Prime Video's The Boys is coming to an end - in the goriest way possible
Season 5 of The Boys will be the last, but won't be the last we see of this universe...
There’s good news and bad news for fans of Prime Video’s The Boys. The bad: the show is ending.
Showrunner and creator Eric Kripke posted on X that Season 5 will be the show’s last. However, this is exactly as the creative team intended.
“Season 4 Premiere Week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the Final Season! Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax. Watch Season 4 in 2 DAYS, cause the end has begun!” Kripke posted.
Season 4 of The Boys will begin streaming on June 13. The first three episodes will be available on day one, while the remaining five are on a one-a-week drip feed until mid-July.
Having a planned end point for the show can only be good news for its finale, rather than having to rush to a conclusion in a couple of episodes. Or, worse still, leaving viewers on a purgatorial cliffhanger.
“It might have been because I was trained as a TV writer and there were five acts,” Kripke told The Hollywood Reporter.
“It gives you enough time to get to know the characters. You can have your calm-before-the-storm moment, which is kind of what season four is for me. I say calm… you know what I mean. It’s about the characters and then you kick off into a climax.”
We don’t have many clues as to what Season 5 may feature just yet. While the show is based on a series of comics by Garth Ennis, published from 2006 to 2012, the series departs from its source material enough to be considered its own entity.
Reviews for The Boys Season 4 are already in, and they are the lowest the series has seen to date. But this season still retains a score most creators would envy.
It sits at 81% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 98% fresh for Season 3.
Inverse accuses the show of being “stuck in autopilot,” while Observer notes “resistance isn’t futile, but it wears you down.”
Den of Geek’s modestly positive review says “it’s easily the series’ weakest batch of episodes thus far. The satire remains as trenchant as ever but the storytelling begins to flag in some noticeable ways.”
There’s an even more dour feel to the fourth season. But with a change of pace surely in line for season 5, no The Boys fan should give up the superhero game just yet.
Aside from the one-year gap between the first two seasons, there’s typically a two-year wait between The Boys series, pointing to a very tentative release estimate of June 2026 for the final season. Spin-off Gen V, and perhaps other properties we haven’t seen yet, may continue after the main series has left too.
“There can be other stories and other corners of the universe. And hopefully, it's vibrant and perverted enough to allow for those stories. So hopefully, Gen V continues, hopefully, a couple other things we have in development continue,” Kripke told Variety.