'The Boys' has ended. What are your thoughts?
I was pretty disappointed by the entire fifth season. The show has been floundering after season 3, when it was clear that the natural climax of the story was post-poned because they couldn't handle a show without Homelander.
There's a number of issues that I have with S5, starting with the pacing. The episodes are paced incredibly weirdly. We spend a lot of time on things that, given the show is in its last season, really shouldn't be the focus. New B-side superheroes are introduced and take a lot of focus away from the core protagonists who's stories we are supposed to be finishing up. There's a whole haunted house bottle episode. There's a 5 min sequence of two new villains sniffing each other's asses because they're animal themed in the penultimate episode. The consequence of this is that the actual climax is incredibly rushed and dealt with in all of 30 minutes. There's a whole storyline that's introduced with a stronger superhero drug that makes you immune to the virus the Boys are cooking up to kill Homelander, and he takes it and then within 2 episodes they just find a new dumb way to kill him. It reeks of upping the stakes without a good reason.
Another issue is how cheap everything felt. There's a distinct lack of set-up shots and extras. Most of the time, it's named characters sitting in a closed room, talking at each other. If there's action, it's just a fist fight with maybe some dry-wall punches. The entire climax of the show is confided to a single room's decor getting torn to shreds and that's while evil superman is getting killed. There's a chase sequence in ep 2 which made me laugh out loud because of how stupid it looked. In this high stakes situation it's just people jogging down roads.
I do feel for the show because for something written pre 2024, they got outpaced by reality on the satire. But that doesn't absolve you from dogshit dialogue that cannot stay away from crass words and sex jokes. All the time. S1 was raunchy and gory at times, but it was timed well and balanced out by genuine, normal conversation. The word fuck loses all it's fucking meaning if you fucking put it in fucking front of every fucking other word. Ignoring even that, the writing still sucks from start to finish.
I'm happy it's over and that I can let this franchise rest. I stuck with it because S1 was really good. I'm sad that a show which had such a clear through line from S1 onwards with the Boys killing their way up the Seven was turned into, well, whatever happened in seasons 4 and 5.
First, I really want to make a meme of that guy a few seasons back that was eating his own ass, and make it about all the people hating on the show.
Don't get me wrong, criticism of the show is absolutely fair and valid, but good lord the internet loves to circlejerk around hating on the same thing. It seriously becomes some kind of strange tribalistic social ritual. It's just an endless sea of everyone desperately trying to one up each other's hate by finding a new detail to hate on so they can feel like a part of the group.
Like Annie and Hughey naming their kid Rose. Like Rose got murdered, they didn't just break up. I've been unfortunate to know several people who have lost their significant other's to things like cancer or car accidents, and I've been around as they've started dating again, and they still love their passed away SO, and their new SO is perfectly understanding of it.
The only people who just hate their ex's or their partners ex's by default and without good reason are emotionally immature insecure teenagers who lack the emotional depth to realize that the concept of widows, widowers, and people remarrying or dating after a death of a significant other, actually exist.
With that out of the way, I was pretty underwhelmed. I don't think it was awful, it was no Game of Thrones Finale or Stranger Things Finale, but "underwhelming" is a pretty apt description in my head. I don't hate the ending and I'm pretty content with it, but it was no Avengers Endgame with me at the edge of my seat rooting for the characters like a sports show. And then again, not everything has to be amazingly satisfying perfection, sometimes ok is good enough, so I'm not upset at all.
Any fanbase can get toxic fast, especially when it's a whole subreddit obsessing over the same thing. I think it's even worse for The Boys. They had a legitimate problem with rape denial so much so that the mods added a disclaimer to the side-bar that yes, Becca was in fact raped by Homelander.
I think the moder iteration of the internet, fueled by algorithms, only makes this worse in general. It's so easy to build a following as a creator by just relentlessly shitting on media and from there it's only a small step into right-wing ragebait grifting.
I think her name was Robin, but that's irrelevant. I agree with you that people getting enraged about that is insane. They're even calling her Hughey's ex, which is like, not true. She died while they were in a relationship. There's so many legitimate criticisms to be levied against the show and season 5 in particular, and these guys pick the one that's completely irrelevant to the story and also actually okay? It's so weird.
I felt, by the 500th cock and balls joke, that it was written incredibly poorly. I pulled up a scene from S1 on youtube and the difference in pacing and styling is drastic.
Oh so you're telling me Frenchy's eulogy that was like 5 minutes of non-stop asshole jokes didn't fit the scene? Wow! Shocker! Who could've guessed?!
(Not the writers)
It was so tiring. They really overshot it with the crass humor.
I was only able to get a couple episodes into S4 before I dropped the show and nothing I have heard since then has encouraged me to come back. As seems to be the consensus, the first 3 seasons are great and I'm fine pretending that's all that exists.
It's definitely a slide down the entire time. If you managed to get away, you didn't lose much.
Same boat here, watched to season 3, then we got rid of prime and just never bothered watching 4 or 5. From reading some synopses of the episodes, it sounds like the plot itself has overarching themes/stories that could work if executed right, but it sounds like that didn't actually take place in the episodes.
S1 is very likely my favorite season of any show all time. Was telling anyone who'd listen they needed to check it out. Thought it was going to be a modern day Watchmen, where it was going to be a lot less "parody super hero show" and a lot more about how fascists the concept of Ubermenschen are and commentary on how a capitalistic, celebrity-driven society gives them power.
But like @Wafik (edit: and it turns out a lot of others in this thread lol), I dropped the show after Season 3
I thought S2 was a drop off from S1 but was still fine, but I rolled my eyes at the "girl power" scene. It basically became "The Boys vs MCU, who did it better" and I don't think being compared to the MCU is a good thing. Like I said I'm not interested in watching a Deadpool knockoff, and that's basically what the show became.
I though the start of S3 was really strong. But the end of it is what swore me off from the show. A big reason I liked the show so much was how much tension was created in S1. But I've come to learn just how many shows abuse that - start the show off being incredible tense, but then never actually have any pay off for that tension again after the start. The fact that absolutely nothing happened at the end of S3 showed that it was just another product that wasn't going to lose characters. IIRC the only two people that died at this point was Black Noir (a background character that all we knew about was that Homelander respected him...then never got the payoff on why) and Solider Boy (who was introduced just that season). And hell from the little I've seen both of those characters are back anyway? Going straight up Marvel.
It's so hard to take any scene seriously when you know nothing is absolutely going to happen. I stopped there because it was a lesson I learned from GoT - that scene where Arya gets stabbed after being a dumb and is then just magically okay the next episode showed how little respect the writers had for the audience. The second they stop respected you is the second it's time to quit the show. While I'm not the biggest fan of Breaking Bad, it's very much what it does right: keep the tension throughout the entire run.
It also bothered me how much the show became a lot less a critique on society and a lot more of satirical political commentary. I thought how on the nose it was was insulting, and that if you're adjusting your output to the lowest common denominator than it's not something I'm going to continue to be interested in. I also think satire generally does the opposite of what it's setting out to do, by giving it attention that isn't outright negative (since it's at best making light of the situation by turning it humorous, and at worst giving something for supporters to be turned on by)
I was still hopeful that there'd be a reason to check out the rest once it was finished, but I'm glad with the choice I made. It really is a massive problem with television, how much is just made up as it goes along instead of understanding what story you're trying to tell from the beginning. It's all Lost again and again. I think what also gets ignored is how much writers change in TV shows...like yeah, obviously it's going to change if the people writing it are different. Woo for miniseries who actually get it right lol
This was my sentiment as well. I think the last episode I watched was the one at the... pseudo-conservative convention? I felt rather ill at ease after that episode, not because of the violence or anything but just the treatment of the situations. It came across as more "haha we're laughing at you" which just makes the left double down on "they're all idiots" and the right double down on "they hate us because we're right" and who does that benefit more really?
There were lots of other issues too but the writers nearly agreeing with the far right by legitimizing their thoughts with humour just made me feel really uncomfortable.
I didn't really watch it beyond that - I just lost complete interest in the show and no desire to finish it either.
I'm glad that it is finished, not so much because it got bad but more because the showrunners got to end it on their own terms rather than Amazon dragging its lifeless corpse through another few seasons to milk it dry. Were there a whole bunch of underutilized characters and side plots that just ended abruptly with not much point? Yes. Did it feel like they just cranked up the gratuitous violence and gore even more to compensate? Yes. Would it have turned out better if Eric Kripke didn't feel forced to raise the stakes in the story to make sure this was the last season? Who really knows. But I had a good enough time with it, and I didn't hate the ending, and honestly that's alright.
It was a Supernatural boss fight. Pushing and tables breaking and dramatic looking and low budgets. I am fine with it too, because I loved supernatural, but I'm also fine with people hating it because it was kind of embarrassing.
I honestly wanted homelander to become a bagboy or something, and then gets hit by a car or something that would've put him in someone else's shoes.
But if the thru line is that Homelander is like an unfettered Trump, then the design was to get our dictator to debase himself on camera which is supposed to be what we're to take away as the solution to these dictators? Having them grovel?
Maybe. But all I am saying is we could've taken this fight to space or at least through a couple of mountains before ending up in the white house playing WWE.
I feel like Season 5 had like 0 budget or something? Because what do you mean they built up Gen V for 2 whole seasons only to do nothing with their characters? And the huge final fight was in one room. Anthony Starr did a good job overall, but otherwise it's kinda crazy that S5 peaked at episode 1....
It lost me around season 3 with that scene. As a show it was always some really poor attempts at humor and never exactly subtle in its satire etc. So that scene was the point that I realized it's no longer the show for me - I was never the target audience at all to be fair - and it's absolutely no loss to me to stop watching it. Looks like I was 100% right lol
I'm curious which scene you're talking about? It's been way too long for me to remember. I'm guessing the Herogasm scene?
I started to describe it but then I deleted it again because I don't want it in my comment history :')
Obviously content warning ahead: link
Everything I read about the show vindicates my decision to stop watching in season 4, after reading that one interview.
Yeah, I get it.
We sure love it when sexual assault is hilarious coz it happens to men. /s
The last season was just a huge disappointment to me. I expected it to go all out. Big fights, lots of death and carnage, cities destroyed etc. Instead, we get a small brawl in the Oval Office. Homelander was suddenly a lot weaker and slower and The Boys were suddenly a lot stronger. It didn't make any sense.
The virus and V1 turned out to be entirely pointless.
The only good thing about season five is A-train's redemption arc in my opinion.
Just caught up on it last night. The death of Homelander wasn't the emotional culmination I pictured when I watched season 1, but ultimately it was a very unsubtle political screwball black comedy and I enjoyed it for what it was. It didn't let me down the way GoT did.
If I had to script doctor it, I'd say that they fell into the trap of personifying the abstract evil into one evil person and then treating the problem as solved when that person is killed. They gestures at the idea, with Stan Edgar getting back in control of Vought and the whole question of how Ryan might turn out, but in the end the gravitational pull of Homelander pulled in the whole narrative. I would have had Sage's plan to take the White House at the end of season 4 kill Homelander instead of Neumann. So the final-season villain becomes a Vought-controlled White House with Homelander as a martyr, still executing a purge of dissidents.
It's a pretty apt way to put it.
Ironically enough Butcher was the only person thinking at that level and they didn't have the balls for him to execute his plan, probably because in true IRL Vought fashion, they wanna keep the door open for more spin-offs.
I'm just gonna say it --- the second Daveed Diggs shows up in a show it starts a rapid decline. I like the guy -- but it just seems to be how it goes.
I stopped watching this final season after the camp breakout. It got too much into go here, do this, go there, do that, tension, tension, repeat.
It was really fun for the first few seasons.
I absolutely loved Season 3, and then immediately felt like Season 4 fell flat on its face. The ending of S4, especially didn’t make much sense. It was all so frustrating and felt like they were just biding their time for another season. I watched the first three episodes of Season 5 and finally gave up. I have read summaries of the rest of the season and I’m glad I gave it up.
I never felt the show was brilliantly written or anything, its political commentary was always super on the nose. But in S4 and S5 they stopped trying.
I dont really "watch" the boys because half of it is crude sex jokes and toilet humor, but I more or less follow the plot just from a bunch of clips on youtube.
I thought the actors for Homelander, Soldier Boy, and to a lesser extent Oh Father were all great and really carried the show with their performances even when the plot was lackluster. Its disappointing they didnt do more with Daveed Diggs.
I thought that Jensen Ackles character was going to have a bigger role in the finale, or rather any role. It felt like he really overtook the show near the end and was the main guy people were enjoying watching, and then they just put him on ice for the 4th time and thats the end of it. It almost feels like they wanted to keep him in reserve in case they wanted to make a sequel series, but at the cost of having no resolution to his character.
It was also pretty out of left field how he flipped on a dime because of a supposed romance with Stormfront when he was initially portrayed as being in a relationship with Crimson Countess. It felt like a contrived backstory to justify switching sides at the end even though he had no real reason to.
Homelander never really approached the levels of interesting he was in scenes like the Vought Lab reunion. I guess it was nice that he went out like a chump, but I think everyone was expecting him to have a more destructive meltdown before being killed off. I think it was a mistake to lean into the Trump allegory, he was a more interesting character when he was just a monster that was the product of the screwed up way he was raised and conditioned. The more they tried to make him a joke the less compelling he became.
I havent mentioned the protagonists because none of them were really interesting and I dont particularly care about any of them.
I have not gotten to 5 yet and will be watching it mostly so I can discuss it with a friend.
The thing that's odd to me is that The Boys did what Marvel originally did and got "the essence" of what was good about the plot and ironed it into something better.
Yeah childish superman is terrifying, but lets give it a little more depth than that, yes the comic is a shock fest, so we'll keep some of that but still try to tell a relevant story. Lets drop some of this comic book logic (clooooooooooooones!) and try to wrestle into something coherent.
Obviously it blew up because of that, and like marvel, they obviously then tried to pivot into "make a franchise!" and lost the tight focus that made it in the first place. Especially silly was going from "okay we have shock scenes because it's part of the material, but not the only focus" back to "LOL GROSS AM I RIGHT!".
I haven't read any comments or spoilers for season 5, as i'm very curious to see if they take the final good part from the comic and deliver.
I watched season 1, and I think I watched some or maybe even all of season 2? The last thing I remember seeing was some lady that quasi-raised Homelander getting exploded or set on fire or something. I remember thinking “Homelander a weird guy, and Butcher is no saint” and then I just never got back to it, and I didn’t feel like I was missing out as I heard about developing plots. Nothing made me go “huh, I should get back into that.”
Season 1 & 2 were amazing. It was so focused on telling a great story, even some conservatives liked it.
At some point it started leaning so heavily into political commentary and the shock value of the original comics... that telling a good story became somehow secondary.
It's crazy how one of the compliments of the early seasons was that it severely toned down the comics...then for some reason they decided to go after just shock value like the comics
Season 4 had many major problems for me. Season 5 is much better than that, but probably not as good as Season 3.
The way the story wrapped up is fairly satisfying. I have many things I could nitpick about. Agree with a lot of what was said in the OP including that pacing is a big issue.
I found the show exhausting after a few seasons and stopped watching it. In fact, I’ve been slightly going out of my way to see spoilers for the final season to keep myself from feeling that I have to finish it.