The Boys Season 5 Gets a Grim Update From Franchise Star (Is a Major Character Doomed?)

The Boys Season 5 will be the final season of the Amazon superhero series, where Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and his squad, The Boys, will be making their final stand against Homelander (Antony Starr), the most powerful superhero in the world. Homelander beat all odds and managed to take authoritarian hold of the US government, ushering in a new era of supremacy for “supes” (those with superpowers). Butcher is living on borrowed time, but thanks to the events of Gen V spinoff series, the Boys now have several key weapons on their side that may actually be able to finish Homelander off, for good.

But how great will the cost be? That’s the question that a lot of fans of The Boys are asking as Season 5 approaches. Now, one of the biggest stars of the show is throwing out hints that their character could be one of those hard sacrifices viewers will have to endure.

The Boys Star Hints At Their Characters’ Death In Season 5 (Spoilers?)

Karl Urban is a large part of the reason why The Boys became a breakout hit. As Billy Butcher, Urban’s scene-chewing mania and vulgar one-liners have made him a meme legend. Urban sat down with Screen Rant‘s Joe Deckelmeier at FAN EXPO, and had some questions for him about The Boys Season 5. Urban had one theme he wanted to share with the crowd: the final season of The Boys will deliver painful hits and big stakes, right from the start.

“I think we throw you in the deep end, but in a good way, because the stakes are as high as they can possibly be,” Urban explained. “I think the real thing to look out for in Season 5 on an emotional level, as far as the characters go, and your attachments to characters, there’s going to be some big hits early on in the very first episode. That’s probably what is going to make you realize, ‘Oh, this s–t is for real.’”

To put a finer point on it, Urban went on to tease that “anybody” can die in the final season – presumably, him included. “The stakes couldn’t be higher, and anybody’s fair game.”

Billy Butcher has been on a ticking clock ever since taking the V24 compound to give himself superpowers in Season 3. It was somewhat surprising to see Butcher live through Season 4, so Season 5 would be the appropriate place to bring Butcher’s arc to an end.

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It may be hard to remember given the gravity of Karl Urban’s personality, but Billy Butcher isn’t actually the main character of The Boys. The series started with the story of Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), a tech geek whose girlfriend was killed by superhero speedster A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) as he was running by. Hughie’s descent into a world of demented amoral supes and the Captain Ahab figure that is Billy Butcher is what needs to be resolved by the end of the series.

In some ways, Butcher needs to be moved aside for Hughie to be able to fully develop and complete his own arc, emerging as a man who has a little more of Butcher’s edge than the sweet boy we met at the beginning of the series. But who really knows? Showrunner Eric Kripke is so wild that he could easily go the other way: killing off Hughie and having Butcher close the series. As Urban indicated, nothing will be sacred and no one safe when The Boys Season 5 arrives.

What do you want to see in The Boys Final Season? Discuss with us on the ComicBook Forum!