Here is my problem with The Boys finale. After five seasons of buildup, watching Homelander laser people in half for looking at him wrong and Butcher destroying himself for one shot at revenge – I wanted a bloodbath. And somehow, the memes that came out of the finale were more satisfying than the episode itself.
The Boys season 5 finale, titled “Blood and Bone,” is not the worst finale ever made, but it is one of the most frustrating ones to sit through. The show threw out every method the Boys had spent seasons chasing to kill Homelander, botched the execution of what remained, and delivered an ending that felt like the writers suddenly remembered they had a show to wrap up.
The Boys finale traded chaos for commentary and lost the plot doing it
The writers wanted Homelander’s final moments to mirror the fall of every real-world tyrant who spent years terrifying people, only to crumble into a sniveling, pathetic mess. He is stripped of everything he thought made him God, and dies as a depowered man with a crowbar in his skull.
People watching this show have spent years watching real leaders abuse power with zero consequences. The symbolism of a tyrant losing everything and begging for his life in the end is not lost on me. I understand why a lot of viewers found it satisfying on that level, but when you spend five seasons building a monster and then quietly defang him to make the ending work, the symbolism stops feeling earned.
Let’s talk about the scorched earth promise that Homelander and Butcher made back in The Boys season 3. The pact was to raise the stakes until one of them was left standing in the rubble of everything they burned down together. The posters leaned into it hard, showing Homelander lording over a burning Earth. Key visuals had Butcher walking over the ruins of Vought Tower. I was ready for absolute apocalyptic chaos.
When the hyped showdown finally arrived, it took place entirely inside the Oval Office, a far cry from the scorched earth apocalypse we were promised. Showrunner Eric Kripke has since confirmed that a post-apocalyptic wasteland was never going to happen and that he always wanted something more intimate and character-driven. While that is a valid creative choice, you cannot spend seasons building up the hype and then hand fans a crowbar fight in a government office.
The show forgot its own rules
There is also the sheer logic collapse of how Butcher and his team even got there. The show spent episodes establishing that Vought Tower was impenetrable due to its heavy security and supe presence. Yet somehow, walking into the actual Oval Office with a sitting president-god on the premises was apparently no problem at all.
Homelander knew they were coming and assigned what felt like a handful of Secret Service agents to hold them off. Where was his supe army? Where was the manic, overwhelming response you would expect from a man who had literally just declared himself god on live television?
The wasted characters hurt more than the weak fight did
Starlight was the face of the entire resistance against Homelander, but nothing says “final battle” like benching your most powerful resistance symbol on a beach to fight a fish man while the actual showdown happens without her. Deep had already been rejected by the ocean itself, but Starlight had no way of knowing that. So why would she fly him to a beach where she is surrounded by water, which is his element, and far from any electricity source that fuels her own powers? It made no tactical sense either.
Speaking of people who deserved more, Sister Sage had real potential because of her superintelligence. I thought the show was setting her up as the real puppet master, a villain smarter than Homelander in every way that actually mattered, pulling strings nobody else could even see. Instead, she spirals into depression, gets depowered by Kimiko, and ends up going to Harry Potter World in Florida, completely at peace with herself. What a waste of a perfectly good character!
Gen V getting cancelled before its third season, and then having its surviving characters shoved to the sidelines in the very season that needed them most, is a separate tragedy. Marie Moreau is described in the show’s own logic as Homelander-level powerful. She had blood-bending abilities that could have changed everything about that final fight. Instead, she got a few lines and a bus out of town. So I don’t understand why the writers built a trump card and refused to play it.
And then there is Soldier Boy. Why would an arrogant, deeply resentful man who does not even like Homelander hand over a vial of V1 to him, just because it is apparently “what Clara would have wanted”? However, the show never explains it. Maybe Vought Rising, the upcoming Boys prequel, will give us more context on the Clara Vought angle. Nevertheless, that scene has already spawned a flood of memes online, and I will be honest, I enjoyed those memes considerably more than I enjoyed the finale itself.
Mother’s Milk got the rawest deal of all when it comes to unresolved arcs. For context, MM’s entire reason for being on this team can be traced back to Soldier Boy. As a child, he watched Soldier Boy hurl a car into his family home, killing his grandfather and other family members. So when Soldier Boy ends up frozen back in Vought Tower at the end of all this, still very much alive, you would expect MM to do something about it. The revenge arc was right there, but the writers ghosted it completely. On top of that, MM takes in Ryan despite the two barely interacting this season.
The Boys deserved a better send-off than this
The Boys was never just a gory superhero show. It was supposed to be a cultural mirror that made people uncomfortable in the best possible way. Instead of going out as that show, the finale fumbled so badly it became the joke rather than the one telling it.
Fans are not quoting the finale’s emotional beats or its political symbolism online. They are making memes and comparing the finale to Game of Thrones and Stranger Things in the same breath, and not as a compliment. It is truly disappointing that after five seasons of holding a mirror up to the world, the finale could not even hold itself together.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
