Television Superhero Shows

The Boys Season 5 Will Bring The Violent Superhero Show To An End

The Boys Prime Video
By Jeremy Mathai

Well, well, how quickly things change. All along, the original plan for Prime Video's hit superhero supervillain series "The Boys" has been to span a total of five seasons — at least according to creator Eric Kripke's response to a question-and-answer session on Twitter back in October of 2020. But having couched it in terms of another failed prediction he once made while working on "Supernatural," which he similarly envisioned to last five seasons and ended up watching it expand to 15, Kripke knows better than anyone that writers make plans and the television gods laugh. Well, consider them well and truly busting a gut over today's news that the creative's initial idea for "The Boys" is, in fact, coming to fruition after all. Just days before season 4 debuts, Kripke has taken to social media (via Variety) to announce that the upcoming fifth season will also be the show's last. As he put it:

"Premiere Week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the Final Season! Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax. Watch Season 4 in 2 DAYS, cause the end has begun!"

His comment about having to be "cagey" is a sly reference to when he recently made headlines in an interview with Inverse earlier this May. Following the show's season 5 renewal, which notably made no mention of the fact that it would be the final season, he strongly implied that "The Boys" would continue on for years to come — which it will do, in a matter of speaking, thanks to spin-off series "Gen V" and the animated "The Boys Presents: Diabolical." For the main series, however, this will be the end of the road.

The Boys are back for only one more season

The Boys Jan Thijs/Prime Video

The end has truly begun for "The Boys." Prime Video finally decided to give Eric Kripke the go-ahead to announce the end of the series on the same day that reviews for season 4 just dropped, including /Film's own review by Danielle Ryan. Based on the comic series created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the adaptation starring Jack Quaid, Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Karen Fukuhara, and more has gone on to earn several Emmy nominations and one win over the years. The streaming platform certainly would've wanted to keep the good times rolling indefinitely, but it's to Kripke's credit that he was able to land the plane on his own terms.

In fact, Kripke most recently danced around the very same question about when "The Boys" would come to a close in a yet-to-be-published interview with /Film's Jacob Hall. When asked if he had a "master plan" to finish up the conflict between the eponymous Supe-hunting team of the Boys and the evil Supes led by Homelander and the Vought corporation, he responded:

"[...] I know where I want a lot of the characters to end up, that's what I would say. I actually don't even necessarily know the climax of the show, as much as I know that 10 pages that happens at the end, when they say "six months later," and you see where everyone is. I know where everyone is. Then my job, whenever we get to it, my job is to just make sure we can back into that."

We're willing to let Kripke's intentionally obfuscating answers slide this time, as long as seasons 4 and 5 live up to the very high standards set by the earlier ones. "The Boys" season 4 premieres June 13, 2024, on Prime Video, and stay tuned for our full interview with Kripke later this week.

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