After five seasons, The Boys came to its wild end, and it was as bloody and brutal as expected. The moment fans waited for was the final fate of Homelander. After openly declaring himself a god to the point that even his own followers were scared of him, Homelander took over the White House. In a nationally televised battle in the Oval Office, Homelander was beaten down by the team, with Kimiko taking away his powers, leaving him a normal person for the first time.
Without his powers, Homelander turned into a coward, openly begging for his life, shattering what little support he still had with the public. Billy Butcher answered him by beating Homelander into a bloody pulp and finishing it off with a crowbar through the skull.
That was a powerful ending, yet some fans have already complained about it being too quick and easy, given all the misery and pain Homelander had bestowed throughout the series. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, creator Erick Kripke discussed the death and questioned whether it might have been a better fate for Homelander to be forced to live powerless.
“We thought about it. There’s a flaw to that, which is he could just take V again. Just because they take away his powers doesn’t mean that it would be permanent. You can’t actually let him walk out of that room, because he’s just one shot of V away from being back. Then it was all for nothing. But we wanted that experience — we wanted the audience to have a taste of how pathetic this guy is, and weak, once you take away all of his bluster.”
Some may argue that point, as it really seems far more fitting for Homelander, who treated regular humans as nothing but insects to worship him, to be forced to live among them. He likely wouldn’t have lasted long as a score of people would come after him for revenge, yet a swift death didn’t seem as satisfying after the man’s countless murders.
Kripke also defended how quickly Homelander went from a godlike figure to a whimpering wretch begging on his knees to be spared. Some might feel that it ruined the character’s threat, yet Kripke defended it as just being true to the character.
“It’s like Saddam Hussein getting pulled out of that spider hole and Hitler in the bunker. Any authoritarian — once you really take away their power — is automatically and almost immediately pathetic and cowardly, and begging for their lives. We’ve done the homework. It’s pretty accurate to how they respond when they’re actually facing real death.”
Homelander wasn’t the only major death in the finale. The Deep paid for his own crimes by being torn apart by the very sea creatures he once defended. And Butcher himself was killed by Hughie when he was about to unleash the supe-killing virus. Yet some fans may still feel a bit let down by how rushed the whole thing seemed and lacking the closure they wanted, especially a darker fate for Homelander.
The finale has already sparked a lot of debate, so leave it to The Boys to keep fans buzzing all the way to the bloody end.
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