Prime Video’s Decision Backfires, Undercutting a Pivotal Moment in The Boys Finale

The Boys mostly sticks the landing with its series finale, but Prime Video still found a way to make one nagging problem feel bigger than it had to be.

The finale: good hour, tough squeeze

The show had one hour to tie off a whole lot of threads, and honestly, it pulled it off better than it had any right to. Season 5 has been divisive and the finale is not going to flip anyone who was out, but where the show ends up with Homelander, Butcher, and the rest of the core cast feels right, earned, and in line with what The Boys has always been.

The trade-off: not everyone got the time they needed. Soldier Boy is nowhere to be found. And the way the Gen V crew gets used manages to be both brief and frustrating.

About those Gen V cameos

After two seasons of Gen V building Marie Moreau up as a potential Homelander-level problem and spending Season 2 on her learning to control her powers, The Boys Season 5 basically waves that off. The show undercuts the buildup by suggesting the hype was overblown and, no, she still can not actually control them.

• End of Episode 7: Starlight seeks out Marie, Jordan Li, and Emma Meyer for help, which tees up a big crossover assist.
• Episode 8: That setup gets walked back almost immediately. Starlight tells them to sit out the main fight and help elsewhere.
• Net result: two short scenes, zero impact on the plot, and they never touch the big battle.

Why bring them in at all?

In theory, keeping the endgame focused on The Boys makes sense. This is their show and their finale. But if that is the plan, why rope in Gen V at all? Gen V Season 2 closed on setup that The Boys clearly did not want to carry forward, so we end up in the worst of both worlds: the crossover serves neither show.

The cancellation makes it sting

Prime Video canceling Gen V after two seasons is what turns a minor annoyance into a bigger problem. There is no real closure for those characters now. That part is not on The Boys writers — they clearly wrote expecting the spinoff to keep going — but it still leaves the Gen V crew stranded. The Boys does nothing with them, and now Prime will not either.

It is not like Soldier Boy, who was absent here but still feels like a lock to pop back up somewhere. The Gen V kids have no runway at the moment. Hopefully they get another shot in a future spinoff, because they deserved more than a hand-wave and an off-screen assist.

Where this leaves things

The finale mostly lands. The big arcs feel true to the show. But the Gen V crossover, paired with the cancellation, is a self-inflicted misfire that leaves promising characters on the bench with no game to sub into.

All five seasons of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video.