In a Twitter Q&A in 2020, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke was asked how many seasons he planned for The Boys. He hesitantly said five seasons, but hedged it appropriately. “My last show, Supernatural, I said five seasons for sure, and then that f***er went 15,” he said. “So I’m mostly going to keep my mouth shut, but creatively five feels like a good round number.”
At the time, it seemed like a lofty idea. But as the seasons crept on, it slowly morphed from a promising plan to an expiration date, until earlier this year Amazon Prime Video announced that the series was in fact renewed for a fifth season. Now, despite his insistence on skirting the topic, Kripke has finally taken to Twitter to announce he’s had his plan all along — and The Boys Season 5 will in fact be the last. At this point, it isn’t a moment too soon.
“Season 5 will be the Final Season! Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought,” Kripke said, accompanied by a heavily redacted page from the Season 4 finale script. “Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax.”
Only two weeks earlier, Kripke told Inverse he wouldn’t even attempt to predict how many series The Boys will get, citing his history with Supernatural again. “No one was more wrong in all of human history about how many seasons their show was going to go than this guy,” he said. “So I am not going to make that same mistake twice.”
Season 4 of The Boys, premiering in only two days, is the penultimate season.
The timing of this announcement seems to be very intentional. Reviews for Season 4 of The Boys are now rolling out, and while many praise the series for delivering the same level of gore and excitement of the past, there were multiple reviews that mentioned concerns about the lack of forward momentum. This announcement completely assuages those fears, assuring that there’s more to this series than The Boys almost catching Homelander and Homelander getting away ad nauseam — it’s all building to the final fight in Season 5.
However, there are still questions left to be answered. With only one season of The Boys left, does that doom the college-based spinoff Gen V to end after its upcoming second season or could the spinoff outlast the source material? Could there be more spinoffs in the works? Most importantly, how will the most extreme superhero show ever bring everything to a satisfying finale?
Fans may not know how The Boys will end — or even what happens in Season 4 — but now they can watch it with the knowledge that it’s all building to something. And, knowing this show, it’s definitely going to be epic.
