[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 5 finale of The Boys, “Blood and Bone.”]
All season long — all series long, really — The Boys has been building up to an epic final showdown between the blatantly fascistic Homelander (Antony Starr) and longtime nemesis Billy Butcher (Karl Urban). The series finale delivered just that… and then ended with more than 20 minutes to spare. Anyone watching the clock knew that meant even darker things were on the horizon, but before getting into that, let’s dig into what brought us to that point.
The episode opens with a funeral for Frenchie (Tomer Capone) — the team is devastated by his loss, especially Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), who has returned to her mute and signing state. The good news is that Frenchie’s sacrifice from the episode before was not in vain, and Kimiko is now able to depower supes with a handy blast from her chest, something they test on Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), who’s thrilled to no longer be burdened with super-intelligence.
Now that they actually have a way to take the invulnerable Homelander down, the team mobilizes, breaking into the White House during Homelander’s planned Easter address to the nation. It wasn’t like there were a lot of unmurdered characters left by this point in the season, and that number gets even smaller during this sequence: Oh Father (Daveed Diggs) gets killed by Mother’s Milk and his own ball gag, because it wouldn’t be The Boys without one last exploding head. And The Deep (Chace Crawford) dies at the hands of the sea life he betrayed, following an epic beatdown by Starlight (which, considering their long history, did include a note of catharsis).
As for Homelander, there’s plenty of ultra-violence as Kimiko, Billy, and late arrival Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) interrupt his declarations of Godhood for an Oval Office beatdown, one that does eventually conclude with Kimiko de-powering him. (Tomer Capone appears as Frenchie in one last fantasy sequence to tell her that “rage is not what makes you strong,” a sweet enough coda for their complicated love story.)
And then, well, it’s time for what (some) fans have been yearning for. Homelander’s death, broadcast live to the world, is a gruesome, humiliating end to the character — from his sad little hops towards the sky to his begging for mercy in the most graphic of ways. One wonders how many different ideas the writers explored when deciding on how exactly he should die — getting his skull crushed by a crowbar seems as effective an option as any.
The Boys (Prime Video)
Once it’s done, though, it almost feels like an anti-climax, especially because the celebration that follows is far from a Return of the Jedi-esque montage of planets partying. Instead, the team regroups quietly, and the real ending begins, as Ryan tells Billy that however bad Homelander might have been, Billy’s not a good guy either. “I don’t want a fresh start wtih you — I want this to be the end,” he declares, just the beginning of Billy’s grim conclusion.
For Billy might no longer be a supe, but he still has the supe-killing virus handy, and he quietly leaves the party to unleash it on Vought Tower/the world as one final act of vengeance. When Hughie (Jack Quaid) catches up with him, armed and ready to do the thing he really doesn’t want to do, it has the sting of inevitability, that this was always the only possible ending for Billy — that after everything that’s happened (and more importantly, everything he’s done), happily ever after was never gonna hpapen.
More importantly, this feels like a showdown that Billy actively courted. The beginning of his scene with Hughie in the Vought boardroom nods to Billy having assumed that Hughie would try to stop him — Hughie even suggesting that this was why Billy kept him around all these years: “I’m your canary, your Kessler, your Lenny.”
Hughie shooting Billy before he can release the virus is in many ways a beat right out of Of Mice and Men, even down to the name Lenny being thrown around — though in the case of Steinbeck’s classic novel, “Lennie” was the character whose death becomes the necessary burden of his best friend. In The Boys, though, Lenny was the name of Billy’s long-dead little brother. Hughie always reminded Billy of Lenny.
As well-acted as the scene is on both sides, it’s without question a painfully sad moment, one of a few rough parts of this conclusion. For Pete’s sake, they even killed the dog, though Terror at least died peacefully of old age. And the old hound was pretty lucky, considering the circumstances. Theoretically, this isn’t the darkest possible ending the show could come up with — after all, the worst of the worst are no longer ruining the world. However, it was a harsh reminder that sometimes, redemption just isn’t possible.
There is one last montage, in which Mother’s Milk renews his vows with his wife, his daughter and Ryan watching happily, and Kimiko travels to France to enjoy a proper French madeleine. (For the record, this was the only part of the finale that made me tear up.) A clear jump forward in time also reveals that Hughie and Starlight are now expecting — and that while Hughie seems happy to be running his own audio-visual shop (a full-circle return back to the pilot), Starlight isn’t letting her pregnancy keep her from helping people.
Supes, despite Billy’s best efforts, remain a presence in the world for better or for worse. But this still ends up feeling like a very definitive ending for the series — and with the cancellation of Gen V, there are no plans for future stories in this timeline. (The upcoming spinoff series Vought Rising is a prequel.) Okay, the door is very blatantly left open for a new potential saga, in which Hughie does end up leading the Bureau of Supe Affairs, per the new President’s offer. Certainly the tease that “Vought is a clusterfuck” is intriguing, especially because of Stan Edgar’s (Giancarlo Esposito) return as the new “acting” CEO of the company…
For now, at least, Hughie says no to the offer, and The Boys leaves us with him smiling up at the sky as Billy Joel plays. He’s content, but he’s one of the lucky ones — there’s no guarantee of a happy ending in this life. Something this show, at its best and worst, never forgot.
The Boys is streaming now on Prime Video.
You must be logged in to post a comment.