The Boys fans have waited seven years watching Billy Butcher stumble between playing hero and a monster, Homelander as an eternal God and a show systematically dismantling every superhero utopian fantasy we must have had. And as the final episode named Blood and Bone is all set to drop, the questions of what the conclusion will be is a major discussion being held on the internet.
Seven episodes in, and the show still has a mountain of loose threads dangling in the air. Frenchie is dead, Homelander has taken over the White House, Butcher has apparently lost his mind and somewhere out there, Ryan is completely unaccounted for.
The final episode has one hour to wrap up one of the most complex superhero stories ever made for television and these are the six biggest questions the finale has to answer before the credits roll for good.
What actually happens to Butcher? And is he the final villain of The Boys?
This one has been building for the entire season, and by episode 7, it’s not even a debate anymore because Butcher has gone fully off the rails. After the supe-killing virus was rendered useless against a now-immortal Homelander, Butcher doubled down on a backup plan so extreme, that it put him at war with his own team.
He secretly ran radiation experiments on Kimiko in the hopes of replicating Soldier Boy’s power-stripping blast, all while keeping Hughie mostly in the dark. Then, once Frenchie died and chaos broke loose, Butcher essentially abandoned the group and went rogue with a modified version of the virus that could be dispersed through air, meaning it threatens every supe on the planet, not just Homelander.
The show has spent the whole season positioning him as a secondary antagonist with a genocidal plan and the question isn’t just whether Butcher dies, it’s whether he goes out as a villain, a martyr, or something in between. The finale owes us a real answer on what Butcher actually is by the time this is over.
Where is Ryan?
Ryan has been conspicuously absent since the midpoint of season 5, and his disappearance is not accidental. After Homelander nearly killed him and Butcher helped him recover, Ryan left the Boys’ base and basically vanished from the story.
This builds up a lot of anticipation for where he is and what he’s up to. He needs to return and the show has to explain where he has been all this time, and give his arc an actual ending.
Will Kimiko actually develop Soldier Boy’s powers?
The radiation experiment storyline has been one of season 5’s most harrowing subplots. Butcher’s plan involved exposing Kimiko to intense uranium radiation in hopes of triggering a reaction similar to the blast Soldier Boy uses to strip supes of their powers was brutal to watch.
Although Kimiko agreed to it herself, suffered seizures, lost her healing abilities temporarily, and nearly died, it’s a tragic arc and it would be nice to know what’s the end to this. Then in episode 7, with Homelander closing in on the Boys’ base, Frenchie confirmed to Homelander’s face that the experiment succeeded.
Frenchie then used the chamber against Homelander directly, exposing them both to radiation, which scarred Homelander and ultimately cost Frenchie his life. So the question going into the finale is: Has Kimiko actually absorbed the power to strip supes of their abilities?
If she has, then she is arguably the most important weapon the Boys have left. She’s the one who can physically approach Homelander and take his powers away in the same way Soldier Boy once could.
What happens to Hughie and Annie?
These two have been the emotional spine of The Boys since the very first episode. Hughie lost his girlfriend in a superhero accident and wandered into a fight he had no business being in and Annie was a corporate supe with real convictions trying to survive in an industry designed to crush them.
Over five seasons, they fell in love, broke each other’s trust, hurt each other, and kept circling back anyway. But steady ground doesn’t mean safe. The finale has to decide: do Hughie and Annie survive? And if they do, what does that life look like?
Does Homelander actually die?
This feels like the obvious question, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. As of episode 7, Homelander has achieved something unprecedented in this universe: he’s essentially immortal after injecting V-One into his bloodstream.
The supe-killing virus, which the Boys spent most of season 5 developing as their endgame weapon, is now useless against him. He’s sitting in the Oval Office with his feet up on the desk. He killed the President, he’s declared himself a god, everyone who could challenge him politically or physically has been neutralized or killed.
However, the show has been quietly laying out the idea that the radiation experiment may have cracked something in Homelander’s defenses. He flew away from Frenchie’s chamber visibly damaged, with scars on his face for the first time in the show’s history.
If Kimiko has actually developed the power-stripping blast, Homelander goes from immortal god to just a very angry man. From there, anything is possible.
Leaked information circulating online suggests Butcher kills Homelander with a crowbar after he’s been depowered, which would be almost poetically ugly in the way this show tends to be.
Lastly, what does the world look like after this?
This might be the most important question of all, and it’s the one the show has been quietly avoiding. The Boys has always been a story about systems, not just individuals. Homelander isn’t the problem, Vought is the problem. The idea that power goes unchecked when it’s profitable enough is the problem.
And even if Homelander dies in the finale, even if Butcher gets stopped, even if the Boys somehow win, what does America look like after a sitting president was murdered on live television by a superhero who announced himself the new god of the nation?
The Gen V characters showing up in the finale, confirmed by creator Eric Kripke, suggests the show is at least trying to address the next generation of this universe. But the finale needs to do more than set up a spinoff. It needs to give some kind of answer to the central question the show has been asking since season 1: can a world that created Homelander be fixed, or does it just create another one?
One final scene of the country rebuilding, or one final scene of it spiraling further, either works, as long as the show commits to it. Seven years of satire pointing at the worst of American institutions deserves more than a freeze-frame on a sunset.
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Edited by Subho Mukhopadhyay