The Boys Creator Reveals His Biggest Fear for Series Finale, Teases Major Character Deaths

The Boys creator and showrunner Eric Kripke has openly shared his significant apprehension about crafting the series finale for the acclaimed Prime Video show, while also teasing that major character deaths are on the table as the story reaches its conclusion. Speaking on the podcast Creator to Creator alongside Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent), Kripke delved into the immense pressure of ending a beloved series satisfactorily, referencing the scarcity of truly great finales in television history. His comments highlight the challenge of tying up complex narratives, a task made even more daunting by the high expectations surrounding The Boys‘ fifth and final season.

“I am in a fair amount of terror about a series finale,” Kripke confessed. “You can count in one, maybe two hands, the truly great series finales. Of which, by the way, well done, I think The Shield is one of them. And, conversely, the graveyard is literally filled with terrible [series finales]. You could have the greatest show for years, but if you stiff that ending, and that’s what’s sending everyone out in the parking lot, they go, ‘Oh, maybe that show wasn’t that good.’” To ensure the ending of The Boys meets fans’ high expectations, Kripke reveals that he has been focusing more on the emotional journey of the characters than on the spectacle. The creator also explained how he draws inspiration from some of TV’s best finales.

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“How do you tie up the stories? How do you do it in a way that is emotional and satisfying? How do you do it in a way that creates, frankly, the illusion that some detail that you dropped in Season 1 or Season 2 is now suddenly coming back to pay off? Breaking Bad, to me, is as good as a show gets, and I was able to ask some of those writers, ‘The way you tied everything together, how did you do that?’ And they said, ‘Oh, we just had a list of loose ends on our board, that we had no idea of what to do with them, that we would keep compiling over the seasons, and when then it was time to do the final season we would just start checking them off, because we are going to look like geniuses because the Season 2 story line becomes this.’ So that, I would say, has been a big challenge. The size of it, you know?” Kripke’s insightful look at his creative process also reveals what’s a priority in the writer’s room while crafting the series finale of The Boys.

“We always say we want to go deeper, not bigger. But there’s inevitably [a bigger scope], like, just because you need to find a new way to do an action scene, or you need to find a new superpower. The trick is so it doesn’t inflate so much that it becomes a parody of itself, because it’s already a parody. So you really keep it grounded. How do you keep it emotionally true? My process in the writer’s room is I always want to break the emotional arcs before I break the plot arcs, because my feeling is a plot turn or a set piece, all that stuff is a dime a dozen, but if it’s not a metaphor for what the character is emotionally going through, or some political point you want to make, then it’s just empty. It’s just floating around. That is my biggest fear and challenge.”

High Stakes and Character Fates in The Boys‘ Apocalyptic Finale

However, as Kripke notes, the finality of the series also brings a certain creative liberation, particularly concerning the fates of its characters. “It’s been fun, though, because you get to waste people in a way you couldn’t do before,” Kripke admitted. “It’s not just characters you’re keeping alive [in the previous season]. It’s confrontations that you’re like, ‘Well, they’ll never survive that as a relationship.’ You’re like, ‘Great! I don’t owe that for next season.’” This statement directly implies that the upcoming final season will see significant casualties, a prospect that aligns with previous warnings from Kripke about The Boys‘ endgame.

Eric Kripke’s comments about being able to “waste people” in the final season of The Boys set a grim and exciting expectation for what is shaping up to be an explosive conclusion. The series has never shied away from brutality or shocking deaths, but knowing that the narrative definitively ends with Season 5 means all bets are off. This creative freedom allows the writers to make permanent decisions without the need to preserve characters or plotlines for future installments of the main show. Kripke has previously warned fans that “there will probably be lots of deaths” in Season 5 and “there’s no guarantee of who’s gonna survive.” These sentiments, combined with his latest podcast comments, strongly suggest that no character is safe.

The Boys Season 5 is expected to arrive on Prime Video in 2026, with Gen V Season 2 laying the groundwork for the finale on September 17, 2025.

What are your predictions for who might not survive the final season of The Boys? Let us know in the comments!