If you’ve read “The Boys’” comics, you know it ends darkly for both the heroes and villains. There are fountains of bloodshed, heartbreaking betrayals, and unspeakable atrocities committed in the name of resolution. Hearing the Prime Video adaptation’s showrunner Eric Kripke promising “lots of death” and asking the audience to not get attached to their favorite characters, it sounds like the fifth and final season of “The Boys” is about to reach similar heights, right?
Well, not really. Granted, season five is chock-full of the series’ shock and awe and lots of blood and bone, but in the end, it never reaches the heights of the “scorched earth” standard that was set back in season three.
Season five unfolds during Homelander’s mission to slowly make the United States of America his own. The Boys, on the other hand, are initially scattered with barely any time left. Once Homelander learns that superheroes injected with the first iteration of Compound V, called “V1,” are immune to Butcher’s anti-supe virus, it becomes a deadly race to see who nabs it first. Should Homelander acquire it, everybody’s worst nightmare will happen: his immortality.
The fifth season begins phenomenally with its first episode, which truly captures what an endgame season should feel like. It begins in a way that will have your jaw on the floor, and ends in the same way, sandwiching all the bloody, gruesome violence and shenanigans in between. However, maybe the first episode sets the bar too high, because the season begins to lose steam soon thereafter.
Understand that this season is still entertaining–it’s just suppressed from its fullest potential. You will enter this season expecting a supe-apocalypse, when in reality, this season feels like what would transpire before that occurs. Still, the existent ultraviolence, debauchery, and twists don’t make up for the sheer lack of brutality that would create true risks and suspense. As much as I would hate to see my favorite characters die, given the high stakes, it would have made sense, and I would have been content with it.
The biggest offender of this notion was episode four, which sent The Boys to their first location to find V1. Coincidentally, Homelander also shows up, and said location has an environmental hazard that causes everybody to be hostile, resulting in The Boys fighting each other. Realistically, Homelander should’ve heard them squabbling, went straight to them, and slaughtered everyone. How he didn’t, I don’t know.
On that note, this season also really struggles with pacing, but in hindsight, it wouldn’t have really made a difference if the pacing was sharper. The plot winds up falling flat with redundancy, making you wonder what the entire gripe about V1 was for. Instead, parts of this season felt like preparation for the upcoming prequel series, “Vought Rising,” and it didn’t do a superb job arousing my interest, either.
Speaking of spin-offs, threads this season including anything from “Gen V” contributed next to nothing. The most important thing any of the characters did was literally drive refugees to the Canadian border. That’s disappointing, because what major developments occurred in “Gen V” season two could have had a huge significance in “The Boys” season five. Now that the series has been cancelled, everything in “Gen V” felt like it was for nothing.
But while this season’s pacing both drags and rushes, season five tries to develop its characters a bit further for both sides of its equation.
For The Boys, everybody is under great stress due to the threat at hand, as they scheme and figure out how to kill Homelander. The biggest difference in anyone was Kimiko, who now talks, but some of the things that exit her mouth feel explicit just for the sake of shock value. Although, her ability to express herself proves strong in her romantic relationship with Frenchie.
As for their leader, Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher initially seems like a lion that nobody should dare pull the tail of. After the end of last season, his own team has trust issues with him as they wonder how much of his humanity is left. That sense of doubt instantaneously wanes after the first half of the season. And while his ability to sprout tentacles was cool to see, he isn’t as violent with it like someone as ruthless as him should have been.
For the Seven, it was interesting to see how even the villains are uncomfortable near Homelander but still feel the need to ally with him. We get to see emotional complexities within characters like Firecracker and Sister Sage, and also the strained father-son dynamic between Soldier-Boy and Homelander. Besides Soldier-Boy, the only other newcomer to the opposition is Oh Father–an evangelical supe played by “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs with super-charged charisma–who assists Homelander with his ascension into godhood through the promotion of totalitarian religion.
Antony Starr’s Emmy-worthy performance as Homelander is still as unnerving as it ever was, as he teeters between an egomaniac believing he is a god and a psychopath thinking he is God. The problem is: Homelander has been like that for the past few seasons, and he doesn’t explode like you would expect–not even at the very end, which is downright disappointing.
However, nothing is more important about this season than the finale. I am happy to report that despite this season’s shortcomings; I was satisfied by this season’s ending. Sure, maybe it doesn’t live up to the meaning of “scorched earth,” but it has all the necessary confrontations, wraps everything up on a good note, and will definitely satisfy fans of the comic series since it slightly mirrors its final two volumes.
“The Boys” season five isn’t bad, but it will undoubtedly let you down. It’s painful to admit that, especially for one of the most highly praised deconstructions of the superhero genre ever made. The core of the entire series centers around humans trying to outsmart and kill a highly stronger opposition, and this season makes that notion both too easy and too slow. The start and end are both spectacles to behold, but the bloody trip in between isn’t as diabolical as it could have been.
RATING: