The Boys, season 5: biblical (review)

The final season lives up to expectations, playing with Homelander’s god complex right down to his cape. A conclusion faithful to its decadent DNA.

This is the worthy conclusion that we hoped for. A very successful final part which follows through on its intentions.

Homelander freaks out and thinks he’s God. Literally. Conquering the White House is no longer enough for him. The opposition led by Starlight’s followers is insignificant. The United States is now a false democracy, where roundups and arbitrary arrests follow one another. Camps are built everywhere to imprison political opponents and silence any dissent. Homelander is too strong. Its communication on the networks is too brilliantly thought out for the population to react. Everything is marketed, exploited, relayed by influencers in the pay of Vought. The country has fallen under the dogma of the all-powerful savior, who will soon turn into a divinity. To worship. Or to fear.

And in the middle of this nightmarish picture, The Boys continues to seat its characters on whoopee cushions. Just to relax the atmosphere. Even more scat than usual (that’s saying something), this season 5 multiplies the ribald dialogues which border on pure and simple vulgarity. Too much poop, too much cum, too much gratuitous childish trash. The Boys are sassy brats. And this is precisely what makes the strength of this final chapter: refusing to grow up, to become too political, too realistic or too moralizing. Faithful to his raw identity, his constant violence hides an obvious sincerity, like an irrepressible desire to embrace his insane extravagance to the end.

Thus The Boys avoids the traps into which the last seasons of series often fall: looking for a deep meaning behind the gore. The series does not seek to justify itself. The echoes of today’s America are less and less tangible. Of course, it still holds up a mirror to the divide which today opposes the two faces of Uncle Sam. But deep down, the series prefers to explode everything and remain the fantastic and delirious spectacle that it has always been.

Obviously, by refusing to evolve, the series also gives the feeling of going in circles. It floats like an air of déjà vu. Season 5 repeats its ranges: grotesque graphic violence, filthy eroticism, ardent media satire and barely veiled references to Trumpian excesses. This flagship of transgressive TV tends to rehash. Up to repeating its plot around the famous virus (the one introduced in season 1 of Gen-V) capable of killing the Supes. Undeniably, the episodes drag on (all are over an hour long).

But The Boys concludes its mission with panache, in a jubilant excess of blood and guts. Eric Kripke’s adaptation of the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson remains the smartest and most relevant superhero series ever made.

The Boys season 5, to watch on Prime Video from April 8, 2026