Amazon’s The Boys Showrunner Reveals Why That Season 1 Twist Ending is so Different From the Comics

Amazon has a hit on its hands with The Boys, but as fans of the comics know, the series made a few changes to the story from the comics, including one rather sizable one at the very end of season 1. In the comics, Billy Butcher’s wife Becky died early on in the books after giving birth to a super-powered baby, which happened because of the rape she suffered at the hands of Homelander. In the comics both Becky and the baby die, but as fans learned in the show, showrunner Eric Kripke decided to change some things up for the show, and there are big spoilers incoming for the end of The Boys, so you’ve been warned.

The final sequence of The Boys in the show has Homelander dropping Butcher off on the lawn to a house in the suburbs, and out walks Becca, the wife he’s been searching for this whole time and some thought were dead. Not only that, but a young boy runs out to meet Homelander, and he has superpowers as well. It turns out not only is Becca alive, but she didn’t tell Butcher she was alive over the past 8 years, and now she has a son with Homelander as the Father.

In a new interview with EW, Kripke explained why he changed the ending to this storyline from the comics so drastically.

“You have this kid who’s half human and half monster; half the person Butcher loves most in the world and half the person Butcher hates most in the world,” Kripke said. “That’s just too perfect a character to not keep alive.”

The boy will likely figure heavily into season 2 of The Boys, which is already in development, as will what exactly happened to Becca and why she never told Butcher she was alive. Kripke also wanted to avoid “fridging”, a trope that sees women sacrificed so that male heroes can have motivations in their stories.

“I acknowledge that it’s a cliché, but I have certain elements of my story that I’m locked into,” Kripke said. “It always nudged us a little in the writers’ room.”

The Boys is executive produced by Seth Rogen and Eric Kripke. It stars Karl Urban and Jack Quaid in the lead roles of “The Boys” leader Billy Butcher and new recruit Hughie Campbell (respectively). Also in the ensemble cast are Jennifer Esposito (The Affair), Elisabeth Shue (CSI), Karen Fukuhara (Suicide Squad) Anthony Starr (Banshee), Dominique McElligott (Hell On Wheels), Jesse Usher (Independence Day: Resurgence), Chance Crawford (Gossip Girl), Laz Alonso (Fast & Furious), Tomer Kapon, Nathan Mitchell, and Erin Moriarty (Jessica Jones).

The Boys is available on Amazon Prime now.