When Eric Kripke began working on his TV adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book series, The Boys, in 2016, he had a simple goal in mind. “I started this show heading in, just wanting to take the piss out of superheroes,” he told The Ringer in 2020. “That was the initial idea.”
At the height of Marvel Studios’ powers in 2019, Prime Video’s The Boys flew into the media landscape and introduced itself as a refreshing, disruptive alternative to the superhero status quo. Weaponizing dark humor and hyper-violent action, the series offered a pointed satire of the overused conventions of superhero storytelling while crafting a gripping narrative built on the familiar setups and concepts of the genre. But over time, The Boys has evolved into a blockbuster franchise of its own. And for the past few years, it has increasingly run the risk of becoming exactly like the superhero cinematic universes that Kripke originally sought to “take the piss out of.”
In 2022, Kripke spoke to Entertainment Weekly about The Boys’ interconnected TV universe, which was about to expand to the college-set spinoff Gen V. And these concerns weren’t lost on Kripke. “We're trying really hard to not be scum f--- sellouts,” he said. “We're trying really hard to make sure that each show or each idea would be something we just want to do on our own anyway, whether The Boys was connected to it or not.”
Three years later, the Gen V Season 2 finale feels like a potential turning point: The Boys franchise may finally be losing its way.
In the penultimate episode, the new Godolkin University dean, Cipher (Hamish Linklater), was revealed to be little more than a puppet controlled by the season’s true villain: Thomas Godolkin (Ethan Slater), the supe school’s founder himself. It was a satisfying twist that set the stage for what could have been a strong ending to a pretty solid season. But the finale, which was released on Wednesday, is a messy, action-packed conclusion that ultimately sets up a future crossover with The Boys, as the leading Gen V students graduate to the franchise’s flagship series. It feels more akin to a lackluster MCU finale than anything else—just with an edgier tone.
Ahead of the finale, Godolkin had successfully executed a long-gestating plan with the help of master strategist Sister Sage (Susan Heyward). Through his avatar, Cipher, Godolkin was introduced as a careful, calculated, and compelling antagonist—due in large part to a captivating performance by Linklater—who manipulated Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) and her friends at every turn. However, thanks to the blood-bending Marie healing him in the penultimate episode, Godolkin could now live in his own body for the first time in decades. Emboldened with this renewed sense of freedom, he devolves into a typical power-crazed villain, setting aside the next steps in his and Sister Sage’s wicked plot to return to God U. Despite Sage’s pleas to stay the course, the suddenly shortsighted Godolkin chooses to purge the university of its weakest students.
Gen V manufactures a final confrontation in the campus’s training facility, where Cipher had just fought Sam Riordan (Asa Germann), Greg (Stephen Thomas Kalyn), and Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas) in the previous installment. Godolkin easily lures in desperate God U students, who are eager to climb in the school’s ranking system, to hone his abilities ahead of his inevitable fight with Marie. When she finally makes a dramatic entrance, the blood bender is joined by her friends, who climb out of a frat bro’s asshole, one by one, as if exiting a clown car.
With a few other crude tricks up their, uh, sleeves, they defeat Godolkin—and yet they fail to kill or otherwise incapacitate him, as they opt to save the other students first. It’s another contrived setup to prolong the suspense and afford Polarity—who had conveniently escaped captivity in the preceding scene—the opportunity to make a dramatic entrance of his own and save the day. In the end, Marie just blows up Godolkin’s head anyway.
The uninspiring spectacle is less earned than the Season 1 finale’s campus showdown, and it’s plainly reminiscent of so many superhero TV or movie endings that have jettisoned their better storytelling sensibilities to make way for an explosive, climactic battle. And before long, the series leans into another superhero trope: The Gen V crew gets a visit from a pair of the franchise’s other star superheroes to build excitement for the upcoming fifth and final season of The Boys.
As Marie and her friends idle in the middle of an empty road, the streetlights begin to flicker. With a tearful smile, Annabeth Moreau (Keeya King) says, “She’s here,” teeing up Starlight’s (Erin Moriarty) superhero landing and second cameo of the season.
“Wanna join the resistance?” Starlight asks them.
“We kind of already have a resistance,” Emma (Lizze Broadway) replies in her typical goofy way, triggering a brief, awkward silence. “But, yeah, no, like some sort of [clasps hands together] merger.”
Moments later, the speedy A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) zooms onto the screen—much to the excitement of the giddy super-teens—and ribs them for gathering in the open. “You guys are fucking rebels now, let’s act like it,” he says coolly, with the Gen V kids all smiling at each other as the episode’s end credits roll.
It’s a cringey closing sequence that feels like the kind of superhero spoof that The Boys, or even Gen V, would have previously produced to poke fun at Marvel or DC. The crossover is a familiar move right out of Kevin Feige’s $30 billion playbook, and a likely symptom of the franchise’s continued expansion efforts. The final season of The Boys seems to be taking precedence over the more self-contained story that Gen V maintained in its superior first season. And it all aptly represents how Gen V has become a cog in the larger machine that the Boys franchise has transformed into.
As Kripke recently told The Wrap, the final season of The Boys—which is expected to premiere in mid-2026—will take place “about six months” after the conclusion of the Gen V finale. And Kripke and Co. are already looking well ahead to the next steps for the interconnected cinematic universe. “We have a plan for Gen V Season 3, and we’re psyched about it, but we need enough viewers to watch Season 2 to justify Season 3,” he explained. “Now’s the time that they’re paying attention to the numbers. … Same applies to Vought Rising Season 1. We have plans for a Season 2, if we can.”
Kripke also gave updates on The Boys: Mexico, another spinoff series written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer that’s currently in development, as well as the second season of the animated The Boys Presents: Diabolical, which Kripke suspects won’t be renewed due to a lack of viewership.
Though it remains to be seen just how central a role the Gen V crew will play in The Boys, they’re now positioned to be a part of Starlight’s resistance ahead of its final confrontation with Homelander. But more importantly, the Season 2 finale—along with the emergence of all of these other spinoffs—points to the larger trend of the franchise assimilating the proven business models of Marvel Studios and DC Studios and becoming just as concerned with interconnected world-building as it is with its individual stories. The overall success of the Boys TV universe is well-earned, and it may be somewhat unfair to criticize its natural growth in a media era forever changed by the overwhelming success of the MCU’s Infinity Saga. Yet it certainly feels like we’re getting closer and closer to Amazon holding a V52 Expo in real life.
