TV showrunner and creator Eric Kripke had a plan: five seasons of superhuman feats, fantastical mysteries and men with chiselled jaws going toe-to-toe in some of the best TV of the 21st century.
There’s only one problem. That never happened.
That’s because when he eventually decided it was time to finish his series Supernatural, the studio had other plans. Instead, another showrunner came on, and it continued for 10 more seasons in a run that was occasionally criticized for gilding the lily if you’re being nice — and jumping the shark if you’re not.
So as his current show, the Amazon Prime superhero satire The Boys, releases the first two episodes of its fifth and final season today (with the last dropping on May 20) Kripke is just glad to be able to say it’s really the end.
“All the credit to Amazon for letting me do it. They could have just as easily said ‘No, we’re going to keep it going — whether you’re with it or not,” he said in a recent interview with CBC News. “They really respected that I wanted it to end. I’m really happy to go out on top.”
WATCH | The Boys Season 5 trailer:
That’s not to say it was an easy decision. Launched in 2019, the critically lauded comic book adaptation found great success in alternately entertaining American audiences, and holding a funhouse mirror up to their actions.
Because following as it does a corporation of corrupt superheroes and the guerrilla group aiming to expose and take them down, Kripke’s series was always deeply committed to saying something about the fracturing state of American society and politics.
That, Kripke says, wasn’t easy to walk away from.
“Look, politically, I have a lot more to say,” he said. “But in terms of the characters and in terms of … what the primary structure of the show is — it had to end.”
That’s because, as that early experience with Supernatural taught him, how a show ends can be more important than anything else. That’s especially true for The Boys, because, regardless of the series’ intentions to mirror and criticize the increasingly depressing realities of modern life, it is, at its heart, a story about two people.
Here, Kripke says, that’s Homelander (Antony Starr) and Butcher (Karl Urban): a fascist sociopathic “superhero” and the anti-hero vigilante bent on bringing him down at all costs.
In a ping-ponging battle that started back in the adult comic series the show was based on, Kripke says it would always come down to a head-to-head between the two.
Since the beginning, they’ve operated like “two planets moving on a collision course towards each other.” And Kripke’s not coy in admitting that if that’s what his audiences are hoping for, that’s what they’re about to get.
“I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that, eventually, Butcher and Homelander are going to fight,” he said.
It was both inevitable, and the reason Kripke was so intent on finishing the show at the five season mark. In his mind, even one more season would have made that battle feel artificially and pointlessly extended.
The trick, he says, was figuring out how to keep that finale surprising to even readers of the original series (“Obviously, we deviate from the comics a lot, and the finale is no exception,” he hinted) while still giving fans what they want.
“If I hadn’t given that to the audience, they’d have said, ‘What the f–k man,’ ” he said. “But I had to give it to people in a way, and have it happen in a way that they hopefully don’t see the outcome coming.”
‘Maddening and absurd and ridiculous’
In terms of how people will receive that finale, he’s still a bit unsure. Especially given how strange and absurd the reality he’s attempting to lampoon has started to feel.
“I can’t control how people are going to respond, or whether they get it,” he said. “I can just point out what about the world I find maddening and absurd and ridiculous.”
Some of that worry has to do with the satirically evil villains — including a literal Nazi — occasionally being interpreted as heroes by the very types of people Kripke aimed to criticize.
But at this point he says, he’s fairly hands-off. As the real world becomes more absurd than a “show about superheroes and exploding genitalia,” he sayd, all he can do is let his points land where they may.
“If that means that some people are gonna think Homelander is somehow some kind of hero — one, I can’t control it. And two, I don’t know what to say to it,” he said, pointing out how the character kills a child early on and “only gets worse from there.”
“If you look at that guy and you think that’s your hero, I don’t know what to say, outside of, you know, you should take a hard look in the mirror.”
In terms of the cast, they have their own hopes for how fans think of the series once it wraps.
“The interesting thing about this show is it speaks to political nature throughout history,” said Black Noir actor Nathan Mitchell, a leading Canadian performer in the series, about The Boys‘ political commentary.
“You can see that manifest in so many different points of history. And I think that’s one of the reasons this show comes across as so poignant and, ultimately, timeless.”
In Urban’s case, his primary concern is that the audience is entertained — even though, he says, “there’s gonna be a lot of tragedy.” And while the cast is “super proud” of what they’ve made, he says they’re also ready to “stand back and hand the show over to you guys now. It’s now yours.”
And trying to predict their own legacy, other cast members hope the show keeps prompting viewers to ask themselves important questions.
“When you see someone ambitious to a fault, you can decide to resist that or you can decide to hook your wagon to them for your own play at power,” said Susan Heyward, who plays Sister Sage.
“I hope people see the show and they go, ‘Where am I on that scale? How much am I capitulating to power? How much am I resisting?’ “
When it comes to what Jessie T. Usher, who plays A-Train, expects fans to think of the final episode’s grisly end, it’s simple: “Shock and awe.”
“I want them to watch it, be shocked and kind of take it in in silence,” added Karen Fukuhara, who plays Kimiko Miyashiro. “[Be] in shock for a day, and then have them go back to episode one and rewatch.”
