Critic’s Rating: 3.8 / 5.0
3.8
They knew!
The writers knew that, given what was coming in future episodes, there was no way to deliver an impactful finale.
It’s the explanation for the many meta jokes, like how a series finale cannot satisfy everyone.
Include an AI joke lampshaded as a Taylor Sheridan one, but it’s the same idea.
And based on how The Boys Season 5 Episode 7 landed, the series finale was never going to be huge.
Instead, it is clean. Way too clean.
It’s the slop AI would generate with a decent prompt that seems passable but lacks punch upon closer scrutiny.
Gen V and Sister Sage
These two are this show’s greatest failures.
The spin-off that led to one of the largest in-universe discoveries was repositioned in the main series like a glitch in the simulation several times.
Marie Moreau and the entire gang were turned into puppets like those from Sam’s mind — powerless and destructible.
So when they’ve been declawed, sending them away to Canada is logical.
It happens with Sister Sage, the smartest supe who never was. She loses her powers to the show’s Hail Mary when Kimiko’s new powers work, and she becomes less smart.
I mean, does she, though?
She just talks more and fucks off to Kentucky or wherever it was.
The Weapon
A non-negotiable for this finale was Homelander’s death.
All the running around has been to find a way to end him. Brute force, mutiny, virus, and his father all failed.
But in the last two episodes, The Boys try to recreate Soldier Boy’s power in Kimiko, and they succeed. The problem is that it’s reverse-engineering instead of progress. Almost like, why didn’t anyone consider that before, and why did it work so well?
It also becomes clear why they were laying it so thick with Frenchie’s death in the finale and the episode’s opening minutes.
It was a narrative shortcut to add emotion to Kimiko’s pivotal moments.
The Endgame
Butcher v Homelander: that’s what we’ve waited years for. The outcome is satisfying on a base level.
Homelander did not deserve such a death. It was mercy. He deserved a slow, painful existence without powers that would kill him slowly from the inside.
However, I will take a televised beatdown because that was fun. It was satisfying on an emotional level to watch him try to escape, only to be dragged back down by Ryan or Butcher.
And when Homelander gets depowered, it becomes even more comical to see him try to fly. Like a chicken trying to fly only to land on that same spot.
Absolutely fucking fun.
Once again, it becomes clear why the writers had been focused on Homelander’s God arc. It was set up for a televised final battle, which, while I think it is genius, didn’t need seven episodes.
The Mandatory Deaths
Series finales have a reputation for killing off characters even when it’s not necessary, but everyone who dies in this episode deserved it.
Butcher was going to commit genocide, killing off the good and bad supes. He’s been consumed by anger that mass deaths are the only way he’d be satisfied.
His death is justified.
Meanwhile, Kevin, who had managed to escape death so many times, finally met his end at the hands of his former best friends and occasional sexual partners.
Like several other arcs in this season, his death has been dragged out for too long. In no world would even the new Black Noir be killed by Kevin. Outside the water, he’s useless.
But the show had been propping him up for this kind of death in the series finale.
Is it funny? Yes. Poetic? Yes. Justified? Yes.
Poetic deaths elevate the finale, from Homelander to Kevin and even Oh Father, who literally shouts himself to death.
Still, in the grand scheme of the episode, these deaths feel too stacked — like the show had to do them, not out of narrative necessity but to check boxes.
In Conclusion
The neat endings continue: Starlight and her wobbly powers help save people; Hughie runs an AV store; and normalcy returns to America.
In the real world, it would never end like that.
Homelander was not just a supe; he was a cultural figure. His supe powers did not make him the threat he was; his political power did.
He was a straightish white man with out-of-the-ordinary gifts. These kinds of people tend to develop devout followers.
Even with his televised downfall, a faction would have formed that countered the narrative.
We’ve seen the MAGA faithful live in a different reality where Trump is the president from 2020-2024, Biden is dead and being played by an actor, and Russia is actually a sick place to live.
In Homelander’s case, AI would have been the immediate clutch.
Gutch Check
“Blood and Bone” is entertaining because that’s the base level for The Boys. But beyond that, it’s sloppy, rushed, and totally unbelievable.
Intrusive Thoughts
- Oval Office epic moment 1: Butcher announces that Daddy’s home.
- Oval Office epic moment 2: An American president looking disappointed in the portrait.
- Oval Office epic moment 3: Ryan’s entrance.
- So Starlight goes on rescues while pregnant? I guess smoking is in too.
- Whatever happened to Soldier Boy?
Autopsy
I do not normally have this section, but since this is the series finale, it’s befitting that we try to fix this mess of a final season.
The weaknesses have been two: logical breakdown and narrative stagnation.
Marie and everyone else from Gen V who’s not a superemacist should have been involved in the final fight against Homelander and his cronies.
This should not have been isolated deaths in one location or another.
It should have been an Avengers: Endgame-level showdown. Prime Video could have afforded the budget for it.
The only concern is that the presence of many powerful supes would have broken the show’s illusion about Homelander’s strength.
With Sage, she should have been killed off as soon as possible because she breaks this entire show as the smartest supe.
She would know how to kill Homelander.
Soldier Boy should not have simply existed here, too, but they wanted to set up Vought Rising. Much of the screen time went to a spinoff that might be canceled after Season 1.
Soldier Boy could have also broken the Homelander narrative by simply depowering him, but they kept circling each other like animals on heat.
No momentum whatsoever.
Finally, the narrative stagnated when each episode repeated the same thing with the same results.
The virus hit a dead end and turned to the hunt for V1, which also ended without success, only for Kimiko to become Soldier Boy in the last two episodes.
The first two need at most one episode each before the show tries to sell us on the idea of characters dying and Kimiko becoming the weapon they’ve been after all this time.
Then the finale would not have felt so flat.
Over to you, The Boys fanatics. What did you think of the series finale? Will you watch Vought Rising now that the final season has been used as a preamble?
Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.
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