Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: the boys

The Boys: Another Case of a Self-Inflicted Series Finale Spoiler?

After a possible self-inflicted spoiler about Soldier Boy's (Jensen Ackles) fate, did the same thing happen to Homelander (Antony Starr)?

Here's what we know about the series finale of Prime Video and Showrunner Eric Kripke's The Boys: the war between Homelander (Antony Starr) and Butcher (Karl Urban) will reach its final act. Beyond that – especially since the final episode wasn't sent out early to critics – everything else is just gossip, rumors, and speculation. Kinda. See, here's the thing about the finale. Since it's such a mystery, we really can't make any assumptions based on what happened during the penultimate episode. We also can't make assumptions based on what happened in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comic book series, because the Prime Video series began to diverge from the comics early in the first season and never looked back. So when Kripke drops some serious intel on Soldier Boy's (Jensen Ackles) role in the big finale, we view that as a self-inflicted spoiler… and those are fair game (more on that here). Now, it looks like we have a serious case of self-inflicted spoiler "Deja vu" – but before we get to that, we're throwing on the "MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!" sign and throwing down an image spoiler buffer before a deep dive into details.

During an interview with Collider that went live earlier this week, Kripke covered a lot of ground, offering insights into this week's episode, the upcoming series finale, and what the future could hold for the "The Boys" universe. Near the end of the interview, Kripke addressed having Gen V characters involved and noted that we've seen hints of just some of the themes that could be explored with those characters in the future. To make his point, Kripke drops this line into the conversation: "Like those are all hints of what we were planning to do for our season 3, our notion was like their story was not over just because Homelander's dead." Again, it might not seem like much of a spoiler since Kripke mentioned previously that the Butcher/Homelander story would come to an end – but there are any number of ways that could be interpreted.

The Boys: Eric Kripke Feels "A Fair Amount of Terror" About Finales

During Sony's "Creator to Creator" podcast, Kripke and Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) had a chance to share what life is like as a showrunner, and if there were two people who have the resumes to have this conversation, it's Kripke and Ryan. Beginning at around the 33:50 mark in the clip above, Kripke reveals his mindset in terms of crafting a series finale that remains true to the show's creative vision while satisfying the faithful viewers. "I am in a fair amount of terror about a series finale," Kripke shared. "You can count in one, maybe two hands, the truly great series finales… the graveyard is literally filled with terrible series finales."

Kripke continued, "How do you tie up the stories? How do you do it in a way that is emotional and satisfying? How do you do it in a way that creates — frankly — the illusion that some detail that you dropped in Season 1 or Season 2 is now suddenly coming back to pay off?" He continued," You could have the greatest show for years, but if you stiff that ending, and that's what's sending everyone out in the parking lot, they go, 'Oh, maybe that show wasn't that good'."

Regarding series finales that hit and hit hard, Kripke shared what he learned from writers and how they approached the lead-up to Breaking Bad S05E16: "Felina" (written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan). "'Breaking Bad,' to me, is as good as a show gets, and I was able to ask some of those writers, I'm like, 'The way you tied everything together, how did you do that?' And they said, 'Oh, we had just a list of loose ends on our board that we had no idea what to do with them, that we would keep compiling over the seasons. And then when it came time to do the final season, we would just start checking them off of like, how do we pay them off, cuz we're gonna look like geniuses because the Season 2 storyline becomes this.'"

During the fifth and final season of Prime Video and Showrunner Eric Kripke's The Boys, it's Homelander's (Antony Starr) world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are imprisoned in a "Freedom Camp." Annie (Erin Moriarty) struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher (Karl Urban) reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. Set to join them are Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Jensen Ackles, Cameron Crovetti, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In addition, Daveed Diggs, Mason Dye, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, and some other folks you might just recognize are also joining the final run.

The Boys is based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, who also serve as executive producers, and was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Phil Sgriccia, Michaela Starr, Paul Grellong, David Reed, Judalina Neira, Jessica Chou, Gabriel Garcia, Ori Marmur, Ken F. Levin, and Jason Netter also serve as executive producers. The Boys is produced by Sony Pictures Television, Amazon MGM Studios, with Kripke Enterprises, Original Film, and Point Grey Pictures.

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