The Boys' Final Season: Scorched Earth and the Only Good Supe is a Dead Supe
By John Kirk
Rating: A
The Struggle Against Vought Corporation comes to a head in the fifth and final Season The Boys.
Based on the bestselling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, the entire purpose of this series is to subvert comic tropes while shocking readers by showing them the natural extremes of the enjoyment of unrestricted power in society. Super heroes are the vessel of those extremes made manifest.
But this season surpasses the others with its cameos, its theme of desperation and above all, the message it has for those who dream of power. It comes at a cost.
Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) and the megalomaniacal Homelander (Antony Starr)
In this season, the world will burn and blood will be spilled. Film at 11. As previously described in the Prime press release, “It’s Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims.”
It’s been about a year from this point and the government is now under the control of the Superhero group known as The Seven. Their leader, Homelander, (Antony Starr) has completely gone mad. Graduating past mere narcissism and economic power, Homelander now sees himself as the rightful ruler of the most perverted version of America that can be envisioned.
With Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) incarcerated in one of the Vought “Freedom Camps” and Butcher (Karl Urban) and Annie a.k.a. Starlight (Erin Moriarty) isolated from each other and on the outside, the situation is as desperate as it can be for the de facto resistance group known as The Boys.
A game changer is the discovery of a genetically-engineered virus that can wipe out all supes off the face of the planet and the situation is dire enough that the Boys are considering its use.
While the whole dynamic of this series is its extremes, this final season pushes everything beyond previous limits. The violence, the dark humour, the moral quandaries and the relationships between all the characters – it’s beyond everything we’ve seen to this point.
This highlights the desperation of the situation and the completely unbalanced nature of the conflict between the Seven and Butcher’s crew. Hiding out in an abandoned elementary school, the slight victories they achieve are offset by the hopelessness of the whole war. Outnumbered, facing the combined resources of a mega-corporation and the United States government, there is no respite in sight for these resistance fighters.
Every episode in this series (leading up to the final one) is about how much loss this group can take. The answer? They can take it all and they won’t stop until they’re dead.
If you love lost causes and forlorn situations, then this is the series for you.
The desperate nature of this team is what makes it such a compelling watch. Leading up to this final season, everything has turned so bad, there seems no possible way they can win. There are no hints in the dialogue, telegraphing, no pistol on the shelf that has to be used by the end of the story – there is NO possible way that the Boys can win.
But they have to.
America is in the worst imaginable possible state. The government is led by a corrupt, petty megalomaniac who has a cadre of yes-men at his disposal. The fundamental rights of its citizens are being subverted and ignored and even worse, the merest whim of this dictator is made into law. All of this is possible because super heroes no longer serve the public trust.
Forget about the heroic virtue of preserving life; this is just a battle for control. There is no distinction between a super hero or a super villain. They’re all just supes and they are to be feared whether they are on side of the government or the Starlighters. Either way, they’ll get regular people killed in the crossfire and that’s what makes the Boys such a desperate story. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they can’t afford to.
That’s why they must win, but even winning will come at a great moral cost. The earth will be scorched, supes will be killed and the blood of innocents will be on their heads if the world is to be brought back to the state it was before. This story is about the heroes being no better than the villains, because power, regardless of how it is to be used, corrupts, unless there are checks to how and why it should be used.
A powerful metaphor for our times, Season Five of The Boys is the final reckoning in this story and in it, we learn that the price of power is surpassed by the cost of its control.
Producers: Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, et al. Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Cameron Crovetti, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jensen Ackles, Daveed Diggs
Season Five of The Boys drops on Prime Video April 8th.