This article contains spoilers for the series finale of The Boys.
After five seasons of superhero insanity, The Boys wrapped up this week with the series finale, “Blood and Bone.” And as you might expect, not everyone made it out alive after the climactic showdown between Homelander (Antony Starr) and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban).
…But actually, now that we think about it, a surprising amount of characters did make it out alive, despite the “scorched earth” promise that the dynamic duo made to each other back in the Season 3 premiere “Payback” – and reminded each other about during a face-off in the Oval Office. Yes, some of your faves kicked the bucket, but plenty of other good guys – and bad guys – lived to cause havoc another day.
With that in mind, let’s break down who lives, who dies, and to crib a phrase from the musical that helped make Daveed Diggs (aka Oh Father) a household name, who tells their story? Here are the final fates of all the major characters on The Boys, as of the closing moments of the final episode.
Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles)
Status: Alive
Just to get this one out of the way, despite being a major part of the season, Soldier Boy does not appear in the series finale, either in the main episode proper or as part of a surprise end credits scene. In fact, there’s no post-credits scene at all, so once you hit that Kripke scrap metal logo: ya done.
What that means, though, is Soldier Boy, father of God, is not in Bogota snorting blow off hookers. Instead, when the final curtain closes, he is back in cryostasis. Or rather, that’s where he is when Episode 7, “The Frenchman, The Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk” ends… Whether someone thawed him out before the end of the day is TBA.
Unlike the fates of a lot of our characters, things are very much up in the air with Soldier Boy. He’ll be appearing in the already-filmed prequel series Vought Rising, which is set in the 1950s. But there’s always a chance that the show is set in two timelines, like your Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, or to borrow from another Jensen Ackles show, The Winchesters, where in both cases someone in the present is telling an origin story in the past.
As far as The Boys is concerned, though, Soldier Boy is alive, but very, very cold and asleep.
The Gen V Kids
Status: Alive, But Canceled
After a lot of anticipation and an untimely cancellation announcement, the kids of Gen V exited their brief sojourn on The Boys by taking a truckful of refugees to Canada. That includes Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), who did not use her blood powers in the final battle against Homelander as foretold/predicted by numerous fans. The female-presenting aspect of Jordan Li (London Thor) also returned and left for Canada. And proving that girls get it done, Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway) also showed up to drop a bunch of profanities and drive the truck to safety.
Unaccounted for and unmentioned by name are the rest of the Gen V kids, who we’re told are safe in hiding, already enjoying Tim Horton’s north of the border. That likely includes Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), Sam (Asa Germann), and presumably Marie’s sister Annabeth (Keeya King), all of whom joined Starlight’s (Erin Moriarty) resistance at the end of Gen V Season 2.
But yeah, that’s a wrap on the Gen V kids, unless they show up later in the VCU (Vought Cinematic Universe) as showrunner Eric Kripke has teased.
Sister Sage (Susan Heyward)
Status: Alive
We got another live one! One of the first main characters to exit in the finale is Sister Sage, the insanely smart Supe who switched sides from The Seven to The Boys a few episodes back. She was working with Frenchie (Tomer Capone) to help juice up Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) in order to give her the same powers as Soldier Boy, but in the wake of Frenchie’s death it seems like the experiment was a dud.
…Or maybe not. At the urging of Butcher, Sage taunts Kimiko, telling her she’s useless and was basically a pet for Frenchie (among other things). Enraged, Kimiko blasts Sage with her uranium-infused, Compound V frying blast and gives Sage her fondest wish: to be a normal amount of smart. Or even better, as Sage says, “I’m fucking stupid like you guys! Thank you.”
And while the rest of The Boys plan to break into the White House to stop Homelander before he kills most of America in a thought purge, Sage decides she’s going to live out whatever time she has left by visiting Harry Potter World in Orlando. “Wands up, bitches! Sage out!” she says, leaving her discarded Taco Bell behind.
The last we see of Sage, she’s walking away from the house The Boys are hiding out in, happily smiling to herself, finally having gotten rid of all the noise in her head.
Gunter Van Ellis (Ivan Sherry)
Status: Dead
Our first death of the episode, and it’s a character we’ve never seen before. While Homelander is attempting to make himself the new god of America, Oh Father explains that they all really work for the billionaires – including Van Ellis. The black-clad, black baseball hat-wearing billionaire certainly is reminiscent of the way a particular billionaire and Cybertruck purveyor dressed way back at the beginning of the second Trump administration, and his talk about white fertility rates and interest in space clinches it: he’s supposed to be Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
Just kidding, it’s an Elon Musk stand-in, and while Oh Father isn’t looking, Homelander flies him into space and leaves him there. RIP, classic TV character Gunter Van Ellis.
Oh Father (Daveed Diggs)
Status: Dead
Once The Boys breach The White House, Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) lure the preacher Oh Father away from Butcher with a pretty good Butcher impersonation. And while he gets a few good licks in thanks to his sonic scream, Chekhov's Ball Gag comes into play.
Earlier in the episode, over wine and dinner, President Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) gifted her husband, Oh Father, a ball gag so strong he won’t be able to break it with his scream. So while Oh Father approaches Hughie and is about to blast him to smithereens, MM jumps behind the Supe and puts the ball gag on. The sonic scream blows back into Oh Father, making his head explode. Whoops, maybe not such a great present after all, Ashley!
The Deep (Chace Crawford)
Status: Dead
While MM and Hughie are fighting Oh Father, and Butcher and Kimiko take on Homelander in the Oval Office, Annie is fighting The Deep on the beach. She even tries to reason with the aquatic Supe, telling him to “take some responsibility for yourself,” to which The Deep yells a very Luke to Darth Vader “Nooooo!”
Instead, they fight, and Annie knocks The Deep into the ocean. Which normally would be a miscalculation on her part, except in last week’s episode, Xander (Samuel L. Jackson) told The Deep that if he put one tiny toe in the water, he would die for his role in the oil pipeline fish holocaust that led to the death of 1.4 billion fish. And sure enough, they come for him, and take him out not just for March 15 (the day of the fish holocaust), but specifically for Ambrosius (Tilda Swinton).
If you don’t recall, though the “previously on” helps here, Ambrosius was The Deep’s octopus lover, whom he jilted, betrayed, and ultimately killed. “Say her name,” shout the fish as they surround him, with an enormous octopus tentacle piercing the back of The Deep’s head, ripping his jaw off and killing him.
“Huh,” says Annie, confused as she watches him die.
Frenchie (Tomer Capone)
Status: Still Dead
Though he died distracting Homelander in last week’s episode, everyone’s favorite fighting Frenchman returns for one last scare this week. While Homelander’s son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) returns to help hold back Homelander, and Butcher holds the baddie from the other side, Kimiko finds herself unable to generate the rage she needs to make the Compound V frying blast.
That’s when Frenchie returns in a vision Kimiko has. She explains she’s not angry, just sad. To which Ghost Frenchie answers, “Rage is not what makes you strong. It has never been mon coeur… It has always been yours.”
In case you don’t speak Frenchie, first of all, he’s dead and this is all in Kimiko’s head; there are no ghosts, and no Supe manipulation going on here. Just a good ol’ pep talk from the imaginary Frenchie who lives in Kimiko’s mind. And second, he’s telling her that he’s not the one with the heart, she is… Specifically working against what Sage told her earlier in the episode.
In any case, before we get too far afield: Frenchie’s dead and loving it.
Homelander (Antony Starr)
Status: So Very Dead, Like, 100% Dead
In one of the most satisfying death scenes ever filmed, Kimiko does blast Homelander, Butcher and Ryan (more on the latter two in a second), taking away their powers. Homelander tries to use his heat vision, but can’t. Then he tries to fly but instead does little bunny hops.
Smiling, Butcher proceeds to beat the crap out of the now completely human Homelander, until he’s bleeding and crying on the floor of the Oval Office while the entire world watches on a TV feed. He begs Butcher to spare his life. But, of course, Butcher only wants justice for his wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), who was raped by Homelander and impregnated with Ryan, essentially motivating the events of the entire series.
So Butcher does what any man in his right mind would do: shoves a crowbar through Homelander’s head, and then pries the top of his head off, spilling his brains all over the President’s office. And yeah, there’s no coming back from this. It’s the ultimate humiliation for a Supe who previously obliterated the scant self-esteem of The Deep earlier in the hour for being, in his eyes, less than nothing. Now, Homelander is nothing, as well, a human who has completely debased himself in the eyes of the world. Not a god, not a man; just a worm (no offense to the talented comedy writer and director Worm played by Ely Henry, who does not appear in this episode).
Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie)
Status: Alive
After stepping up and saving The Boys from a trap in the White House, Ashley has reunited with the psychic Back Ashley (aka the mutant growth on the back of her head). She stops short of helping them get to where Homelander is, and instead gives vague directions while getting herself to safety. When Homelander is dead, Ashley does her media thing, lying during a press briefing that Homelander went rogue and a group of individuals working at her directive took him down. In addition, she definitively states she is not quitting her job as President…
…Which we then smash cut to a news report that Ashley was unanimously impeached and immediately removed from office. “So ends the scandal-plagued tenure of America’s first female President,” intones the reporter, adding insult to injury.
While we don’t find out what’s next for Ashley, there are some options for her if she wants to return to her old job at Vought, which we’ll get to in a second.
Terror
Status: Dead
So sorry, did you order the punch in the gut? You may notice that after Homelander is killed there are still 20 minutes left in the episode, never a good sign. And the bad times begin with Butcher getting told off by Ryan, who rejects his offer to run away together because Butcher still isn’t a good man.
Saddened, Butcher heads to his room to talk to his beloved bulldog Terror… But Terror is dead. Now, in the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, a character called Jack From Jupiter kills Terror, ending a tentative truce between The Boys and The Seven and beginning the comic book series’ endgame. In the show, Terror almost died eating chocolate a few episodes back, but there was no chocolate eating going on in this episode.
Instead, Terror just died, likely of natural causes or old age. It’s enough to drive Butcher to go scorched earth for real by using the Supe virus. But as for Terror, it seems like he was just an old dog whose time had come.
Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito)
Status: Alive
While The Boys continue to chill out after their victory over Homelander, one hiccup arrives in the form of Stan Edgar, who has returned to his old office as interim CEO of Vought. Stan’s speech on TV is the usual mix of pretending to be disturbed about recent events and promising the company will have a renewed focus going forward. But also, this is exactly what Stan told Mother’s Milk earlier this season, that even if they beat Homelander, or release the Supe virus… Well, the machine must still be fed, and companies must still grow.
The spice must flow, and Stan Edgar is back in charge of Vought to figure out what the next iteration of Homelander, Supes, maybe even his own Supe virus looks like. Basically: the neverending fight continues.
And to loop back to what we said earlier, depending on how things continue in the VCU, perhaps there’s a place for Ashley Barrett, by Stan’s side?
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban)
Status: Dead
In a surprising twist, Billy Butcher does not slowly and painfully die of the cancer that was previously wracking his body… Perhaps the Compound V that gave him super-cancer, followed by Kimiko’s irradiation, cured him? Instead, Hughie kills him.
Or to explain this a little better, Butcher takes the Supe virus to Vought Tower, and puts it into the sprinkler system – a plan he hatched with Frenchie. Once the office opens for the day, he’ll press a trigger and release the virus, spreading it through the building and then the world in a matter of days. That’s game over for all Supes, everywhere.
After Hughie unsuccessfully tries to convince Butcher not to do it, they fight. Butcher, of course, overpowers Hughie, and is about to release the virus when he once again, as he has previously in the series, sees Hughie as his brother. His hand eases off the trigger… And Hughie shoots him.
To be fair to Hughie, he likely didn’t see Butcher having second thoughts, and instead thought Butcher, like Homelander, would never stop unless he stopped him. Hughie holds Butcher’s hand as he dies, sunlight slowly pouring through the window of The Seven conference room as a new day dawns.
The final bit of Butcher in the episode? The Boys hold a funeral for him, with his epitaph reading, “Oi, fuck off you cunts.” Not quite “She saved the world. A lot,” a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it’ll do.
Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and Ryan (Cameron Crovetti)
Status: Alive
Weird duo to put together, right? But as Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” the number one song on anyone’s Billy Joel Top Five, plays on the soundtrack, we get a montage of where we’re leaving The Boys. The quickest bit? Ryan has found a good man in Mother’s Milk, two characters that maybe never talked over the course of the entire series? Weird.
Anyway, MM is reunited and gets remarried to Monique (Frances Turner) while his daughter Janine (Liyou Abere) and Ryan happily look on. The implication is that the now powerless Ryan will live a normal life as Ryan Milk. And MM can safely live with his family again, now that everything is wrapped up nicely, except of course Soldier Boy, who killed MM’s grandfather and is still alive and MM swore vengeance on him but don’t worry about that! Not even one bit! Yay! Mother’s Milk and Ryan Milk! Hooray forever!
Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara)
Status: Alive
While Frenchie may be dead, Kimiko is living out all their dreams together, including going to Marseille, trying a madeleine, and getting a dog. Marseille is the birthplace of Frenchie, and they’ve discussed going to the city together someday. The potential implication here, after the multiple pet conversations throughout the episode about who is whose pet, is that the spirit of Frenchie lives on through Kimiko’s new dog. Maybe don’t think about that too much, but she’s happy, so we’re happy.
Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Annie (Erin Moriarty)
Status: Alive
The final duo we check in with is Annie and Hughie, who are happily unmarried with a baby named Robin on the way. No, not named after the Batman sidekick; after Hughie’s girlfriend, who was killed in the opening of the series by A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). They’re working at Campbell Audio/Visual, bringing things full circle as Hughie started the series trying to get a raise from his manager at Bryman Audio… Now he runs his own place with Annie.
He also rejects – once again – President Bobby Singer’s (Jim Beaver) offer to be the new head of the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs to keep checks on Vought… Instead, he and Annie have a police scanner, and even though she’s very pregnant and wearing comfy Crocs, flies off to help save the day while Hughie happily looks up at the sky.
After all this, Annie has become a superhero for real, and given Hughie something to believe in, turning the dark, pessimistic world of The Boys into something that has the potential to become as hopeful and bright as the classic superhero comics we all know and love.
You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky @azalben.bsky.social, or find him regularly yapping on the Comic Book Club podcast.
