SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “The Boys,” now streaming on Prime Video.
After seven years, the Boys have finally won their battle against Vought — but it came at a steep price.
In a climactic battle that fans have been waiting for since the show’s series premiere, Butcher (Karl Urban) and Homelander (Antony Starr) have a years-in-the-making, bloody face-off. With Homelander’s powers removed, thanks to Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) blasting him with radiation, Butcher gains the upper hand and stabs Homelander through the brain with a crowbar. However, there’s not much time to celebrate the villain’s death. Butcher then goes rogue and attempts to spread the supe-killing virus from the top of Vought Tower, but Hughie (Jack Quaid) intercepts him. The two friends argue, but Butcher has gone off the deep end and wants to kill every last supe. In the end, Hughie shoots and kills Butcher to stop him from wiping out the population. Those two deaths are arguably the biggest of the entire series, but the bodycount doesn’t stop there in the finale.
The episode starts with the Boys paying their respects to Frenchie (Tomer Capone), who left a raunchy last will and testament behind for his friends. Even though he was gone, Frenchie still had a major impact on the Boys. His and Sister Sage’s (Susan Heyward) radiation experiments on Kimiko proved to be a success. Kimiko tests out her new ability by removing Sage’s genius-level IQ and the Boys then set their sights on Homelander, who’s announcing to the world on Easter that he’s a god.
Homelander has an awkward reunion with his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), who’s hiding out in a cabin and wants nothing to do with his dad. He then prepares his Oval Office address. The Boys sneak into the White House, with an assist from Ashley (Colby Minifie), and battle the Deep (Chace Crawford) and Oh Father (Daveed Diggs). Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) kills the supe pastor with a ball gag, and Annie (Erin Moriarty) flies off toward the ocean with the Deep. After the aquatic supe sexually assaulted her in the series premiere, Annie finally gets her revenge when she blasts Deep into the water and he’s killed by a giant squid.
Back at the White House, Butcher, Kimiko and Ryan battle Homelander in the Oval Office. Kimiko hesitates and can’t bring herself to blast Homelander with radiation, but she sees a vision of Frenchie who encourages her to do it. With Homelander neutralized, he grovels at Butcher’s feet and pathetically begs for his life (and offers to “suck your dick” and “eat your shit on live TV”). Getting justice for his late wife Becca, Butcher finishes off Homelander with his crowbar.
As news of Homelander’s death spreads, it’s later revealed that Ashley was impeached as president and Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) has returned as Vought’s interim CEO. The Boys celebrate their victory with cigars, while Butcher has a sad reunion with his stepson Ryan. Even with Homelander dead, Ryan doesn’t want to have a relationship with Butcher and asks to go their separate ways. Butcher then discovers that his beloved dog, Terror, has died. Heartbroken and alone, Butcher steals the Boys’ supe-killing virus, installs it into the Vought Tower sprinkler system and prepares to launch it. Before Butcher can pull the trigger, Hughie confronts him and the two fight. However, Butcher sees a vision of his late brother Lenny, who resembles Hughie, and freezes. Hughie uses that moment to shoot Butcher in the chest and save the world’s supe population.
In the end, the Boys reunite and say goodbye at Butcher’s grave, which is next to Becca’s. Mother’s Milk gets re-married to his ex-wife and takes in Ryan as own son; Kimiko gets a dog and travels to a French café as Frenchie had wanted; and Hughie and Annie are expecting a child named Robin (named after Hughie’s original girlfriend who was killed in the series premiere). The new president, Robert Singer (Jim Beaver), offers Hughie a job at the department of superhuman affairs, but he declines. He’s started his own tech store business and Annie is back to crime-fighting, and she flies off on a mission as the series fades to black.
With Variety, creator Eric Kripke breaks down the finale deaths, more spinoff ideas and how “Gen V” Season 3 would’ve continued the story if it hadn’t been canceled.
Jasper Savage/Prime
From day one on the show, was this always the plan for how it would end?
Yes and no. From the very start of the series, we knew that this was Hughie and Butcher’s ending. It’s not totally one to one, but I think we have a reasonably faithful ending of Butcher and Hughie that’s similar to the comic. So we had a target to aim for, but that was built in from the very beginning. It was just so satisfying to finally do it because we’ve been laying thread for that for seven years. We 100% knew that Butcher was going to kill Homelander with a crowbar. I’m not sure we totally knew where or when or how, but we just knew that was going to happen. For the rest, I would say about the middle of Season 3 — just by talking through the characters — we had enough of a sense of where we wanted everyone to roughly end up. In the beginning of this season, we spent five or six weeks really landing the end of everyone’s character arc.
When did Kimiko de-powering Homelander come into play?
It came out of the first five or six weeks of that room, so we knew it from the beginning of the season. I remember walking Karen through the season, and I’m like, “I have some bad news, and good news. The bad news is Frenchie dies.” She started crying. They live these characters so long that they attach to them. I said, “But the good news is, while you’re not the one to kill Homelander, you do take his powers away.” She was like, “Oh, that’s awesome.” We knew we had Soldier Boy, this Chekhov’s gun of his power and we didn’t want Soldier Boy to do it.
It was really important to us to do the things that the audience was waiting for, which is the Boys take on Homelander and Butcher gets the final moments with him. Then it was just about doing it for real. We never wanted to release the virus on the planet and destroy every superhero. So, how do we take down somebody as powerful as Homelander? Then we were like, “We do have this power and we have Kimiko, who has regenerative properties that make her an ideal test case to see if they can recreate it. Frenchie couldn’t do that on his own, let’s make sure Sage is there because she could do it.” Once you figure out it’s going to be that, followed by this very satisfying Butcher versus Homelander fight, both of them powerless, you start building it based on the puzzle pieces you have.
I thought Homelander begging Butcher for his life before he died was perfect. Were there any lines that didn’t make it into the final cut?
No, as usual, that came from me and Antony brainstorming and kicking it around. His line that he pitched was, “I’ll eat your shit on live TV.” That’s so funny, I’m putting that in. People have said to me, “In his final moments, would Homelander really be that weak?” Yeah! We’ve said all season, “Take away your powers, and what are you? You’re nothing.” If you go through history, most strong men, when they’re finally dragged in front of some form of justice, immediately break down and they’re the biggest pussies on the planet. When you drag Saddam Hussein out of that spider hole, suddenly he is not the powerful person that you thought he was, because these guys are weak, insecure men.
How did you want to balance Butcher’s tragic death with the happier endings for Hughie, Annie, Mother’s Milk and Ryan?
It’s this notion that I’ve been saying from the beginning, which is I see the show as hopeful but it doesn’t come without pain, sacrifice and failure. Nothing will ever be perfect. There are still superheroes running around, Annie’s been throwing up and fighting with her mom, but when families pull together there’s hope and a chance to be happy. When you quit waiting for someone to come in to save you, and you get to work saving the people you love, you can have a happy ending. That’s what we’re showing with Hughie and Annie and MM, who spent all season thinking he was never going to see his family again. Now he’s remarried his wife, he has his daughter, he has a new son and is going to raise Ryan, which is what Butcher asked him to do last season. Even Kimiko, as sad as it is that Frenchie’s not there, she’s reaching some kind of a peace. Nothing’s perfect and everything’s hard, that’s life. But if you keep getting up every time you’re knocked down, you can find happiness.
This may be the end of “The Boys,” but the universe is continuing with the “Vought Rising” prequel. Are there any threads from the finale, like Stan Edgar returning as Vought’s interim CEO or Hughie and Annie’s child, that we may see explored in the future?
Had we done more “Gen V,” we were very clearly signaling in the finale that the torch was being passed from Annie to Marie for the good supe you’re following. I would love to find a way to continue that story. We’re in the very embryonic stage of seeing if there are any ideas that we’re really loving. It’s like all these loose nukes. You have Stan Edgar basically disavowing relationships with superheroes, and so these people who have been coddled and protected this whole time are now suddenly out in the wild. Who tries to be Jessica Jones, and who tries to be a super villain? It leads to some really fascinating places that I would love to see, and the hope was we were going to put the “Gen V” kids in the middle of all that. But hopefully we still will, and we can bring some of those characters into some of these stories that we’re talking about.
Would that have been “Gen V” Season 3 or a new continuation of “The Boys”?
Without giving the specifics away, yes, “Gen V” Season 3. The plot challenges they would have had to deal with were almost this metaphor of being a young adult, which is like you’re out in the world and there’s no infrastructure or jobs anymore. How do you build a future for yourself, and how do you deal with certain superheroes are just choosing to be villains?
Looking back at the entire “Boys” run, is there anything you’d do differently?
No, we landed where we wanted it to land. Did some stories work better than others? Absolutely. There’s no TV show that is perfect and every storyline is perfect all the time. But all of those stories got us to this place. I’m happy with where it landed. It’s been the best professional experience of my life. If I could do it over, I would do it again.
This interview has been edited and condensed.