1 Part of The Boys’ Finale Is So Much Worse Thanks To a Prime Video Decision

The Boys‘ series finale mostly sticks the landing, but one of the biggest problems with it is made worse by a Prime Video decision. The ending faced a difficult task in wrapping everything up neatly in just one hour, but it actually did a solid job. While Season 5 was divisive, and the finale hasn’t changed that, the fates of Homelander, Butcher, and the rest of the main characters felt right, earned, and true to what the show has always been.

Unfortunately, however, the finale didn’t have the time to do justice to everyone. Soldier Boy wasn’t present at all, and the Gen V heroes only appeared for one very brief scene, where Marie Moreau, Jordan Li, and Emma Meyer were basically told to just stay out of the way of the main fight by Starlight. That itself was disappointing, but it’s compounded by the fact that Prime Video cancelled Gen V after just two seasons.

Gen V’s Heroes Being in The Boys Was Pointless (& The Cancellation Makes It Worse)

Getting the balance right of Gen V‘s heroes being in The Boys Season 5 was never going to be easy, but what we ended up with makes me think there was no point in even doing it. After two seasons building up Marie to be as powerful as Homelander, and in particular, Season 2 being about her learning to control her powers, we were swiftly told that “reports of her awesomeness” were exaggerated, and that she cannot, in fact, control them.

It was worse in the finale itself, given that Episode 7 ended with Starlight going to them for help, only for Episode 8 to pretty much immediately walk it back and have them focus on helping people elsewhere. In total, they appeared in two scenes, contributed nothing to the plot, and we didn’t get to see them involved in the fight.

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The idea of Gen V‘s heroes not being in the endgame isn’t inherently a bad thing. Indeed, because the focus should be on servicing The Boys‘ characters and audience, it can be argued that it was good to avoid relying on people from another show. But then why include them at all? It feels like Gen V Season 2’s ending set up a story that The Boys had zero interest in telling, and so it got caught in a worst of both worlds situation where it doesn’t really serve either show well.

The cancellation of Gen V makes this much worse, because there’s no closure for those characters. That, in fairness, is not the fault of the writers, who penned this thinking, or at least hoping, the spinoff would continue. But it does make it all the more frustrating: The Boys does nothing with them, and now Prime Video won’t either. It’s not like Soldier Boy, where there’s at least a guaranteed future. Hopefully, the Gen V characters will get to return in another spinoff, because they deserve better than this ending.

All five seasons of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video.

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