The Boys: The Biggest Differences Between The Show And Comic Book Ending

Spoilers for the series finale of "The Boys" ("Blood and Bone") to follow.

After "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 7, "The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk," I thought there was no way the show would be able to do adapt the original comic's ending with the mere hour it had left. Well, I'm now cooking a meal of crow. The big picture of the series finale, "Blood and Bone," is very accurate to how the original "The Boys" comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson ended.

In a final clash between the Boys and the supes at the White House, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) avenges his wife Becca's (Shantel VanSanten) rape and death by killing Homelander (Antony Starr). But Butcher's rage doesn't end there. He still tries to unleash the supe-killing virus, killing everyone on Earth with a trace of Compound V in their blood. Hughie (Jack Quaid) stops and kills Butcher, and he later gives him the same eulogy as in the comic: "[Butcher is] in Hell, kicking the f*** out of the Devil."

But the journey of getting to this ending was often quite different compared to the "Boys" comics. That means that within this big picture, there were inevitably some different details.

"The Boys" issue #65 dropped a last minute twist that silent, masked supe Black Noir was a twisted clone of Homelander, created by Vought to kill Homelander if he ever went rogue. Black Noir decided to bring his purpose to fruition by framing Homelander for a bunch of horrific crimes — Noir is the one who raped Becky Butcher, not Homelander. Eventually, Noir and Homelander have a fight to the death; Noir wins, but is so badly beaten that Butcher is able to tear his skull open with a crowbar and crush his brain.

This twist never could've happened in the TV series, which gave Black Noir a different backstory and showed Homelander was plenty evil all his own. Series creator Eric Kripke, speaking to The Ringer, explained that not doing the Noir twist was something he'd decided very early on: "It's like you're asking someone to follow a villain, and then at the very end, you say, 'No.' That's not fulfilling at all."

The show actually makes Butcher vs. Homelander the final White House battle, and it prepared ahead of time to change the circumstances. Karl Urban's Butcher got superpowers back in Season 4 so he can stand up to Homelander; Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) — a TV original character and Homelander's prodigal son — helps Butcher fight his dad; and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) gets a nuclear blast power that can take away supes' abilities.

This culminates in the most satisfying death scene in the "Boys" series finale, where Kimiko takes away Homelander's powers, and then he's left helpless as Butcher beats and kills him. Butcher uses the same move that finished off Noir in the comics, jamming his crowbar into Homelander's skull and then tearing it open.

The "Boys" comics devote the entire last volume to Butcher's plans for supe genocide, whereas the show confines it to about 20 minutes of "Blood and Bone." That means there's a lot more casualties in the comics — namely, the rest of the Boys besides Hughie.

Some important context: In the "Boys" comics, all of the Boys have Compound V (not just Kimiko, who's only called "The Female" in the comics). That means Butcher's plans to kill all supes would kill them, too, not to mention make it a mass murder-suicide for Butcher. When the Boys learn about his plan, Butcher reluctantly moves up his timetable. He kills M.M. by detonating a grenade in his face and plants a timed bomb in the Boys' headquarters to kill Frenchie and the Female. 

In the "Boys" TV show, most of the antiheroes instead make it out alive. Frenchie dies at Homelander's hands in Season 5, Episode 7 (If you know Butcher killed Frenchie in the comics, it's funny to hear him say "This is for Frenchie" when he's killing Homelander), but Kimiko and M.M. (Laz Alonso) get to ride off into the sunset, just like Hughie and Annie (Erin Moriarty). Similarly, M.M. adopts Ryan and is last seen remarrying his ex-wife Monique (Frances Turner). Kimiko, who's adopted a dog, also visits Paris in tribute to her beloved Frenchie's memory.

"All respect to Garth [Ennis], but it felt unsatisfying to have these characters that I'd been following for years suddenly be murdered," as Eric Kripke told Polygon regarding the comics' ending. Of course, being "The Boys," you can't have a completely happy ending, and Frenchie was the logical choice to kill off to add some tragedy to his romance with Kimiko.

Hughie and Butcher's confrontation is a bit different in the comics and show as well. In the comics (where it's at the Empire State Building, not Vought Tower), Hughie pushes Butcher out of a window to stop him from pressing the trigger. They land on the observatory deck, and Butcher is paralyzed from the neck down. Unwilling to live the rest of his life immobile, he goads Hughie into killing him by lying that he had killed Hughie's parents beforehand.

But before that, they have a nice long chat for almost the entirety of the penultimate issue of "The Boys," #71. They talk about how Butcher kept Hughie around as his conscience, how they both wish things went differently, and Butcher finally accepting Hughie's relationship with Annie. Thinking of how Becky made him happy, he tells Hughie not to waste his love. All that culminates in Butcher's last piece of advice, the summation the whole series has been building towards: 

"All that macho sh*t — that gunfighter, Dirty Harry bollocks — it looks tasty, but in the end it's f*ckin' self-defeatin'. It just leaves you with bodies in ditches an' blokes with headfuls o' broken glass. Men are only so much use, Hughie. Men are boys."

The show cuts this down significantly. Butcher himself takes his hand off the trigger to release the virus, because Hughie reminds him of his late little brother Lenny, but Hughie apparently doesn't clock that and shoots Butcher. Billy's last words are about how Hughie looks just like Lenny, which is redundant — the episode already showed us that. "Blood and Bone" mostly satisfies but cuts out a piece of the ending's heart by excluding "men are boys."

"The Boys" is streaming on Prime Video.