Warning: This story contains major spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episode 8. Please proceed with caution!
After five seasons, seven years, 40 episodes, and four Emmy Awards, Prime Video’s anti-superhero drama has flown off with a series finale that’s equal parts devastating and heartwarming.
Ultimately, what showrunner Eric Kripke wants people to take away from The Boys is that “hope is possible.” However, “it’s really hard, and it requires great sacrifice,” he tells Gold Derby. “I think that’s as strong a message to end the show on as any we could think of.”
The last episode, titled “Blood and Bone,” was directed by Phil Sgriccia and written by Judalina Neira and David Reed. It debuted in select movie theaters Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. local time and streamed Wednesday at 3 a.m. ET/midnight PT on Prime Video.
The finale wraps up all of the show’s long-running storylines, most of them in bloody fashion. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) finally murders Homelander (Antony Starr) after Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) uses Soldier Boy’s (Jensen Ackles) blast to strip the show’s big bad of his powers. Hughie (Jack Quaid) shoots and kills Butcher to prevent him from releasing his supe-killing virus. Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) throws The Deep (Chace Crawford) into the ocean, where he is impaled by an octopus tentacle. And President Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) is impeached soon after her husband, Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), loses his head.
To Kripke’s point, the last episode is also full of hopeful scenes. Hughie and Annie are having a baby that they’ve named Robin in tribute to his deceased girlfriend, whose shocking death opened the series. Kimiko moves to France to honor the late love of her life, Frenchie (Tomer Capone). And Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) gets married and becomes a father figure to young Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti).
Read on for our complete finale postmortem with Kripke, where he reveals everything from the hidden Easter eggs you may have missed to the Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) cameo that didn’t happen. The showrunner also explains why he’s not worried about Elon Musk seeking revenge over a satirical character based on the SpaceX CEO. And Kripke also teases what’s next in The Boys universe.
Gold Derby: What scene from the series finale are you most proud of, and why?
Eric Kripke: Ultimately, I think it’s the final Butcher-Hughie scene. It’s just so stunningly acted by both of those guys, Jack and Karl. And it’s sort of secretly what the show’s always been about. The fight against Homelander is at one level, but the conflict between Hughie and Butcher has always been the secret primary conflict. It finally plays out with Hughie fulfilling the role that Butcher brought him on the team for in the beginning. The kid you met in the first episode is now somebody who can throw a couple solid punches at Butcher in the last episode. Showing his growth, it brought together so many things that we’ve been layering in for so long. It was really satisfying, and the way the guys played it exceeded my expectations.
Why was it important to kill off Butcher, and that Hughie was the one to pull the trigger?
That was always going to be the thing. Besides Robin getting run over in the pilot, it’s one of the more faithful things from the comics that we’ve done, and that was something we had the advantage of. I loved that their final moments together were intimate, just the two of them as Butcher dies. It was always going to be that, because Butcher was not going to stop. One good thing about Butcher is he was aware of his sociopathy, and he intentionally brought on someone to externally be his conscience. He had that with his little brother, and now he had that with Hughie. It was crucial that he knew he was going to go too far, and he knew he wasn’t going to stop, so he brought Hughie on specifically to stop him. These were the roles that they had set themselves up for seven years now.
Hughie naming his and Annie’s future baby Robin was a nice wink to the first episode. Tell us about that choice.
That came from David Reed and Judalina Neira, who wrote the episode. They pitched it to me, and I loved it, and then we pitched it to Jack, and I think Jack teared up. What I love about that particular scene and moment is the amount of Easter eggs in there that are about the early days of The Boys. There’s obviously his electronics shop, there’s his jacket, and there’s Annie’s costume, which is white and gold. Next door is Tony Cicero’s pizzeria, where they spent the second episode. It’s this notion of nature is healing, and everything is going back to normalcy — but normal, by no means, means perfect.
In the final scene, Hughie is looking upward, and he sort of smiles. How did you decide on that being the last moment we would ever see in The Boys?
Like I’ve been saying from the beginning, I find this show hopeful, and hope is possible. But it’s really hard, and it requires great sacrifice, and it requires astounding amounts of failure before you can get to success. That’s how the world works, in my view, and they went through a lot to get to that point. Again, it’s not perfect. She’s throwing up, she’s fighting with her mom, but they have hope. Having a baby is a really major expression of hope for the future, and Hughie watching her fly off is hope that they’re going to be OK. It’ll require a lot of work and sacrifice, but they’re hopeful they can get there, and I think that’s as strong a message to end the show on as any we could think of.
You had a post-credit sequence showing all of the crew members through the years. Did you consider also doing another one with any of the characters?
No, that was always the crew. What happened was, during our wrap party, they cut together a shorter version of that piece, and I really loved it. We were never going to have any mid-credit sting or anything, because the show’s over, and those characters are retired. The actors, obviously, and rightfully so, get the spotlight. But we’ve had an incredible amount of the crew that have been there the entire time, and they work so hard, 14 to 15 hours a day, every single day, to make this show. They deserve their flowers as much as anybody, maybe more.
There’s a character that’s similar to Elon Musk who gets dragged into outer space. Are you worried at all that Elon might come after you like he’s coming after The Odyssey?
No. [laughs] I mean, I think it’s hilarious the way he’s coming after The Odyssey. So, if Elon Musk wants to come after us with whatever points he’s making, that’s totally his call.
Can you confirm whether Kimiko still has all of her powers?
She continues to have Soldier Boy’s blast powers as well as her own powers, that is true.
Were there any cameos that you wanted for this final episode that didn’t work out for any reason? For example, maybe Queen Maeve?
I would have loved to have had Maeve. I was in conversation with Dom. We still email once in a while. She’s mostly retired from acting, and her schedule didn’t work out. It was all a very friendly, non-controversial thing. I was like, “If we wrote it, would you do it?” And she’s like, “I’m kind of out of it, and I’m busy, and unfortunately I can’t, but send everyone my love.” That was sort of it.
What’s next for The Boys universe?
Vought Rising comes in the first half of ’27. It’s good! We’re about three weeks away from picture lock, and then all the VFX has to be done. It’s smart and twisty and noir-ish and really fun, so I hope people dig it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Be sure to check out Gold Derby’s full The Boys Season 5 coverage:
