There is always a lot riding on series finales. Eric Kripke repeatedly said he was nervous about landing this one for The Boys after 5 seasons, but also that he was grateful to be able to end it when they wanted to. Having lived through the contentious Supernatural finale after 15 seasons (which I loved), I was worried FOR him. And of course there are plenty of people posting that they didn’t like The Boys series finale either, but there are also plenty who did – I’m relieved that I’m one of them. I think it went the way it should have gone, even if I might not have enjoyed 100% of it – it made sense and felt like an earned ending, which I thought was also the case for Supernatural.
I enjoyed all the hoopla too (something Supernatural definitely did not get in 2020!) Many fans went to see the episode in the theaters it played in all across the country and much of the cast and crew attended the red carpet festivities in LA before that screening. Their excitement was contagious, so even though I didn’t go to one of the screenings near me, I felt even more anticipation than usual after watching the cast and crew smiling and proud of what they’d accomplished.
As a Supernatural fan, it also warmed my heart to see so many #SPNFamily in attendance. Eric Kripke (creator of Supernatural and showrunner of that and The Boys) finds good people in the industry, whether actors or directors or crew, and works with them on multiple projects, which means there are always familiar faces. I love that these people love continuing to work together, and also still have such a soft spot for the little show that brought them together. Phil Sgriccia, who directed so many episodes of Supernatural, directed many episodes of ‘The Boys’ including the finale – he and Eric Kripke looked like the proud papas of the evening. Chris Lennertz was one of two composers for the entire run of Supernatural, and he’s the composer for The Boys too – so talented and also just a great guy! Many actors have Supernatural and The Boys in common – at the screening there was of course Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester and Soldier Boy), and also Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir) and Rob Benedict (Splinter) who were on both shows (and Rob’s partner Ruth Connell of Supernatural too). It was so nice to see them all celebrating together!
Yes, we needed that photo of Jensen Ackles on the red carpet.
Now, for the episode itself. Major spoilers ahead, obviously.
I was actually glad that Soldier Boy was not going to be in the finale – I have complicated feelings about the character partly thanks to Jensen Ackles playing him – and I was oddly glad he was safely tucked away in stasis while everyone else fought to the death. (Yes, I said safely. I admit I didn’t want him to die. I also admit I should want him to die.) If you, like me, are a Soldier Boy fan, check out the very in depth chapter I wrote in ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes’ all about the fascinating character, and also read Jensen Ackles’ exclusive interview chapter all about how he crafted his complicated character – info at the end of the article.
It’s also fitting that we return to a focus on Butcher and Homelander for the finale, wrapping back to where we started this journey. The opening reminds us of their scorched earth pact: In the end, only one of us left standing.
The Boys
The Boys start the episode discouraged and mourning Frenchie, especially Kimiko.
They give him a funeral which is very The Boys, alternating between Frenchie’s scribbled out words about being closer to all of them than his own blood, that they are his family, and he’s at peace because he knew Heaven on Earth in Kimiko’s arms – and then noting that he’s seen every one of their assholes (with details of how and when) as the proof of how well he knows them. I’ve said it a lot, but the 14 year old boy humor always throws me out of the scene a little, and this was no exception. It’s the show, though, and I guess I’m in the minority since it has characterized it since the start.
Many fans were upset about the abrupt cancellation of The Boys spinoff Gen V, and hopeful that those characters might play a pivotal role in The Boys finale. They do appear, but were kept on the periphery, to some fans’ disappointment. (It seems we may see them in the two other The Boys universe properties in development, however.) Annie asks Marie, Jordan and Emma to help the influencers they saved, but they’re reluctant. As Emma asks, “the ones who were just with the guy whose hog they were dying to suck yesterday?” As I’ve written before, I like Emma and I miss her – that one line was excellent. Annie tells Marie a story intended to inspire her not to give up – about how she idolized Queen Maeve and then met her and was disappointed. She was by then checked out, bitter. Annie says she swore she’d never let that happen to her, but it did – but not anymore. Now it’s about keeping the light burning as long as they fucking can. Don’t meet your heroes, she advises Marie.
Marie: I don’t know about never meet your heroes – worked out kinda okay for me.
It was a sweet little moment. The Gen V three drive off, headed to Canada to help the people they can, leaving the universe open for the Gen V characters to return in another iteration of the universe.
Sage joins Kimiko at Frenchie’s grave and taunts her about letting people think she was the stray that he took in when it was really the other way around, accusing her of keeping Frenchie like a pet, on a leash, until finally Kimiko gets enraged enough to do the chest blast thing.
It works – Sage is no longer super smart.
Sage: It worked! I’m fucking stupid like you guys!
She thanks Kimiko, saying her brain was always so loud and now it’s quiet. Relatable, to be honest.
Now that they know Frenchie’s plan worked, and as Homelander is about to announce his Godhood and then turn his thought police loose on any “non-believers”, they decide to use a secret tunnel to the White House that they have blueprints of to take him out.
Butcher: One last go?
Everyone nods; Kimiko signs.
Butcher: I’ll take that as a yes.
Except for the recently de-suped Sage.
Sage: Fuck no, you all are dumb as fucking shit, Homelander is gonna kill you. I’m going to Harry Potter World in Orlando. Who’s with me? (No one). Sage out!
She smiles as she walks away. An unlikely survivor but honestly, like I said, sometimes she’s relatable. You go, fangirl.
The Boys set out, Hughie reassuring Kimiko she’s not just a weapon to them, no matter what Butcher says. Butcher carries his signature weapon, the crowbar that also appears in the comics.
Homelander
While the finale doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on the psychological storytelling that I most enjoy on The Boys, we do get some, especially when it comes to Homelander. I honestly do not understand how Antony Starr does not have multiple Emmys by now. He is absolutely captivating – and makes me feel the most unsettling mix of emotions every time he’s onscreen.
This episode picks up right after the last one, and we can see how shaken Homelander is by his near-abandonment by his father and what he did to “prevent” that. I’m still so affected by that scene, a powerful embodiment of the toxicity of abusers who “love” the people they feel they need in their lives and refuse to let them leave, no matter what they have to do to make them stay. Of course those great lengths only make them feel worse – more unloved, more vulnerable to eventual abandonment. The show makes quite clear how desperate Homelander is to be loved, and it’s not romantic love that he craves the most, it’s familial love. He was horribly abused, never allowed to have a family or to experience parental love, and it is the organizing principle of his life trying to get it – and constantly failing because he doesn’t actually know how to GIVE love at all, let alone receive it.
So of course Homelander goes to see his son. He offers Ryan a floor at Vought Tower, to come and go as he pleases. It has the same desperation as his attempts to buy Soldier Boy’s love, building him an amusement park and throwing him a hollow victory parade every night that he doesn’t want. It’s all he can think of to do for these two people who are the only family he has ever had – and it’s all mixed up with his desperate violent attempts to force them to love him or at least to stay with him. It’s the most reasonable he’s ever been with Ryan, trying to give him some space and autonomy, but it’s too little too late after the vicious beating he gave him the last time. Ryan asks why he gives a shit about him.
Homelander: Because we’re family, we have the same blood. Soldier Boy doesn’t matter, you and I matter. I know you because I am you. And you’re me.
It’s sad because he does want that. He wanted it with his father and he wants it with his son. All his life he has desperately wanted family and never had it – the times he might have gotten something like it, he was too damaged not to destroy it. I find it tragic even as I know, just as Ryan does, that Homelander will always be too fucked up to be safe around anyone, no matter now much he “loves” them.
For a cruel second, he thinks he’s gotten through to Ryan, who calls him Dad.
Ryan: Dad?
You can see on Homelander’s face how much that means, paralleling the moment that Soldier Boy called him ‘son’. But once again, it’s not enough to keep them from abandoning him.
Ryan: Get fucked. I am nothing like you. You’re the most powerful person on Earth and you’re a lonely piece of shit throwing tantrums when you don’t get what you want. More power is only gonna make you more lonely, and scaring people into calling you God doesn’t make you God. And deep down you know that.
Ryan is telling the truth; Homelander is incapable of hearing it.
(And wow, does that little speech have real life parallels that other people in power are never going to be able to hear either…)
Homelander is hurt, tears in his eyes, but this time he leaves without hurting his son, saying “it’s okay, you don’t know what’s going on, it’s okay. But you will.”
He’s in a way spared both of them, his father and his son, but also in a completely fucked up way that was always going to backfire on him.
Down the hall, Ashley and “the first Gentleman” O Father get horny over a new titanium ball gag she gifted him as he works on writing Homelander’s speech about becoming the new God, saying he didn’t expect so many people would doubt it. Ashley can’t figure out if he’s serious or not about being a believer, and Bashley refuses to talk to her or read his mind for her, much to her dismay. She tries casually feeling him out, but he keeps appearing to be on board for real.
Later, O Father meets with a white dude in a baseball cap who proposes that Starlighters work at his company as “non-compensated employees”.
O Father: So, like, slaves?
It’s Gunter Van Ellis, world’s richest man, with 17 children, an amateur astronaut…. As soon as I realized who this was parodying (is it still a parody if it’s just a reflection?) I burst into laughter. Priceless. O Father insists to Homelander that they need the ruling class of America to support them, but Homelander scoffs, asking is this guy a believer or just scared of him?
At that moment, the Deep joins them, calling Homelander “your Eminence” and suggesting he needs a crusader like The Deep. While he and O Father argue about who the Crusaders actually were, Homelander casually walks outside with Gunter and they blast into the sky. He comes back alone.
Homelander (shrugging): He’s an astronaut, I took him to space.
I burst into laughter again.
Homelander: I don’t need him. And I don’t need perverted fish fuckers who debase themselves endlessly for mere drops of my affection.
He tells Kevin exactly how much he despises him. The Deep is crushed.
And then it’s time for the big announcement, after Homelander has essentially burned almost all his bridges, so caught up in his own megalomania that he truly thinks he doesn’t need anyone (a reaction to his awareness that everyone has abandoned him which is just too painful for him to take in – thus, it must be that he doesn’t need them anyway).
Homelander addresses his “fellow Americans” from the White House desk, but he’s having flashbacks of his visit from Madelyn and his choking out Soldier Boy, clearly still traumatized by that abandonment.
Psychics roam auditoriums full of people listening to the speech, making notes on their iPads, ready to judge nonbelievers. While it was a little silly that these powerful psychics looked like corporate America’s worst organizational consultants with their handy dandy iPads, nevertheless I found that part more terrifying and horrifying than anything else on this show – it feels horrifically plausible, that even when you’re casually watching something on TV you might be in mortal danger for thinking the wrong thing — and that’s something I never thought I’d say unless I was talking about George Orwell. And FICTION.
Homelander compares himself to Jesus (on Easter no less) but says that Americans deserve a god who doesn’t die. Then he gives a speech that also felt like it could actually be given by some of the people in power right now and once again that’s not something I ever thought I’d say.
Homelander: Recently I was visited by an angel bearing the gift of revelation. I was awakened to my true purpose – to save all humanity. To be the second coming. But in a way I’m really the first coming. (He literally cannot tolerate thinking he’s not first, not best, at anything – does this sound familiar?) America, I am the lord, your savior. I am your God. I’m going to usher this world into a new golden dawn. Your prayers will be truly answered when you visit Homelander.church. And all I ask in return is love — pure unadulterated love.
Sadly, Ryan was right – that is what he wants. And he pretty much ensures that he never will get it. Everyone around him is doomed to fail him and then pay the price.
One of my quibbles about the finale is that the urgency of this episode relies on really feeling the sense of impending danger that Homelander’s speech and the psychics’ monitoring is supposed to create. We need to believe that countless people are about to have their heads exploded because they aren’t “true believers”. THAT is truly terrifying, but the narrative doesn’t set it up very convincingly. We may have needed to see more of it in this episode – they started a little of it the episode before, when the test audience was attacked for not believing, but it was a self contained little room and the supes doing the killing were relatively easy to take out, so the stakes never felt as high as they should have.
Only One Left Standing
Security tells Ashley there’s a break in, but O Father is unconcerned, expecting Butcher and The Boys and prepared for them. Sure enough, The Boys encounter a door that isn’t on their blueprints and are suddenly trapped while a terrible supe dog whistle goes off, incapacitating all of them who are supes. Ashley to the rescue though – as security takes her to “a secure location” she runs away from them, cursing “fuck my fucking life”. Bashley chooses that moment to return, and Ashley frees The Boys.
Ashley: He’s in the Oval Office.
Butcher: Lead the way.
Ashley: Fuck no, but I’m sure you’ll be fine – it’s that way. Break a leg!
Ashley is another character I can’t help but be fond of at times. Sure, she’s out for herself and can be terrible, but she has always struggled with that, always seen things clearly and hated herself when she went along out of fear, at least a little bit. Not enough to not do it repeatedly, but…
The Boys encounter The Deep crying – but instead of learning any lesson from Homelander’s brutal rejection, he thinks the universe is rewarding his loyalty by bringing Starlight there for him to kill so Homelander will “finally see.” He attacks her, Annie tackles him and out the window they go. They land on a beach and I think we can all see where this is headed (otherwise why the hell would they have landed on a beach??) Annie tries to convince him to cut it out, asking him why he’s doing this for a man who wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire? Says she knows he’s scared and that Homelander terrifies him, but he doesn’t respect him. Don’t you want to be free of him, she asks?
He can’t hear it. Instead he blames her for him losing everything and refuses to take any responsibility, attacking her again. They fight and he seems to be winning, but she gets back up and kicks him in the balls (fittingly considering their first meeting when he assaulted her) and then sends him flying – right into the water. All the fish surround him as he says he’s sorry and pleads for his life. A tentacle penetrates him up his ass because of course it does and comes protruding right through his mouth, killing him. It’s pretty on the nose for him forcing her to open her mouth for him, and it is once again 12 year old boy type violence and a very Freudian fear of being penetrated and thus emasculated which shows up in this show repeatedly, but it does feel like poetic justice.
Actually the best part was Annie’s face because she had no clue he’d terminally pissed off all aquatic life.
Annie: WTF?
The Deep’s story was also a tragic one. Kevin was a sensitive boy who was seriously traumatized by being turned into a supe and initially was actually trying to save the fishes and the oceans. A cautionary tale of what happens when you are too scared to stand up to a ruthless dictator and willing to compromise all your ethics to stay in his good graces. And when you’re not too bright. Ahem. Hits pretty close to home, doesn’t it?
Also, were they foreshadowing The Deep’s gruesome open-mouthed death with the popcorn bucket??
After Annie and Deep leave, O Father bursts into the room (literally) saying he just wants Butcher and the girl, the rest can go in peace. Hughie tells Butcher to go get Kimiko to Homelander, “I got this.”
Butcher is skeptical, but Hughie assures him, you have your thing, I have mine. He uses his very human tech skills and shoots the fire extinguisher system and creates a blinding fog that allows Butcher to get away, Hughie luring O Father to go after him by imitating Butcher. He confronts Hughie, but just then MM appears and uses the new titanium ball gag just as he’s about to use his superpower sound. It ends up exploding his head – all over Hughie.
(Hmmm. My first thought was did Ashley know it might do that if it turned out she had to deal with her beloved husband being on Homelander’s side against her?)
Thanks to Hughie’s diversion, Butcher and Kimiko make it to the Oval Office, where Homelander has gone completely off the rails in his speech, saying that those who accept his truth will be welcomed into a land of milk and honey.
Homelander (reading the cue cards): For I am your….
He falters, unable to read the word “Father”, the word too loaded for him because of both Soldier Boy and Ryan. His face darkens, as he thinks of their betrayal, rage taking over.
Homelander: But no matter what I do some of you will never love me, never believe me… And to such heretics, I offer oblivion! When this world is cold and dead, I shall remain, eternal, God of the ashes.
The listening public look horrified.
Butcher bursts through the wall.
Butcher: Daddy’s home.
Homelander honestly almost seems glad to see him, saying he was starting to think Butcher wasn’t going to hold up his end of the deal.
Butcher: Scorched earth.
An all out fight ensues, Homelander using his laser eyes, Butcher his tentacles, throwing each other across the room, the gathered public watching on a camera knocked sideways. Kimiko can’t make the chest blast happen but luckily Ryan shows up and joins the attack. It’s more betrayal than Homelander can take and he turns on his son.
Homelander: You little piece of shit.
Ouch. Toxic masculinity has come full circle. That’s what Soldier Boy said when he met his grandson and felt betrayed; it just keeps going and going, and it’s tragic.
Kimiko hallucinates Frenchie and tells him she can’t do it, she doesn’t feel rage, she just feels sad. He puts his hand on her heart and says rage is not what makes her strong, which didn’t entirely work for me in the midst of the battle, but it works for her and she begins to glow. Butcher and Ryan hold Homelander down as Kimiko chest blasts him; they all collapse.
Butcher wakes up first and then Homelander, gasping and coughing, bleeding. He tries to do his laser eyes but nothing happens, tries to fly away but just ends up jumping in place.
Antony Starr is beyond masterful in making it look absolutely pathetic and heartbreaking. He’s truly mortal, stripped of his powers, and looks more like just a terrified little boy who has done horrific things. Butcher whales on him, punching him repeatedly, saying ‘this is for Frenchie.’
I couldn’t watch actually, it was too much for me. I think it would have worked better if we’d seen more of Homelander being brutal and wantonly killing people who didn’t agree to worship him, so that the violence Butcher dealt out would have felt imminently necessary. It would have worked better if Homelander wasn’t depowered and just a human being – a horrible horrible human being but also a human being who was MADE into a monster by other arguably even more monstrous human beings. In this episode, we didn’t see him actually DO anything except make unhinged threats and sound psychotic. That made Butcher brutally killing him when he was already not a threat hard to stomach.
Homelander falls down, sobbing, saying Butcher owes him for all the times he could have killed him but let him live, then pleading, offering to give him Vought, give him a shapeshifter to be Becca. Frantic, blathering, he says “I’ll suck your dick, please – you want me to eat shit, I’ll eat shit”. Literally.
I’m guessing for some people all that humiliation and odd sexual supplication felt good, like fitting retribution for a hated villain. But honestly, the narrative has never been that simplistic and that’s what I love about it. So it didn’t feel good to me, it felt sad and pathetic and hard to watch.
Butcher kills him, stabbing him through the head with his signature crowbar, his brains spilling out, saying “this is for my Becca.”
(Not lining up all that well with the comic, I gather, which was more willing to paint Butcher as equally villainous and someone who knows the revenge was not ‘for Becca’, who would not have wanted it).
The others wake up and are joined by Annie and MM and Hughie. Butcher stomps on the still recording camera.
The Aftermath
The news reports that Homelander was deeply unwell and is now dead. Ashley tries to retain the presidency but is impeached. MM and Kimiko and Butcher smoke cigars (Kimiko says they taste like dirty cock and is that why rich men like them?) Ryan is traumatized once again; Butcher tells him he did what he had to do, did the right thing. They can put all this behind them now, he says, without powers, just ordinary blokes. Go somewhere quiet, the two of them and Terror, and start again.
Ryan says no.
Ryan: I know what my dad was and it’s better that he’s gone, but you’re not a good person either. I didn’t choose you over him. I chose myself. I’m sorry, but I don’t want a fresh start with you. I want this to be the end.
He leaves; Butcher tells Terror well, it’s just you and me now. Then he realizes that Terror has died in his sleep. The final loss breaks something in Butcher. He slumps against the wall, rage taking over his expression. He looks at the vial of supe-killing virus, having lost everything.
Honestly, this would have made more sense if, like in the comics, a supe had killed Terror. Then it would have made sense that it’s the final push that makes Butcher decide they all have to be eradicated, Kimiko and Annie be damned. But in this version, it seems that Terror just died of old age. So yes, it leaves Butcher alone and without the one creature he thinks loved him unconditionally (Homelander really should have had a dog, but we all know how tragically wrong that would have gone…) and makes him decide to be reckless, but the sudden rage doesn’t entirely make sense to me.
It does, however, make sense that Butcher just cannot stop. For a man whose existence was fueled almost entirely by revenge, it’s all he knows to do to keep going.
Meanwhile, Stan Edgar is on TV announcing he’s returning to Vought as their interim CEO and that Vought’s most profitable days are ahead of it as he turns it into a corporation that will keep supes in line. (Arguably the scariest part of the finale).
If you didn’t realize that the real villain all along was Vought, what show were you watching??
Hughie finds Terror dead and Butcher gone and the vial container empty and goes after Butcher, finding him standing where Homelander stood for so long to address The Seven.
It’s a chilling sight, full of meaning – Homelander was certainly a villain, but Butcher right now, is he the same? Fans are divided over whether it would have been “the greater good” to unleash the virus and kill all the supes, even though many innocent supes would die.
Butcher says he thought Hughie might try to stop him, but he shouldn’t have come alone. The virus is in the sprinkler tank and all he has to do is pull a trigger. Hughie tries to talk him out of it, but Butcher insists sooner or later some cunt will become the next Homelander, that they need to end the whole bloody notion of supes. (And Annie and Kimiko would be collateral damage).
Hughie tells him he’s Butcher’s canary, his Kessler, his Lenny – but that Butcher doesn’t need him, that he has a broken heart but he still has one, that he’s not a monster. I can see that they set up Butcher’s gentleness with Terror as evidence of his remaining humanity, and now that he’s gone, maybe that’s gone with it.
Butcher says he’s sorry but refuses to change his mind. They fight, Butcher overpowering Hughie and beating him up, then picking up the trigger. He looks down at Hughie and hesitates, though, looking at Hughie but seeing Lenny.
It’s like Swan Song on Supernatural all over again, when Sam was possessed by Lucifer and beating the shit out of Dean and then suddenly saw Dean and their childhood play out before him, and it allowed him to break free of the literal devil. Here it’s just enough hesitation for Hughie to grab the gun and shoot Butcher. He collapses and Hughie kneels with him, saying he’s sorry, that he didn’t want to do it, that he’ll call an ambulance. Butcher says not to bother, since it’s clearly too late.
(Now suddenly it’s the Supernatural series finale as Dean bleeds to death with Sam helpless to stop it, without the time to call an ambulance either, realizing it’s too late). Like Dean Winchester, Butcher tries to make sure Hughie doesn’t blame himself and offers him a view of himself how Butcher sees him.
Butcher: It’s all right, I gave you no choice, I wasn’t gonna stop. All the shite I put you through, and none of it made a bit of difference. You stayed yourself, no matter what I done.
That’s the point of the series, or one of them. That you can endure horrible things, mistreatment, violence, unfairness. That you can lose hope and be on the verge of giving up or maybe for a while even doing it. And you can still, against all odds, hang onto yourself. You can not give in to losing your humanity or stop caring about others. You can still be you, even if you’re changed by the trauma. You can find hope again. That’s Hughie. It’s what Annie was trying to tell Marie too.
Butcher coughs up blood, eyes teary, more uncertain that we’ve ever seen him. More human.
Butcher: I don’t know what to do.
Hughie holds Butcher’s shaky hand. In the end, he is the strong one, reassuring Butcher.
Hughie: You don’t need to do anything.
It’s a lot like Sam Winchester giving his brother permission to go, I think with tears in my eyes.
Butcher nearly smiles, looking at Hughie.
Butcher: You really are the spit ‘o Lenny.
It’s all about the brothers, isn’t it? If I wasn’t already emotional and mired in both The Boys and Supernatural feels, that would have done it.
His hand goes limp in Hughie’s and his head falls to the side, and that little close up of their joined hands made me extra emotional because it’s what happened to Dean Winchester’s hand as he died and it fell from Sam’s. I was not expecting a Supernatural-reminiscent ending and for me, it made everything a lot more painful – but also more powerful.
Like the Supernatural series finale, it also made sense. It was at least in part true to the comics and true to the complexity of Butcher’s character. He wasn’t a good guy most of the time – just like Homelander or Soldier Boy, we understood why he wasn’t a good guy, but the fact remained he could be as ruthless and violent as they could be and was just as damaged.
And it had to be Hughie who did it.
It was poetic and tragic and hit me hard, as it should have.
The End
Also much like the Supernatural finale, the very end is not hopeless and tragic. It’s hopeful. It’s finding a way to go on – whether that’s in Heaven reunited with your brother or The Boys leaving Butcher’s funeral to get on with their lives.
Hughie eulogizes him, saying he’d probably give them shit for crying over him. That he was nothing but flaws and bad choices but he never gave up hope that he could stop Homelander and he actually did it.
Hughie: Love him or hate him, he made the world a safer place, which makes him a hero.
Ryan is there, tearful. Butcher is buried next to his mom.
MM: That’s where he always wanted to be. Let’s go, kid.
Ryan leaves with MM. Annie and Hughie hold hands. They plan go to the topless steakhouse in Reno, as he promised Butcher. Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’ plays, the perfect score, as they walk away from Butcher’s grave. At the bottom it reads “Oi, fuck off you cunts”.
Kimiko goes to Marseille to eat pastries, petting a dog, smiling as she remembers Frenchie. Human.
MM remarries his wife, with Ryan there as part of the family, all happy. It’s fitting that Ryan ends up with MM, the one who started out as the family man, another who strayed temporarily down a dark path but managed to keep coming back to himself and hang onto his moral compass and his humanity. I imagine he’ll be good for Ryan.
Months later, Hughie’s phone rings. It’s Bob Singer! I squealed out loud because that means it’s Jim Beaver, also of Supernatural. Jim did a chapter for the book ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes’ in which he confides that Eric Kripke told him he’ll always make sure to have Jim in his shows. He was in every season of Supernatural and I was feeling a little sad that he wasn’t in this season of The Boys. I should have known Kripke would come through!
President Singer offers Hughie the job of heading up the Bureau of Supe Affairs since there are “V-ed up nut jobs out there wreaking havoc”, but Hughie says no thank you, he has his own start up venture. In he goes to Campbell Audio Visual store, similar to where we first encountered him in the pilot, but now it’s his. Annie is behind the counter, very pregnant. She’s wearing the colors of Starlight’s first super suit.
Her mom just called, she said, bitching about them not being married, something Hughie is ready for.
He walks her out and they stand on the sidewalk, eerily reminiscent of Hughie and Robin in that unforgettable first scene. This time nothing bad happens. Hughie says “take care of your mom, Robin” and Annie flies off as he smiles. Naming their child after the woman he loved and lost because of supes seems fitting.
It’s a full circle moment and I love that for an ending.
I thought that Annie and Hughie would survive; I’m glad Kimiko and MM and Ryan did too. And Soldier Boy, still asleep in his capsule!
For a show that was often relentlessly dark and constantly shocked me with its prescient depiction of terrifying things that are happening right now in real life, it’s a happy ending. And a hopeful one. And right now, I really want to hang onto that, even if it’s just for a little while. At the same time, Hughie’s understandable decision to walk away and not try to keep supes in line is ominous. Vought is still there, biding its time, wanting the same nefarious things it always has. Supes are still out there, with more power than any human should have. Power, eventually, corrupts. So yes, it’s a happy ending for our protagonists, but it’s far from a utopian one.
(We got a little behind the scenes reel of the crew at the end of the episode, something that Supernatural often did as well. Forgive me, this finale really did put me into my Supernatural feels – though it also packed an emotional punch all its own).
All in all, I liked the finale, and The Boys will go down as one of my favorite pieces of media (for more on why, with input from psychologists and the show’s actors, check out the book ‘Supes Ain’t Always Heroes at the link below).
I hope you feel accomplished in what you did, Mr. Kripke. You told me a few weeks ago that you didn’t think I’d be disappointed – you were right.
–Lynn
You can read more about The Boys and its
complex characters, with insights from the
actors and psychologists, in Supes Ain’t
Always Heroes, info and links at:
A satisfying finale to a complex and amazingly written series. I felt the SPN feels, too – intended or otherwise.
Probably at least some were intended, but either way, they were there for me!