The Boys Season 5 Was Written Before The 2024 Election: 'Things Are Not Going Great' [Exclusive]

"The Boys" is a satire, and not just of the superhero genre. Homelander (Antony Starr) has always been written as a thinly-veiled stand-in for Donald Trump, and a key part of the show's comedy is recreating supe-flavored versions of real controversies,

Season 4 of "The Boys" ended with Homelander seizing control of America and capturing most of the Boys. Season 2 of spin-off "Gen V" already offered a peek at life under his authoritarian regime, but it will be the main focus in "The Boys" season 5. The previous season premiered months before the 2024 U.S. presidential election; the faux-Trump that is Homelander taking power was just a preview for the real one returning to it.

As a satire, what happens on "The Boys" must reflect what happens in real life. So as I waited for season 5, I started to wonder: If the election had gone the other way, would this final season of "The Boys" have been written differently? Did the election results put creator Eric Kripke and his writers' room in a more cynical mood about the country than if America had chosen differently?

Well, I got the opportunity to ask Kripke that himself, and it turns out the election results were a bit immaterial since the final season was written before they happened. As Kripke explained:

"Every season before [the fifth], we had just kind of reacted a lot in terms of what was happening in the news. But this time was the first time that we weren't totally sure which way things were going to go."

As it turns out, the real world made the choice that more reflects what happened on "The Boys." Is what's good for "The Boys" and its satire bad for America?

In the past, "The Boys" has always chosen relevancy even over fidelity to its comic source material. The season 1 storyline of Starlight's (Erin Moriarty) sexual assault was rewritten to account for the #MeToo movement. Instead of staying silent, Starlight tells her story publicly. She becomes a feminist symbol, and Vought International cynically tries to capitalize on her new image.

Vic Neuman, the comic's parody of George W. Bush, was reimagined as Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) and a parody of progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (The show banked on its audience being inclined to like an AOC stand-in. When Neuman turned out to be a villain, it carried an effective message: Don't trust politicians, even ones who claim to be on your side.)

But for season 5, "The Boys" writers room had to rely more on their own speculation over real headlines. As Eric Kripke told me, that speculation turned out to be uncannily close to what has now happened:

"We had this interesting job of sort of speculating on what American authoritarianism would look like with the genuine — in hindsight, naive — hope that people would watch it and say, 'Boy, we really dodged a bullet.' And it turns out we all got hit in the face with the bullet. And honestly, it's been straight up troubling how much of what we thought were out there, speculative ideas, how many of them have actually come to pass already. Which is not great, so my spoiler is like, 'Things are not going great.'"

Luckily (or not), I don't think people watch "The Boys" to avoid being reminded of what's happening in the real world.

"The Boys" season 5 premieres on Prime Video on Wednesday, April 8, 2026.