I’m still salty about the abrupt cancellation of Gen-V, especially since the characters are given an opportunity to breeze through the last two episodes of the season,and do basically nothing.The plots don’t even converge. The grooming of Marie to become this next level superhero never pays off.The final two episodes of The Boys solidifies that Amazon cancelled Gen V independently of the actual finale, and its implications, because that door is left wide open. It isn’t like the finale prohibits a third season of Gen-V, quite the opposite. Considering how VOT is left at the end of the series, it’s more than likely that our Gen V kids would have moved into the corporate structure at VOT.

But how did we get there? The Boys is one of Amazon’s most immediately recognizable franchises, truly helping to put them on the map, and Amazon owes it a lot of credit. Much like Netflix would have to nod to shows like House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, Amazon had The Boys, and it helped to launch a hundred other shows because it gave people a reason to watch and subscribe to Prime video. Come for The Boys, stay for Citadel. The Boys has never not been irreverent and unafraid, and that’s what makes the fan backlash so interesting. Sure, The Boys leans in a bit on our current political climate in the last two seasons, but the comic from which the show is adapted isn’t exactly void of criticism either. It just was written at a different time, with different influences. Take the initial drawing of Huey, who was clearly modeled after Simon Pegg. Obviously the show felt Pegg was a bit too old to play Huey when the show was cast (he is 22 years older than Jack Quaid), so they decided to pay homage by having Pegg play Huey’s father. The creators of the show aren’t unfamiliar with, or unaware of the thing that they are adapting, but it is still an adaptation, and most of those make some changes, whether big or small.

A lot of fans pointed to the creation of Firecracker, a superhero sycophant that is created in Season 4 almost directly, and obviously, out of the American political landscape. You could decry the blasphemy of creating a character that never existed in the comics, though I’d call you a hypocrite if you gave Daryl Dixon a pass in The Walking Dead. Sometimes, the most interesting thing a show can do is create a character not tied directly to the source material, as it leaves their fate completely undetermined. With The Walking Dead, so many characters met their demise at the point they did in the comics, while others had their fates radically changed. But for created characters like Daryl, it left a persistently open door, as to how and what he would effect. Firecracker was a little like that for the Boys, initially feeling like a gag, but put to the test in Season 5, as Homelander starts to believe he is God. This puts the deeply Christian Firecracker at odds with her adoration of Homelander, and her deep seated faith.Because of her characters complicated path, the choices she makes, it means we’re more invested in a character we were never supposed to like in the first place.

The thing about final seasons is we have to look at the progression of these characters. Homelander (Antony Starr) basically has always been who he is. The progression of seasons has only fed his ego, and every time he eliminates someone remotely near him in terms of skill or strength, it just inflates his ego. Finally, in the final season, he’s given a literal God complex, something challenged only when he realizes he doesn’t have the original strain of V, so he is not immune to the virus developed by The Boys. Then it becomes a race for immortality. Ultimately, how you feel about his fate at the end is going to be how you feel about justice. Without spoiling things, he has a lot of exit strategies. Hell, the whole squad of The Boys could have died, with Homelander ruling the world. They opened a door through Soldier Boy, which could have been an interesting plot twist. He kept harping on people being true believers. What happens if everyone just stops believing in him? IF we want to mirror our current political climate, wouldn’t it have been a little satirical to have everyone just reach their breaking point with him, and even though Homelander has power, it is still not enough when everyone is against him. I’m not sure they picked the strongest ending, but they picked one tht ties in and gives resolution to at least one character arc.

As far as the rest of The Seven, The Deep (Chase Crawford) is still vain, an idiot, and perhaps even more of a sycophant. His storyline takes a natural course. Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) struggles with pretending he’s the same Black Noir, and we finally learn more about who this new version is. A-Train (Jesse T Usher) has been working up to a redemption arc, and his balance in season 5 has a lot to do with a full circle moment with Huey.

As far as The Boys go, Starlite (Erin Moriarty) is feeling the weight of an entire movement around her, as Homelander has moved dissenting forces into prison camps. She gets a lovely episode where we meet her father (Tim Daly) for the first time, and it really helps to point her compass back in the right direction. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) is just looking for peace, not just in the world, but also so he can go back to his family, and be the dad he’s been longing to be. I don’t think anyone in this show is looking forward more to retirement than Milk. Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) have been working this relationship to get to this point, and even though Frenchie starts out in prison at the top of the season, love can’t hold them back. But, will it survive the season? Will Huey (Jack Quaid) and his love for Starlite survive the season? For someone whose journey started so he could avenge the death of his girlfriend, he certainly has moved on hasn’t he? And finally, the man behind it all, Butcher (Karl Urban) who has been on a quest for revenge at all costs has lost the little shreds of humanity left in him slowly, bit by bit, something that Season 5 leans on.Can he save the world? Can he save himself?

Other peripheral characters like Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) is trying to stay out of the crosshairs, realizing he can’t defeat Homelander on his own, but will he be called into the fray anyway? Sage (Susan Hayward) is still mentally staying a hundred steps ahead at all times. Ashley (Colby MMinimfe) is now the Vice-President, and we see how taking that shot of V worked out for her. She’s now in arranged marriage to Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), whose superpower is either being an obnoxious preacher or manipulating sound, or both. Some other smaller characters pop up for one last gag, like Legacy (Paul Reiser), and there are a ton of celebrity cameos to look out for, from Seth Rogen to Will Forte. And, a certain voice from Butcher’s head makes a fun, altered reappearance.

I have never not liked The Boys. Sometimes, a show I like does drive off the cliff, and I just stop watching. It’s like, I decided on where the show ended. It’s a little like how people stopped watching The Walking Dead with the introduction of Negan. I stopped watching Lost right at the final season, when I realized the bomb explosion on season 5 left us at a point I was no longer interested in. So, for me, the bomb exploded, and the ending is ambiguous as fuck. I also dipped out on Grey’s Anatomy, a show which did the surprise sibling story arc once, needed to do it again, because someone thought it might be a good idea to let Chyler Leigh out of her contract as the backup Grey. Yes, because her career has been so massively successful ever since. i can totally understand why she David Caruso’d her way off the show, but that doesn’t mean you get to replicate the storyline. The Boys never reached that moment where I pulled the zip cord. Even the finale, which should have been better than it was, and less constricted by runtime, wasn’t a complete failure. It was a little like the Stranger Things finale, in that it was expected and safe. And honestly, The Boys never plays it safe. The Boys is the kind of show to have a tiny superhero run into a penis through the urethra and masturbate someone from the inside. Remember that?

that is The Boys. The Boys is the balls out no holds barred nonsense that gave its temperamental villain a fixation on breast milk, that had a superhero in a sexual relationship with an octopus, and revived and rebranded an old superhero to reveal she was secretly a Nazi. This show has never, ever, been safe. So, why then did the finale feel like a soft landing? Even with the gore, it still felt predictable, and it still felt like the creators were afraid to let some characters live, and have others die.

So I can’t say this was the best season, but I also push back on those who have trolled it since Season 4. The show you loved is still there, it just now has commentary that hits close to home, so it’s hard to see that it is still the same audacious dark commentary it always was. To be honest, if they had turned their sights on me, or my values, I likely would have struggled with watching as well. No one loves being made fun of, or be made to feel stupid, and The Boys took a swing that ultimately alienated a chunk of its audience. It’s important to acknowledge why those people jumped ship. It isn’t because the show got overall dramatically different, it is just the target changed.

The audio description across all five seasons of The Boys has had so much nonsense to have to describe, I have to hand it to everyone involved. So many bizarre superpowers, over sexual scenes, massive gore, silly powers, super suits, and just a lot that would have left a blind audience behind without a damn fine audio description track, which we have always gotten. This isn’t goodbye forever, as we are still getting the prequel series Vot Rising, and there’s The Boys: Mexico in the works. I still lament the loss of Gen V, especially since the characters get no resolution, but c’est la vie.

It is the same show you fell in love with, but it isn’t entirely sure how to please fans that have divided since Season 4, and attempts impossible unity, sacrificing its audacious tone and penchant for doing the unexpected.

Fresh: 7.5/10