The Boys - The Final Season Review

 

NOTE!: I WILL BE GOING FULL SPOILER MODE IN THIS BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT TO DISSECT HERE! SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED, SKIP THIS REVIEW ENTIRELY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Man I've been reviewing a lot of final seasons lately. First it was Peacemaker, then Stranger Things, and now The Boys.

The Boys is a comic book TV series based on the Garth Ennis series of the same name. Production was handled by Sony Pictures Television, Kripke Enterprise, Point Grey Pictures, Original Film, Kickstart Entertainment, KFL Nightsky Productions, and Amazon Studios. The last one also being the distributor. Eric Kripke developed the show, and this season had a total of eight episodes. Thus the show ended with forty episodes.

The story is, it's been one year since Homelander rose to power and now rules over the United States. The Boys are planning one last attempt to kill him with a special virus. The problem? The virus kills anybody with superpowers. They also face the problem of Homelander searching for a serum called V1 that could make him immortal. The stakes have never been higher and this is The Boys' last chance. Will they win or will Homelander?

• Negatives

Where to begin? Let's start with the writing...oh boy the writing. The plot for this final season is a mess. One of the many examples was the fifth episode titled "One-Shots" where at one point we follow the and I kid you not, the dog Terror around. Okay! what is with a lot of comic book projects and the animals? First there was Captain Marvel with the cat, then there was Peacemaker with his eagle, then Superman with Krypto, and now The Boys with Terror. Why? I thought everybody agreed throwing a cute animal was just bad writing? Then we have the satire. Eric Kripke learned nothing from last season. Him and his ilk couldn't keep Donald Trump out of their heads. Everything Homelander did was once again an unsubtle jab to the President. Now I'm not against making fun of any politician, but we've been getting Trump "jokes" since 2016. Not too mention but if you're going to do comedy you go after everybody. That's when satire is at it's best, when nobody is safe. And when it's not Donald Trump then it's the writers going after Christianity and it's the same people problem with Trump stuff. This show and its fans praise their show for being "It's edgy bro! It's just so edgy!", but yet I would think an edgy show would've also gone after Judaism, Taoism, Islam, etc. Oh and we also get some "jokes" about Elon Musk, cause Kripke this time around really wanted everyone to who and what he hates. The writing this time around also has a really bad habit of waving stuff off. The biggest example of this is the Flight 37 video. Yeah remember how if the Flight 37 video got out it would be bad news for Homelander and the rest of The Seven? Remember how that was treated like a big deal? Well here it's shown in front of millions of people Homelander included, and then later Sister Sage says it was A.I. generated and that's the end of that, never brought up again. I'm serious folks. That was the end of the Flight 37 video. It's treat as the big threat it is and then waved away. Such brilliant writing. And if that wasn't horrible enough we've got the final episode. Let me tell you, for the script for that final episode, somebody should've proofed read this. It was such a rushed episode. The Boys pretty easily get into the White House with almost no problem, they only had to deal with one trap. Then the only two members on Team Homelander those being Oh Father and The Deep are killed quickly.  Butcher, Kimiko, and Ryan fight Homelander (who by the way despite being able to handle a superpowered Butcher, superpowered Hughie and Soldier Boy is struggling to fight against Ryan of all people), then Homelander is depowered then killed by Butcher. Then later Butcher finally snaps, goes to Vought Tower to release the virus, gets into a fight with Hughie, Hughie kills Butcher. Later the remaining members of The Boys bury Butcher and then they disband without so much as saying a proper goodbye. The End. Now the actually episode was much longer then that, but that's the basics of what happened. Everything you were excited for from Butcher and Homelander having another one on one to The Boys disbanding, it's all wrapped up in a couple of minutes. But you know what really pissed me off with this final episode? The Boys didn't stop anything! Sure they killed Homelander and freed America, but Vought is still in business and there's still Supes out there being absolute monsters. Sure that last one they stated there's gonna be some sort of task force for bad Supes, but that doesn't change the fact Vought is still in business. So when Butcher said all they did was give Vought a black eye and there's gonna be a new Homelander, HE'S RIGHT! The last thing I'll touch upon for this part of the review is how there was no "Scorched Earth". You know, that whole thing where everybody feared Homelander finally snapping and just killing everyone on sight. Never happened. Hell Homelander barely scorched the oval office. So that means posters like the one I'm using and ones like these 👇

A complete and total lie. And I've seen people defend this by saying "Well they didn't actually say that." when they couldn't be further from the truth. They were hyping that concept up for at least two seasons. And they fact all we got was Homelander once again just making threats and a fight at the oval office is a letdown.

So now that I've got story out of the way, what about characters? That's not any better. Let's go over not all of them but a good portion of them.

-Let's start off with Butcher. At the end of the fourth season it was set up that Butcher was gonna go full villain and use the virus to kill all Supes. But during this season's first episode he's back to being anti-hero Butcher. He doesn't turn into villain Butcher until the final episode and I believe it was during that episode's last thirty minutes. So why did he go from villain to anti-hero between season four and five? Never explained.

-Homelander is once again given the same exact storyline. Throughout season five he's experiencing mental breakdowns and we're waiting for the moment when he goes full psychopath. Like I said it's the same story again! At this rate he sound already be insane. Either season three or four should've end this whole he's on the brink of insanity and then season five is when he's fully crazy without any mental breakdowns whatsoever.

-Kimiko can speak and she's annoying. I'll get into how bad the entire dialogue is terrible but for now let's focus on Kimiko. Making her speak was terrible because like I said her dialogue isn't charming, funny, or interesting. Not mention, but by having her speak you better much took away another interesting about her. Oh and it doesn't help she barely gets a story arc. I mean she has this whole thing where after this over she and Frenchie want to run away together and have a quite life, but it was so uninteresting that most of the time I forgot that was her story.

-Then we have the newest fan favorite Soldier Boy. I can't tell you how much I loved seeing him back again. Once again he was very entertaining and I did enjoy every time he belittled Homelander right to his face. So what's the problem then? Well to answer that question he was wasted! He plays a part in getting Homelander the V1 and then he's right back to being frozen again. He doesn't even play a part in defeating Homelander. Which brings us to another question, what was the point of having Soldier Boy return if you were just gonna put him back on ice? Oh that's right, Kripke and co. had to promote the prequel series Vought Rising starring, you guest it, Soldier Boy.

-So there was also a spin-off series to The Boys called Gen V. That show only lasted two seasons before being canceled. Why am I brining this up? Because during the second season of that show the Gen V heroes were being written as soldiers in the fight to defeat Homelander. So what did they do here? Not a damn thing! Scratch that they gave Starlight and M.M. some notes on Oh Father and drove some people up to Canada to keep them safe while The Boys go off to fight Homelander. That's it. That was the Gen V kids big moment. Two seasons of hyping them up, more specially Marie, and that's all they do. So if you were planning on watching Gen V, don't because it's a giant waste of time.

-Ryan is once again given terrible writing. The first problem was they didn't know if they wanted him to be good or turn into the next Homelander. Now the problem is they didn't seem to know what to do with him until the final episode. Here's Ryan's entire storyline for season five. In episode three Butcher finds him after hiding away for a year, they agree to take down Homelander with the virus even though it'll kill them, Ryan & Butcher have a falling out, Ryan goes to fight Homelander by himself only to get his ass kicked. In episode four he's recovering and then just disappears. We don't see until the eighth and final episode where the only things he does is insult Homelander and then later on fights him along with Butcher and Kimiko. Loses his powers because Kimiko's chest blast, says goodbye to Butcher during his funeral, and then goes to live with M.M. and his family. The End. So yeah, Ryan was pretty much useless. So useless he might as well not have even been here.

-I'll end this portion by writing about a character who's never had any good writing since they debuted, that being Sister Sage. And if you thought she was poorly written in season four, the final season is even worse. First we get her reason as to why she wants the virus to be unleashed. See if the virus is unleashed panic will spread and basically World War 3 will happen. Then when a majority of humanity is gone, Sage can read books out in the open and in peace. Firstly, she was already reading in peace when we met her back in the last season. Secondly, if she wanted to read in peace why didn't she just go off the grid? You'd think for someone who's called "The Smartest Person in the World" would have a better idea of how to achieve this dream. And if that's not bad enough she's not punished despite helping Homelander gain power over the United States. Basically after insulting Kimiko to see if her chest blast works, Sage loses her powers and then she leaves and is off to Harry Potter World. I'm not kidding that's how her story ends. No punishment for helping Homelander or anything. She just helps Kimiko get the blasting power, loses her powers, goes to Harry Potter World and is never seen or heard of again. So yeah, it doesn't matter if it's season four or five one things for certain. The writers really sucked when writing this character.

The last thing I'll write about is the dialogue. Once again, Kripke and his friends needed a proof reader. Circling back to Kimiko whenever she spoke it was dumb. Here's parts of her dialogue

-When Starlight asked how can she talk Kimiko says, "F*cking speech therapy, and f*cking therapy-therapy, and so much f*cking TikTok."

-"Oh, wow. Your skin is so oily, like hugging a McRib".

-"I want to tit slap you but also give you a hug".

-"I've been watching pornography and I'd like to try out some cunnilingus".

Yeah...that's some of Kimiko's lines. And then we also have Homelander talking about how he's gonna punish people for making memes about him and instead of a dark joke it's treated with the upmost seriousness. Yes, that was also a bit of dialogue that's actually in this show. Do I even need to say more?

• Mix

The only slight saving grace was once again the cast. I would pick favorites like Anthony Starr (who by the way I hope after this he's given way better stuff to work with), but I want to give credit to all of the actors and actresses. They managed to still give some good performances, but the reason I'm not putting in the "Positives" section of this review is because they deserved far better material to work with.

• Positives

None.

So ends The Boys, and man oh man what a letdown. I didn't have much faith going into this because of the last season but that doesn't change the fact this season is still awful. There's still terrible things I've both realized and witness after finishing watching this season. The realization is this was the shows last chance to go out and instead of focusing on a good story Kripke instead let Trump live rent free in his head. In doing so this show ends on a whimper and not a bang. And what I've witnessed is fans (or consumers which ever word fits properly here) defend this season. But there's nothing to defend. It's even more annoying cause I'm willing to bet a lot of these people are the same ones who were complaining about the final season of Stranger Things. I guess Kripke gets a free pass because he's got Trump Derangement Syndrome while the last time I checked the Duffer Brothers don't. But regardless, the final season could've captured what made season one so great, but the writers didn't try.

My final rating is, Awful!

Well I'm drained, so let's wrap this up. Sorry if I bummed you out bit not just because of how bad this season was, but also for bringing stuff up like Trump among other political stuff. But it really bothered me and you know I prefer to get things off my chest. But I still want to apologize cause I know a lot of you just want to be entertained. So once again, I'm sorry. I'd also like to apologize for uploading this so late, but given all the problems of this season and I wanted to rant a little before giving my rating. Anyways, come back on Saturday, May 23rd, for my review of the newest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day and go watch something better.