The Boys, a heavy-handed dark comedy satire of politics, social media, and comic book superheroes, is entering its final season and the stakes have never been higher. I’m not sure I’m ready.
Homelander is trying to get the original V-compound prototype to become immortal. Butcher is doing weird Cthulhu tentacles from his trench coat. And Americans are being rounded up in camps. A new season 5 shows the series at its grimmest as a final showdown brews.
Here’s a 2-minute look ahead of the May 20 premiere on Amazon Prime:
It shows Homelander teaming up with his dad, Soldier Boy, and the latter eventually confronting Butcher as the nation is plunged into a fascist lockdown. The plan is still to try and use the supe-killing virus discovered in season 4 to take down Homelander and, well, potentially instigate a genocide as the sickness spreads to everyone else with super powers as well. Butcher also appears to be going off the deep end even more than usual as his Venom-like tumor ratchets up his violent dissociative outbursts.
But there are some moments of levity too. The Deep and Black Noir take to podcasting, recreating Ezra Klein meets the morning radio Zoo Crew. And Kimiko Miyashiro, played by the wonderful Karen Fukuhara, finally gets to talk now.
The Boys, especially in its later seasons, hasn’t been shy about making the text of modern American politics bleed into the text of the show. The show’s creators clearly believe that subtext, as it were, is for cowards. But as the absurdity and horrors of the real world have outstripped some of the show’s recent excesses, it’ll be interesting to see how it handles the balancing act for the finale. Or if it even bothers. It might just blow everything up instead. The only thing I’m not expecting is a happy ending.