“The Boys” Season 5: Eric Kripke Discusses the Final Series, Homelander’s Fate, and Themes of Hope in a Hopeless World

The last time Eric Kripke spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine was to discuss the penultimate Season 4. He knew he had one more season to bring the show to a crescendo – a logical, organicm and satisfying conclusion. He previously said, “The television graveyard is littered with the corpses of bad finales. We feel a real obligation and responsibility to stick the landing when the show ends.” On revisiting that quote, we asked him if he felt he avoided that fate for The Boys.

How did you approach the final season now that it’s done?

I have no idea whether we actually pulled this off. Ask me again after it airs. I’m hopeful we did. I approached it with the right amount of terror and trepidation.

I just tried to focus on the characters. I tried to make it emotional. What is the most cathartic thing for any given character to go through? I figured if we could just land it with emotion, then we’ll be okay.

But finales, they’re brutal. So the worm in that fist episode is the mouthpiece of the writers. And it’s stressed. So when you know that you’re concluding a series, it’s a very special season.

Eric Kripke. Photo courtesy of Prime Video

How did you balance the mechanics of writing the “next” season versus the “final” season?

In the beginning, as we convene the writers’ room, we take about a month and work our way through the mythology of the season.

And this one was a little different because we were very clear on how we wanted it to end. After all, the big final battles in that last ten pages where you see where every character ended up and it’s scored to the sad part of the song Layla. We knew that from the start.

We got that up on the board and then it started to become a question of, “How do we build to that?” Knowing where we want the characters, not just to land plot wise, but emotionally, how do we start them knowing where they end up.

Let’s play the game and just start them opposite of that. And let’s figure out what trauma do they have to go through to get to that point. We really worked backwards on this one.

Season 5 accelerates the conflict between Homelander and Billy Butcher. How did you navigate that?

Over the previous four seasons, Highlander (Antony Starr) is becoming progressively unhinged and drunk on power. Although, it’s unclear that power is what he really wants.

He’s miserable. He’s in this vicious cycle. We make pretty overt, even in Episode One, but throughout the season. He thinks if he can accrue more power, he’ll be happy.

He accrues more power and he’s even more miserable. And then he thinks, “If I get even more power, then I’ll be happy.” And what he doesn’t realize is he really needs to look inward like that guy who needs some serious therapy.

The more power he gets, the less happy he is. And it’s driving him crazy because he just he cannot accept his own humanity and vulnerability, He is in fact, disgusted by it.

And so, taking him this season to his final form, he’s doing it in a way that hopefully, isn’t just like a drooling madman, but someone that you still understand why he thinks he wants that. That is a real challenge.

I don’t like personally like stock crazy characters. I want to understand why they have that point of view. And that’s what we tried to do with Homelander.

Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) & Frenchie (Tomer Capone) Photo courtesy of Prime Video

[More: ‘The Boys’ Is A Punk Rock Political Satire” Showrunner Eric Kripke & Executive Producer David Reed On Season 4]

Billy Butcher is arguably just as crazy as Highlander. What drives him?

Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) releases a virus to destroy the remaining supes – including himself.

Butcher, at the end of Season Four, showed there were two sides of Butcher at war with each other – this human side and this monster side. And at the end of Season Four, the monster won.

And that’s who we see in Season Five. He’s sort of given up on the idea that he even needs to be human. He’s accepted that he needs to be this monster in order to defeat the monster that is Homelander.

And if that means destroying every supe on the planet, then so be it. He’s perfectly willing to commit genocide in order to get at his target. He’s hard driving towards that monstrous goal.

Is Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), or anyone in The Boys, able to pull him back from the brink while also understanding that this is the only way to kill Homelander? Everyone’s in this real moral quandary in every season. And this one’s no exception.

Karl Urban (Billy Butcher) Photo courtesy of Prime Video

Discuss maintaining the central theme of the series is the corruption of power.

Do we let our better angels prevail or do we allow our worst demons to prevail. Both of them stemming from our humanity. It’s a real concern of this season, in part because of everything that’s happening in the world.

A real concern of this season is, how are you able to hold on to hope when things are at their darkest? Which frankly, I think a lot of people are feeling. Why not just put your head in the sand? Why not just give up? Why not just ignore it rather than get your heart broken time and time again? I hope people take away a hopeful message from the show.

We’ve never been that kind of show filled with make-believe hope. The Boys looked at that big, sweeping hope.

Hope is hard. And it comes in really small doses. And you fail a hundred times just to get one little bit of success.

But to me, that’s what’s really beautiful about humanity. Our ability to get up every single time we’re knocked down. That’s the real big concern this season. Who’s able to hold on to hope and who isn’t? And ultimately, that’s what makes us alive.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.