The Boys Season Five: Super Uninspired

Shock and awe, my son.

So. That’s the end of a semi-era – given that there are apparently prequels and maybe more lined up to come. This season review is full of spoilers, so don't read it if you're trying to keep what's left of the surprise in store.

I've watched all of The Boys, from episode one to this finale. I saw the series begin as a comic somewhat come to life, complete with the visceral and gratuitous humor that became the trademark of the printed run. It was there to shock, and it did so in style.

The style wore off after five years. Also, some political commentary may have been integrated into the plot making some things – like the inclusion of an eccentric billionaire with a space company – nearly predictable rather than shocking, and which were not done with subtlety, meaning they occasionally jarred me out of my enjoyment of the series.

This season has been somewhat hit or miss for me. It felt like there was a lot of circling around for the next possible solution to the ultimate series goal of killing Homelander throughout various episodes. First there was the virus, then the new virus, then the V1, then recreating Soldier Boy’s power within Kimiko. All that would have made fine background had the characters evolved enough emotionally over the season, but with a few exceptions, they don't.

Character Development in The Boys: A Shortlist

The Gen V collab turned out to be a mighty bust. Marie Moreau was built up to be a powerful blood manipulator in her origin series. I could have come up with a dozen ways her power could have supported the Boys, as could the powers of the rest of the Gen V team – as containment for the fight with Homelander, if nothing else. I know it was intended to make us feel like Annie had some character development.

Frenchie to me remained Frenchie throughout the series. He became briefly bisexual at one point and he was still Frenchie. He is romantic, insane, talented and deadly. He dies romantically sacrificing himself for Kimiko. I think his passion for her was clear from the beginning. He seemed about to make a momentous change towards a wish for a peaceful life with Kimiko, and got killed before the change took root. I’m sorry his character is gone.

Sister Sage turned from a potentially interesting character to someone fairly boring. Which is I guess what she wanted. A quiet brain. She did flip sides to support the good guys, but she was totally self-serving all the way, and I don't buy her excuse this season that humans are unpredictable and that, therefore, intelligence is worthless.

Soldier Boy is now confused about life, his son, and morality. I don’t think the life he used to have holds as much interest for him anymore. It looked like he was killed by Homelander, but expected to return, and his body is kept in a tank last I saw. If there was a future series of Soldier Boy returning to life as a hero, changed into caring by these horrible experiences, I’d be there for it.

Hughie, like Frenchie, is another constant in the series and especially this season. Even when he despairs, he’s hopeful. Maybe it was just me, but towards the end I found his optimism so extreme it was almost worthy of being called a superpower itself.

Mother’s Milk says his humanity is going, but in the end, he’s the one who takes Ryan. His arc over the season has left me wanting as he just gets progressively worse and loses hope. I suspect he may have been lifted out of his darkness, but we don't get to see how.

Kimiko... started out the series silent, brought some sort of sign language into the mainstream (yay go Deaf people) but the inconsistent presentation of the character throughout the series makes it hard to see her own character development this season. At first she and Frenchie flirt with the idea of a life beyond killing. Then they flirt with breaking up. Then they realize their love is true. Then she becomes an Anti-Homelander Tank in addition to her healing and fighting skills. She loses Frenchie in the process, and her voice. Then she has to radically redesign herself to use love to activate the power of radioactive superpower removal. She departs from the team with no real words, only – bye, and then a pastry. Okay. The only force capable of taking down insane supes is definitely someone I want to take pleasure in pastries. Kimiko continues to take a lot of trauma – even to ask for it – and clearly thinks she deserves it. The loss of Frankie seems to feed that part of her.

Annie regains some of her hope, and gets pregnant. She also remains a superhero, and Hughie manages her calls for help. Of all the cast, her character seems to have the happiest ending.

Ryan actually seems like one of the most mature of the bunch, his clear negation of any connection to Butcher is a great speech, as was his assessment of Homelander. I’m glad he lived, and is now a Normal Boy. He’s going to need so much therapy.

Homelander immediately began abasing himself and begging for his life, but are we surprised? The thing you desperately want other people to do for punishment is likely the thing you yourself are most afraid of. He had opportunity after opportunity to change but stayed his course, and staying that course led him eventually to a denial of reality and a certain level of madness.

The loss of Terror was almost anticlimactic. He seems to have died of old age. Why this sent Butcher into his final kill them all rage and not the end of Frenchie, I don’t know. Terror seems to have gone peacefully.

Butcher remained Butcher till the end. I didn't like that we lost Karl Urban and we lost Terror. I don't mean in terms of the story – I just like Karl Urban. It felt right that it was Hughie that had to end Butcher. Once you save someone you’re responsible for them, and Hughie had saved Butcher countless times, by calling him back to his humanity. Part of me mourned that Butcher had never had the chance to become the dad Ryan – and maybe Hughie – clearly wanted.

There were some truly great moments in this season, despite the somewhat circular pace. A-Train’s confrontation with Homelander in the first episode was epic.

Homelander: What's so funny?
A-Train: What was I so afraid of? You are fucking nothing.
Homelander: Really?
A-Train: Yeah. Really. You're just an empty fucking suit. Take away these powers... and what are you, huh? A pathetic weak, sniveling fucking loser.

Homelander deciding to awaken Soldier Boy, also epic. The introduction of Rock Hard, and his unique powers, gross. But the type of grossness from the first and second season that made me squeamish at first is not seen as much here, and instead we’re actually seeing more gore and blood than weird powers (although Oh Father manages to die from a ball gag.) They’d already shocked everyone a hundred times and it’s beginning to pall, anyway; Gen V did quite a bit of shocking, too.

The show's best moments were never really capitalized on. What I saw this season is that once you get past the shock, you need a story. Just like Homelander without his powers, this show without shock is pathetic and sniveling, and struggles to fill the gap with plot and character development. Butcher dies as Butcher lived, Sage finally got a brain drug that didn’t wear off. Starlight regains her idealism and superhero nature. Hughie goes back to being the sweet guy holding his girlfriend’s hand. The show is over, but it feels like in some ways it never happened – disappeared, like the Deep’s body, into the sea. Karl Urban giving his Butcher grin sustained me through five seasons of watching, as did Jensen Ackles being added to the show.

That it didn't end as well as it began is something that can be said about many a television series, however, and might be more about initial novelty than any real comparison. So let's ask this: did the episode do the job it needed to? Did it answer the questions the series posed? I'd say one of the frustrating things about this season is how it seemed to be very muted in any optimism. When the episode ends Vought is still out there, superheroes are still active, and the waters are still muddy – and as Butcher himself noted before he died, all too soon there'll be another Homelander, and then what?

The show doesn't seem to have an answer for that, except for the underground vigilante partnership of Hughie and Annie, or the killing of Homelander, which seems almost tame after watching Deep getting his brain speared by an octopus earlier in the episode, or Hughie shooting Butcher, which is no surprise by the time we see it happen, because we know the kind of guy Hughie is. Which goes back to the point I tried to make at the beginning of this review: if The Boys isn't about shock and awe, well, what's left?

The other thing to consider is the inevitable Final Fight. In this episode it was between Butcher and Homelander, with some support from Ryan and the finishing blow from Kimiko. The fight itself I'd probably give a four out of five, although I thought it was strange that Homelander would change personality so quickly – I thought he'd need a little more evidence of how thoroughly he could be obliterated by Butcher. Where the Final Fight fails is a sense of true stakes-raising and epic battle, but as Butcher himself made clear by bringing a crowbar to an energy blast battle, this finale ain't fancy.

My Rating: Two out of five shockingly gross superhero abilities.

So what's your rating? What did I get right? What was totally off-base? And what did you want more of?

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