After seven years of Billy Butcher and others fighting against Homelander and the Seven, The Boys‘ series finale has arrived on Prime Video, bringing the satirical superhero show to an end. It’s been a rocky road to this point, with Season 5 proving divisive among the show’s online fanbase. There have been complaints about the pacing and episodes being “filler,” and that does leave the finale with a lot to get through in just one hour. Warning: SPOILERS ahead.
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Get through it all it does, just about. The series finale of The Boys packs a hell of a lot in, with Homelander being defeated once and for all inside the Oval Office, Butcher meeting his own end at the hands of Hughie Campbell, and the surviving members of the Boys each getting a moment to wrap up their character arcs.
Who Dies In The Boys Series Finale
Frenchie’s death in The Boys Season 5, Episode 7, had laid the groundwork for several more characters to be killed off in the series finale. He was the first member of the Boys to die, and that suggested all bets were off. In the end, it wasn’t quite a bloodbath, with Hughie, Starlight, Mother’s Milk, and Kimiko all surviving, but the following characters all died in the finale:
- Oh Father: Killed by his own sonic scream, due to a ball gag placed over his mouth by M.M. and Hughie
- The Deep: Blasted into the ocean by Starlight, and then killed by the sea creatures he had betrayed.
- Homelander: Depowered by Kimiko after a fight with her, Butcher, and Ryan, he’s then killed by a crossbow through the skull from Butcher, who uses it to rip off the top of his head.
- Terror: Butcher’s dog died in his sleep, seemingly of natural causes (or perhaps eating chocolate).
- Butcher: After threatening to unleash the Supe-killing virus, he’s shot dead by Hughie at Vought Tower.
Why Homelander Had To Die Like That (& What Eric Kripke Told Us)
There has always been a lot of speculation about how Homelander would be defeated, and it uses the death of Frenchie as a launchpad to help Kimiko remove his powers so that the job can be finished, but in the end it comes down to him and Butcher. This makes sense: it’s always been about their face-off, and building to a showdown between them. No one was more driven to destroy Homelander than Butcher, even at the cost of his own humanity, so it’s fitting that he is the one to end it, rather than Ryan having to kill his own father.
The crowbar through the head is a brutal way to go out, but it’s what comes before it that’s even more appropriate. Homelander has increasingly been desperate to appear as a God, in part because he was so terrified by his own weaknesses and mortality before getting the V-One. To strip his powers away reveals the truth of who he is: a small, weak, sad, pathetic man, who is left begging for his life. Speaking to ComicBook, showrunner Eric Kripke explained this had long been the plan with the villain, saying:
“It comes down to Butcher and Homelander and we really wanted to take Homelander’s powers away. That was something we had been thinking about from the very start of the season. As many characters say to him throughout this season, ‘You take your powers away and you’re nothing.’ We wanted to demonstrate that and what a weak, simpering coward he is once you have removed his powers, as are, frankly, many strong men.”
Why Hughie Had To Kill Butcher
Killing Homelander could have been the end of it, but not for Butcher. After he’s rejected by Ryan, and then learns that Terror has died, he feels he has nothing left. He darkens, the last remaining shards of his humanity appearing to slip away in an instant, and he decides that he will unleash the Supe-killing virus after all, despite the cost to the likes of Starlight and Kimiko.
That, of course, isn’t something Hughie can allow to happen. Part of that is motivated by a desire to protect the woman he loves, part of it is that he also doesn’t believe it’s right, and there’s also part of him that still wants to save Butcher. In the end, he’s not able to save his life and is actually the one to kill him, but he might at least have salvaged some part of his humanity and soul, and him winning out represents a victory for hope.
Their final moments allow Butcher to look past his hate and anger, seeing his younger brother, Lenny, once again, and how much Hughie is like him. Hughie is the heart of the show, and its everyman hero, and he’s what Butcher couldn’t be, as he tells him: “All the blood and sh*te I put you through, and none of it made a blind bit of difference. You stayed yourself no matter what I done.” He is, in a way, the antithesis of Butcher as a hero, and why he had to be the one to end it.
What Happens To The Surviving Main Characters
After Butcher’s death, we get some wrapping up with the main characters, who go their separate ways. Kimiko leaves to go to France, which is not only a touching choice given the loss of Frenchie (and she seems to now have a dog, something they’d previously spoken about), but it also highlights how she is now free to experience life in a way she never has before.
Mother’s Milk finally makes it back to his family, the thing he’s always been fighting for, and gets remarried to Monique (who had divorced him earlier in the show), with their daughter, Janine, watching on. It shows that his obsession with Supes is over at last, and he can now move on and be the husband and father he always should’ve been. That includes to Ryan, who has seemingly been adopted by M.M., giving him the family he’s never had.
Family is also a theme present with Hughie and Annie, as they’re starting one of their own. Hughie runs an audiovisual store, but that allows them to keep a tab on police lines so Starlight can still operate as a superhero, something she’s still currently able to do while pregnant (though, much to the consternation of her mother, they’re not yet married). It’s also revealed that they’re naming their child Robin, after Hughie’s ex-girlfriend, who was killed by A-Train in the first episode of the show.
How Did Terror Die In The Boys?
One of the saddest deaths in The Boys‘ series finale is that of Terror, Butcher’s bulldog and faithful companion. This serves a purpose, as earlier in the season we had seen how the dog (and Hughie saving him) highlighted the humanity and heart that was still inside of him, and his death propels him to unleash the Supe virus. It’s never explained how Terror dies, though it is seemingly of natural causes. It is possible he ate some chocolate, since that was set up earlier in the season, but given that he was Butcher’s when Becca was still alive, he was probably quite old.
Did Ryan Lose His Powers?
Butcher states that he and Ryan have both lost their powers and are now normal, but we don’t get explicit confirmation of this with Ryan. His is a more intriguing case because, as a natural-born Supe, he doesn’t have Compound V. It’s possible that Kimiko’s blast did not affect him in the same way because of that, and The Boys does at least leave it vague enough, incase it ever wants to revisit it in the future. Despite that, it does seem more likely he did lose his powers, as him being nothing like Homelander, and able to live a normal life, seems a more fitting ending for him.
How The Boys’ Ending Compares To The Comic
The Boys‘ ending hits some of the same broad strokes as the comic: a final showdown in the Oval Office, Hughie being the one to kill Butcher, and Hughie and Starlight being together at the end are all taken from the page, but the way it all plays out is very different. In the comics, while Homelander goes increasingly crazy and kills the President like in the show, it’s eventually revealed that Black Noir is a Homelander clone, and he is the one killed by Butcher with a crowbar.
Butcher then goes on a mission to wipe out all of the Supes, via what are effectively Supe-killing bombs he’s got placed across the globe, and he even kills Frenchie, Mother’s Milk, and The Female (Kimiko) so that they can’t stop him. Hughie encounters him on the top of the Empire State Building and, after a fight leaves them both injured, Butcher goads Hughie into killing him. Hughie and Starlight are married at the end. The TV show has a happier ending for several main characters, and keeps things relatively more grounded and a lot less wild.
What’s Next For The Boys Franchise?
That may be it for The Boys as a TV show, but it’s certainly not the end of the franchise, which has been dubbed the Vought Cinematic Universe (VCU). We’ve already seen spinoffs: The Boys Presents: Diabolical lasted just one season, and more recently, Gen V was cancelled after two seasons. But still, there will be more.
Next year will bring Vought Rising, a prequel set in the 1950s starring Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, alongside Supes such as Liberty/Stormfront and Bombsight. There is also The Boys: Mexico in development, created by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer and with Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal onboard as producers. There may be more, too, as Kripke tells ComicBook:
“A couple of the senior writers from The Boys, and also from Vought Rising, are putting together ideas that they are passionate about. We will only do them if one, they are totally different from The Boys. Two, if somebody is really passionate about it and it’s not just a piece of commerce, if it’s idiosyncratic and weirdly shaped and something somebody loves. I know that makes a difference.”
Quite what they’ll be, and whether they’ll continue the stories of the Gen V characters – Kripke says he would “love to continue that story” – remains to be seen.
All five seasons of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video, including the series finale.
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Image courtesy of Netflix -
Image Courtesy of Netflix
