The Boys’ Latest Episode Breaks IMDb Record As Fans Worry About It Repeating Game of Thrones’ Finale

The Boys has been a modern TV phenomenon, and pulled off the small miracle of being one of the most thrilling and well-produced superhero shows ever, while also mercilessly satirizing the superhero genre, the modern socio-political landscape, and so much more. But now the five-season journey is coming to an end, when The Boys drops its Series Finale in both movie theaters and on Amazon Prime Video.

At the time of writing this, The Boys‘ penultimate episode (“The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk”) has premiered on Prime Video, and the reaction from fans has been… not great. In fact, the second-to-last episode seems to be so disappointing that The Boys fandom is worried that we’re headed for another Game of Thrones-style crash-landing of the plane.

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The Boys’ Penultimate Episode Sets A New (Low) Record

According to IMDb ratings, The Boys Season 5 Episode 7 has a score of 6.6 out of 10. While that might not immediately look like a terrible episode of television, you have to keep the larger context in mind. In five seasons, no episode of The Boys has ever held an IMDb score lower than 7.0, making “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk” the lowest-rated episode of the entire series, according to that metric.

That’s a helluva record to set with the second-to-last episode of a TV series, after maintaining a certain line of excellence since 2019. However, the fact that it was the penultimate episode of The Boys has a lot to do with why the score is so low: fans’ expectations just weren’t met. Typically speaking, penultimate episodes are supposed to significantly up the stakes and tension, and these days they are often more entertaining than the actual finale. The Boys did almost the polar opposite, providing a quieter and more contemplative lead into the Finale, and even though fans don’t know it yet, rumor has there was a good reason for that choice.

Rumor: The Boys Series Finale Is About to Go Full Superhero Movie

There have been a lot of rumors and leaks about The Boys’ Series Finale. While it’s impossible to know what’s true and what’s not, there are a lot of those leaks that all say the same thing: that The Boys‘ Series Finale is so big and blockbuster-sized in scope that the vast majority of the budget and production work had to be invested in the climax, making the rest of the season slightly suffer as a result. It would explain the slower, more contained episodes of Season 5, which have been noticeably lighter on action and set pieces per episode than previous seasons.

If even a quarter of some of these leaks are true, The Boys Series Finale will be an event that was worth a theatrical release event (which is sold out in many places). There will also be a whole lot of buzz and controversy if some of what is rumored to go down is indeed shown onscreen, but we’ll all deal with that when we get there.

The question is: Even if The Boys Series Finale is a whole movie, and it’s great, will it still be enough to counterbalance the deep lows Season 5 hit to get there?

Ask us again in a week when The Boys Season 5 Finale is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Until then, discuss the show on the ComicBook Forum!