Boys season five finale

The Boys season finale felt flat. That is the best way to describe it and honestly the kindest way to describe the season finale that I can think of.  The confrontation with Homelander that fans have been wanting to see felt less like an epic cinematic fight scene and more like a whimper of what could have been.

The Boys season 5 felt unnecessary throughout with the exception of episode one and episode two, but from then on, it wasted the hour slot on a lot of filler and slow-moving scenes that added not a lot to the overall scenes. A lot of lines of dialogue were spent on a backdoor pilot to Vought Rising, which no-one asked for.

Solider boy was also missing from the finale, which also seemed like an odd writing decision as he seemed important enough to feature heavily in every episode other than the finale. Instead, they made Kimiko take on the role of Solider boy in taking down Homelander, a clear sign that they wrote themselves into a corner by making Homelander two powerful for the virus to work on him.

Speaking of the virus itself, the show took two seasons focusing on this important MacGuffin only for it to be relevant in a tiny confrontation with Butcher and Hughie, which was only written in as they needed to kill Butcher off. The scene with Hughie and Butcher was clearly written to fill up the remaining time as the writers realized they had to fill up the hour slot.

I cannot think of anything nice to write about the Boys season five other than it is finally over and we all can breathe a sigh of relief. This show should had been three seasons at most, as a lot of time the writers stood next to their big red reset button, waiting to reset the stakes and do nothing with the characters. As it seemed every-time the boys got close to a solution with Homelander the writers needed to make a reason they could not do until they had to produce a desperate situation in Kimiko. The setup for the finale, could have been spread over all seven episodes but instead we get them infiltrating the white house easily bar a minor setback in which Ashley suddenly develops a conscience over the course of ten minutes and had to save them.

For a show that seemed to pride itself on shock and awe, the gore seemed tame and all but two of the main cast made it out in one piece, and Homelander’s death itself was pretty lacklustre, and it seemed like Butcher only used the Crowbar as a homage to the comics. Butcher and Homelander talk about scorched earth, but Homelander did nothing but kill a billionaire in the finale.