressure to end it well. Because if we can stick the landing, then people will be like, ‘That was a great show.’ But if we shit the bed, people will say: ‘It was a good show, but then it shit the bed."

"For the legacy of the show, I really want to land the plane. It’s hard to land the plane! I feel an incredible amount of pressure."

It makes sense that Kripke is feeling the pressure, since the fifth season of The Boys is guaranteed to have a lot of eyeballs on it. Each season has been watched more than the one before it, with season 4 netting 55 million views between its premiere on June 13 and its finale on July 21, per Variety. The audience for season 4 exceeded that of season 3 by 20%, and since Kripke intends to pull out all the stops for the big finish, I expect that number to grow again for season 5.

Soldier Boy will go after Billy Butcher in final season of The Boys

So what stops is he pulling out, exactly? Aside from whatever big character deaths I'm sure are in store, Kripke is bringing back some old favorites, including Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, the world's first superhero and Homelander's father.

"You know, what we realized was we really hadn't explored the father-son relationship much between Homelander and Soldier Boy," Kripke said this past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con. "There's a lot of material there, how Soldier Boy feels about Homelander, how Homelander feels about his dad, and so we really wanted to dig into that relationship."

The last time Homelander and Soldier Boy exchanged lines was in season 3, and things got ugly. This time, it sounds like they may be on the same side. "Soldier Boy is really driven to kill Butcher after Butcher betrayed him in season 3," Kripke said. "So he's just an excellent antagonist, to switch sides and basically, you know, to be with the supes."

Let's end with a tease from actor Nathan Mitchell, who has played both versions of Black Noir, the mask-wearing super-ninja and part of the totaliarian group of supes known as the Seven. "I think season five is going to be chaotic," Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter. "We’re in a mad dash to the finish line and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Everything is way more perilous for the Boys, and I think the Seven is going be as powerful as they have ever been. And new Noir is probably going to be even more comfortable with killing. He’s growing into his role, so he’s more of a threat to the Boys now, even though, again, as we’re saying, it’s still a progression over time. I don’t think The Boys have held back. But if there is anything left to unleash, we’re unleashing it in season five!"

"It’s going to be batshit crazy, and it’s going to be a battle for the outcome and the future of this world. And that’s the level we’re playing at. So, I think that is what the fans are going to get in season five. "

If you need to tide yourself over while you wait for the final season of The Boys, the spinoff Gen V has a new season coming next year, and another spinoff — a prequel series set in the 1950s — is in development.

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