what makes me most sick about the ending of the boys is the engine of vought ultimately coming out as the true sole winner of it all. stan edgar is back in precisely the position he was in s1, spouting off about profit in the wake of so much blood. supes will continue to be created and abused. the gears continue to grind.
homelander was never the villain of the show. it was always vought. i was okay with homelander becoming the face of vought, i was okay with his death, i was okay with all of it so long as it meant ending the cycle. taking down the monsters that made him into what he became.
instead, we saw a victim of heinous abuse be shattered by hatred, delusion, fear, and humiliation. driven insane by the delusions that vought put in his head in the first place. he died slowly and painfully, stripped of the only security he'd ever known. he died scared and truly alone in the world, all while the company that created him happily moved on to bigger and better abuses.
i understand that this is probably in part due to the spectacular failure that is gen v's existence and subsequent cancellation. maybe if the writers hadn't been anticipating that series as a future catalyst for vought's downfall, we would have gotten more finality. instead, we're left with an absolutely dystopian ending in which victims have only three options: die as martyrs, survive to exist in compliance with the status quo, or become the scapegoat villains to be mocked, snuffed out and painted over.
my heart goes out to all the folks who're struggling with this ending. i know homelander is a polarizing character who's largely been treated as nothing more than a caricature by the show and fandom/world at large, but there is something in him that resonated with many of us. there is such tragedy in his character that deserved more respect. it makes me deeply sad for everyone who had any hope for a shred of dignity to be shown not just to his character, but to the abuse he endured, and what that turned him into.
I like seeing people’s takes on the end of The Boys cause I don’t think too deep about it (at first). It was an okay finale and I can find myself agreeing with takes on all sides of the spectrum on how the finale was good and what it lacked.
I personally wish the season would’ve built to a better penultimate and final episode for the show as a whole. Which was pretty much what the posters lied to us about.. the city (if not world) destroying catastrophe that was Homelander going off the rails and a bunch of shit being destroyed before he gets taken down and that didn’t come to fruition.. AT ALL. We really could’ve had the finale in like 2 different locations and really split up the boys as a team.. had MM, Starlight, Frenchie (given that he lived that long), and hell even the Gen V kids go to Vought tower and set up bombs to destroy it while simultaneously taking down the Deep and Soldier Boy (the fact that MM didn’t get to kill SB is wild to me honestly). I would’ve had Butcher, Hughie, and Kimiko along with any other supes that had been recruited (which is really what I wish they would’ve spent the season doing.. getting dissenting supes on their side to fight Homelander loyalists) go to the White House to face Homelander after he’s already massacred (or had other supes massacre) a ton of the civilian population. Have the supe war thing outside, leaving Butcher to face Homelander by himself and kill him.. probably with the help of Ryan or a couple more backup characters. I can even take the comic based way Butcher killed Homelander with the crowbar and Homelander begging for his life. It was a nice touch, I would keep it honestly. I would also keep Hughie killing Butcher at the end (obviously somewhere different if the tower is destroyed in my “version”) and probably everything after that too because it wasn’t the most awful way to end these beloved characters. I really think you would’ve had to have executed the whole season VERY differently to get the story to do what I described above. I don’t even have the brain capacity to describe how I’d change the rest of the season to fit my imagined ending in a better way either, it’s just really what I wanted from the finale though.
I enjoyed the first half of the season a lot honestly.. but it didn’t really set up or lead to where I wanted it to go. I know plots need tied up for a lot of characters throughout (A-Trains death worked because of how soon it happened and it really raised the stakes) but the season also introduced characters, like Oh Father, who I enjoyed but he didn’t do the most (same with the Gen V kids). I liked the references to other seasons that it did when it had the chance. It was cool to meet Annie’s dad and I really enjoyed ep 4 but it didn’t really lead to much in the end so I can see why people thought ep 4 was “filler”. SB was kinda wasted and used for Vought Rising setup (as many have pointed out) but was captivating during most of his screen time. The Homelander is God plot also felt a bit meh to me. Not that it doesn’t fit the character but I think I wasn’t sure how to take where they were going with it. New Black Noir dies a meaningless death too. The V1 plot mattered.. until it didn’t.. with a lot of people pointing out it seemed to make Homie just invincible and not really MORE powerful (again the penultimate episode kinda screwed the pooch.. ending ep 6 with the boys looking terrified just to not really have it be an intense race against the clock from the second ep 7 started). Frenchie dying was valid but I don’t think it made me emotional because unlike other deaths this season I saw it coming.
I’m not going to address every plot point but these were the few that stand out right now. I was expecting it to be bigger than it was at the end. Again the WHOLE SEASON probably would’ve had to have been different (including a lot of the killed off characters living till the end for the imagined supe war) to meet what I was expecting for the ending though. Expectations aren’t always reality but damn I can’t believe the last two episodes aren’t even a 7/10 on IMDb. I was okay with the finale episode for what the rest of the season set it up to be. Maybe pacing was an issue for some, but it was better than the penultimate. Again, I expected the season to build to more. I’d give the whole season a 7.5 or 8/10 for what it was and the strong start, but when I think about it, I was a bit let down honestly, especially with the potential of what we could’ve had. But that’s it I guess.
