‘The Boys’ Series Finale Is A Crushing Disappointment

The Boys

Credit: Prime Video

I’m of two minds when it comes to the series finale of The Boys. On the one hand, there were some very entertaining moments throughout. On the other, this should have been so much more than what we got. The final showdown between the Boys and Homelander should have been the biggest, craziest fight of the series. Instead, well, we’ll get to that. Spoilers ahead.

Taken on their own, there were some nice moments in the finale, “Blood & Bone.” Hughie’s final confrontation with Butcher was fitting and hit all the right emotional beats. It always had to go down like this, I suppose, with those two. And the denouement was nice, if a little sappy. A happy ending for most of our heroes (sorry Frenchie) was warranted. Unfortunately, Vought also got a happy ending, with Stan Edgar back in charge as “interim” CEO. That actually feels pretty realistic to me, given how consequences work for the rich and powerful. Remember the housing crisis and all those bankers who went to prison after? Yeah, me neither.

But so much of this episode, like the rest of the season, felt lackluster and undercooked. For instance:

Oh Father vs The Boys

The entire Oh Father bit was so weird. The season had set up two important threads with the super-powered preacher. First, he was clearly doubting Homelander’s rise to godhood. He supported him, but the more unhinged Homelander became, and the greater lengths they had to go to convert the faithful, the more Oh Father seemed to doubt. There was a real opportunity here for him to push back in the end, grasp at a shred of redemption, and get killed by Homelander.

The other, and much more recent, setup was the special ball-gag Ashley got for him. It made no sense that MM would use this on Oh Father, not knowing it would stop his super-shout. It made even less sense that it would work, since MM didn’t even strap it on Oh Father and simply held onto it. Surely the shout would have just blasted it out of his mouth along with both of MM’s arms or hands. Besides, wouldn’t it have made more sense for Ashley to do this instead of MM? If that’s the setup, you need a scene where she gets him gagged and depowered.

Starlight vs The Deep

Likewise, while it’s fitting for Starlight to take down The Deep, the way this happened was puzzling for several reasons. In order to dispatch him, she flies him to a beach. This is A) far from Starlight’s power sources since there doesn’t appear to be electricity around and B) right next to the Deep’s power source. She would have no way of knowing that the sea had turned on The Deep (and the sea is always right). If there had been a point where she said, “Hey, you’re free to go” and pointed to the ocean, it might have justified her bringing him here, giving him an option to flee. Or they could have fought while she was flying and she could have just accidentally dropped him as they flew over the water.

Worse, this pulled Annie out of the fight at the Oval Office, leaving it to just Butcher and Kimiko and later Ryan when he showed up. This, of course, is where the biggest problems with the series finale occur.

The Final Showdown

The Boys make it into the White House and while Hughie and MM take on Oh Father, Butcher and Kimiko break into the Oval Office while Homelander gives a super creepy speech to the American public about being god. At first, it’s pretty much what he planned on giving, but when he reaches the end of the speech, the line about being their father throws him into a despondent mood. He rambles on about becoming the lord of ashes after he kills everyone, living for eternity alone.

Into this comes Butcher with his crowbar and a big fight ensues. Only, it’s not that big of a fight. It’s entirely contained to the Oval Office, for one thing, and the room itself barely takes any damage. A couple walls get smashed and maybe a desk.

Also, Homelander, despite having injected himself with V1, is apparently weaker than ever. His laser eyes no longer cut through his enemies, they just knock them back. His super-speed (which was about the same as A-Train’s) is not speedy enough to avoid Butcher’s tentacles. While old Homelander could slice Kimiko in half with his laser eyes, now they just knock her down. Maybe the radiation experiments made her stronger in other ways, but that’s never really explained.

Side-note: The thing that takes down Homelander isn’t the supe-virus or Soldier Boy or anything we’ve been following all this time, but rather an experiment Frenchie and Sister Sage completed in the previous episode with absolutely no build-up whatsoever. This is bizarre. All I could think at the time was how this subplot needed a lot more time to actually work. Talk about a deus ex machina.

Why not have a second vile of V1 or something that made Kimiko more powerful along with the radiation? At least then it would have tied into the season-long quest to get V1. Alternatively, they could have used the supe-virus to weaken Homelander (it took out Soldier Boy for a few hours).

A better final showdown would have looked something like this: The Boys arrive at the White House only to see Homelander fly out and head down to where a huge group of his fervent believers have gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial. As they rush after him, they see him go full scorched earth, tearing into the people there with his lasers and unleashing hell. As they rush to stop him, a number of his lackeys get in their way, forcing them to fight lesser supes first, while he massacres the crowd and destroys the monuments and generally goes totally insane.

One thing leads to another and all the good guys convene against Homelander. The Boys but also Marie from Gen V and her crew. The following showdown is a desperate fight that takes every single one of them working together. It takes place in the sky, on the ground, in the Reflecting Pool. The full array of Homelander’s V1-level powers are on display, and only with Marie’s blood-bending powers and Kimiko’s Soldier Boy blast (assuming this had been established over the course of the season rather than the last minute) are they able to stop him.

And what about his final moments? He begs and pleads for his life. He snivels and cries. He offers sexual favors. He’s as pathetic and weak as you’d expect him to be without powers, and then Butcher sticks a crowbar through his forehead. I didn’t really mind this, I just didn’t think it was earned in the end. We should have seen his full madness and absolute power and only after a genuinely insane fight where all seemed lost should he have broken like this. A part of me also wanted to see him arrested and put on trial rather than killed, but I suppose Butcher had to get his revenge in the end.

Scattered thoughts:

• I don’t like that they had Terror die in his sleep, or die at all for that matter. It’s supposed to be what causes Butcher to take the virus back to Vought Tower, but I think Ryan’s rejection could have served that purpose. Terror seemed much too spry and healthy to just suddenly die. Maybe if he’d died because of a supe’s actions this would have made more sense.
• Sister Sage got off way too easy. She’s depowered by Kimiko and then just . . . goes to Harry Potter World in Florida all happy as can be. This is a woman who set in motion all sorts of genuine horrors, one of the most evil characters in the show, and she gets exactly what she wanted (or at least a version of what she wanted). She should have had some comeuppance in the end.
• I mentioned bringing the Gen V characters into the final fight up above, but honestly they should have been integral characters across the season. Instead, they got a couple lines and were shoved to the side. Marie is one of the most powerful supes in existence, Homelander-tier, and Starlight (a pretty low-powered supe as far we can tell) just tosses her and her friends aside, when they needed every bit of help they could get. I mean, if the Boys had failed it’s not like Marie or the people they were taking to Canada would have been safe. They really let down those characters and fans.
• What about Soldier Boy? Did they all just forget about him? He’s the last V1 supe at this point and just because he’s frozen in Vought Tower doesn’t mean he’s not a threat. They should have blasted him while they were at it. Did MM just forget his own revenge arc or something? The writers clearly did.
• Speaking of poor planning, Oh Father’s entire security plan was to trap the Boys in the tunnels and then shoot them with bullets that can’t penetrate Butcher, Kimiko or Starlight. Beyond the whistle, that’s it. No sleeping gas, no extra supes to come help take them down. What if they hadn’t gone that way? It’s just such lazy writing!
• Also, Hughie and Annie are naming their first kid Robin? After Hughie’s dead girlfriend? I don’t know about you, but in my experience you don’t name your kids after your exes, dead or alive. But okay. Maybe they can name the next one Kevin.
• Bigger picture: The Boys was better when it was a parody of celebrity culture and corporate power rather than an on-the-nose satire of MAGA. I’m not a Trump fan, but there’s only so far you can go with that kind of political satire, and everything got worse the more the show went in that direction. Homelander became far less scary, the butt of every joke, and we lost a lot of tension and momentum along the way. I don’t exactly expect subtlety from this series, but come on.

Like I said above, there were entertaining moments in this finale and even some nice emotional beats. I chuckled a few times. A few times, like during Frenchie’s funeral, my chuckles turned to eye-rolls. This wasn’t downright unwatchable like the Stranger Things series finale, but it should have been so much more epic and exciting. The actors did a great job for the most part. Antony Starr was perfect as Homelander right up until the bitter end. Karl Urban was terrific as Butcher. Jack Quaid and Karen Fukuhara and Chace Crawford were all great this episode. But the writing just wasn’t there.

Everything felt like a foregone conclusion. Nothing felt surprising. Homelander was hardly a threat. We spent far too much time on Soldier Boy this season for basically no reason. We spent far too many episodes on filler, when they could have been building to an epic showdown that actually went full scorched earth. It’s hard to please everyone with a big series finale, sure, but this felt like the kind of finale that won’t please anyone.

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