Warning: This review contains full spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episode 8!
If there’s any one complaint that can be leveled against The Boys Season 5, it’s that the series has taken too long to get to the good stuff. The back half of the season has been solid, but the road to get there was pretty rough at times. My main concern heading into the series finale was that The Boys left itself with too much ground to cover in one episode. Can “Blood and Bone” really tie up all the lingering loose ends and give us a truly satisfying payoff to the years-long conflict between our heroes and Antony Starr’s Homelander? As it turns out, yes, it can.
It helps that the finale doesn’t waste a lot of time setting up that final battle. We get a handful of scenes exploring the immediate aftermath of Episode 7 and Frenchie’s (Tomer Capone) tragic death, but after that, it’s off to the races.
Granted, this episode is definitely weakest early on, where we get an underwhelming sendoff to Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) and her friends. Reiterating past reviews, it’s very disappointing that Gen V Season 2 set up such a critical alliance between the two groups and The Boys Season 5 has done so little with that setup. Why wouldn’t Starlight (Erin Moriarty) want Marie along for the ride in this final battle against Homelander? Why wouldn’t the writers want to finally pit the world’s two strongest supes against one another? This goodbye to Marie and the gang only rings more hollow in light of the recent news that Gen V isn’t coming back for a third season. These characters deserved better.
The opening to Episode 8 fares better when it comes to Frenchie’s funeral, at least. It’s a fittingly emotional farewell to a long-running character, and a reminder that Karen Fukuhara does her best acting on the series in complete silence. Kimiko’s pain is palpable here, and that’s the best tribute to Frenchie we could ask for.
It’s here that we also get a proper send-off to Susan Heyward’s Sister Sage. Sage’s last little bit of brilliant strategy is to make Kimiko angry and unleash her newfound Supe Blaster 9000 death ray. Kimiko proves Frenchie’s death wasn’t in vain, and Sage gets to enjoy the bliss of living the rest of her life being as stupid as the rest of humanity. Win/win for everyone involved. Certainly, a more sensible plan than Sage spending decades holed up in a bunker with her books.
From there, the episode pivots to the grand showdown in the White House. There’s no shortage of drama to be found within those halls, as we see both Ashley (Colby Minifie) and Oh Father (Daveed Diggs) struggling with their mounting concern over the Homelander situation, and Homelander himself letting the whole godhood thing go to his head. We even see Homelander has moved past the point of appeasing the billionaire class when he murders a thinly veiled parody of Elon Musk. I actually wish this season had spent more time exploring this rift between Homelander and the oligarchs who think they hold his strings, in light of similar material in Season 4, but alas…
This episode pays off on Ashley’s season-long arc in a satisfying way, as she finally grows a bit of a spine and makes her stand against Homelander. Sure, she scampers off to hide before the big battle, but what more can you expect from her? The aftermath to this development is also amusing, as Ashley’s reward for finally standing up to evil is to be summarily booted out of office.
It’s a little unfortunate that Oh Father is never afforded the same opportunity. He’s clearly struggling with the gulf between what he wants Homelander to be and the reality of the situation. But, ultimately, Oh Father is killed off (in spectacularly gruesome fashion) while defending his new golden god. Not every supe is afforded a shot at redemption here.
That certainly goes for The Deep (Chace Crawford), but in this case, I wouldn’t have it any other way. If this character were ever capable of redemption, that ship sailed a while back. Episode 8 delivers a fittingly pathetic end to this cowardly sycophant. Sure, his death by vindictive sea life can be seen coming a mile away, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying or appropriate.
Back at the White House, everything comes down to one last brawl between Butcher (Karl Urban), Kimiko, and Homelander, broadcast on national TV for good measure. Here again, the episode doesn’t necessarily hold many surprises. You can pretty much call all the big beats well before they happen, from Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) showing up in the nick of time to Homelander himself getting a faceful of Kimiko’s energy blast.
But like with The Deep’s death, none of that predictability really gets in the way of a satisfying victory for our heroes. After so many years of seeing Homelander play the infallible tyrant and psychopath, it’s immensely rewarding to see him reduced to a sniveling weasel begging for his life in front of the very people he hoped to enslave. The series told us plainly that it would eventually come down to one last battle between Butcher and Homelander, and it delivers that battle. Maybe it lacks the sheer scope some fans might be hoping for, but The Boys has never really been about expensive superhero spectacle. Just goop and gore. Lots of gore.
As ever, Starr is one of the MVPs of the show’s ensemble cast. In his final outing as Homelander, he really seizes on the opportunity to play the character at both extremes – the triumphant, vindictive king and the terrified, defeated bully. There’s a part of me that wishes Homelander were forced to live with his eternal shame as a powerless loser, but a crowbar to the head will suffice. It’s a fun little nod to the comic’s ending.
That’s where “Blood and Bone” seems to reach its climax. Had things truly ended there, the series would still have a decent final episode, but I think something would definitely be missing. The deaths and betrayals up to that point are, again, very satisfying, but everything wraps up very simply and with a nice little bow. It’s all a little too neat and tidy. More importantly, the idea of Butcher getting a happy ending and riding off into the sunset doesn’t quite sit right.
That’s why it’s so nice to see that the series saves one last curveball for the very end. Rejected by his biological son and faced with the death of the last being who truly, unequivocally loved him (poor Terror), Butcher finally snaps. He can’t escape the knowledge that victory is hollow and empty for someone who sacrificed everything to get to this point. He has nothing left but one final mission. Every supe has to die.
Here, the show draws more on the ending of the comic than I was expecting, given how far the two have diverged over the years. As much as Homelander might have been Butcher’s endgame target, The Boys is really a story about the conflict between Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Butcher. Can Hughie retain his innate sense of hope after being dragged for years through the muck and mire of Butcher’s world? What happens when they reach the end of the road and Butcher himself emerges as the last and greatest threat to the world? Episode 8 ends by addressing those questions head-on.
The final Butcher/Hughie showdown easily ranks among the strongest scenes of Season 5 as a whole. It does a great job of exploring the fundamental gulf between the characters, and both Quaid and Urban successfully draw on years of well-honed chemistry together. As much as it might not make sense that Hughie would pursue Butcher alone, thematically it only feels right to have everything come down to one last fight between these two. This battle reminds us that The Boys is ultimately a tragedy, even after Vought’s great evil poster child is brought down.
In the end, Butcher is given a poetic sendoff, as it’s shown that his love for Hughie (and his brother Lenny) is enough to stay his hand just long enough for his old friend to deliver the killing blow. The show proves to be less cynical about Butcher than the comic was, which is definitely the right play here.
Finally, The Boys is allowed to end for real, with our heroes sharing one last moment together over Butcher’s grave before going their separate ways. Fittingly, the episode ends with a montage of happy moments set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” MM (Laz Alonso) finally reunites with his family, which now includes Ryan as his adopted son. Kimiko gets her Bernedoodle and her idyllic French retirement, just without Frenchie by her side. And Hughie and Starlight open an audio/video store, though Starlight hasn’t quite left the superhero game behind. In the end, most of the characters on The Boys get exactly the ending they deserve.
In some ways, it’s surprising just how open-ended this conclusion is, at least on the Vought front. Homelander is dead, but the company endures, and Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) is back at the helm. There’s also the little matter of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) still being locked away on ice in Homelander’s apartment. It definitely feels as though the writers are leaving the window open for some sort of continuation. Maybe the upcoming Vought Rising spinoff isn’t only set in the past? Whatever the case, Season 5 ends on a strong enough note that I’m hopeful for more of this sordid little superhero universe.
