The Boys Just Broke Its Biggest Homelander Promise — And It Changes Everything

So, did The Boys actually let Homelander go nuclear in its final run? Short answer: not really. Season 5 gives him a messy, fitting exit and pushes his instability into the red, but the show stops just shy of the total catastrophe a lot of us were braced for. And given how the season was teased, that restraint is... surprising.

Where Season 5 Picks Up: God Complex, Government Power, and V1

After seizing the U.S. government at the end of Season 4, Homelander spends Season 5 tightening the screws on non-supes and treating civil liberties like a suggestion. He also straight-up declares himself God, then tries to force that belief onto his base. It is exactly as deranged as it sounds, but it tracks with his ego and the yes-men orbiting him.

Then Episode 6 drops the big upgrade: Homelander gets his hands on V1. That makes him immune to Butcher's supe-killing virus and seems to kick his powers up another notch. The terrifying part? He barely gets to use it. Kimiko strips his powers before he can turn that boost into anything epoch-level, and while his final comeuppance is deeply satisfying, the fact that it arrives before massive fallout undercuts a lot of the doomsday vibes the season was selling.

Remember That Tease?

Expectations for Season 5 got supercharged when Antony Starr went on The Kelly Clarkson Show and promised this about Homelander:

"The worst thing is yet to come."

Given this is the guy who let a plane of innocents drop, executed a protestor in public, and built out those so-called "freedom camps," that is a high bar to clear. The season also put out a final-season poster showing Homelander looming over a scorched Earth, which had a lot of fans convinced he was about to wipe out a city or worse. That mass-destruction swerve never arrives.

What He Actually Does In Season 5

Homelander is still a monster this season. The difference is that almost all of it feels like the same monster we already know, just further untethered:

• He declares himself God and tries to purge nonbelievers, though he largely unleashes others to do it and the plan doesn’t actually succeed.
• He physically assaults Ryan and nearly kills him at the end of Episode 3, finally crossing a line the show has teased since Season 2.
• He kills President Steven Calhoun — honestly, it is shocking Calhoun lasts as long as he does.
• He murders ex-teammates A-Train and Firecracker, which is brutal but not exactly unprecedented for him.
• In the series finale, he delivers a fully unhinged televised speech threatening to slaughter anyone who refuses to fall in line.

All awful. None of it the kind of singular, reality-reshaping atrocity implied by the pre-season hype.

So What Did Starr Mean?

Two options make sense. One: he was talking about Homelander almost killing Ryan — not the most body-count-heavy act, but emotionally the darkest place the character has gone. Two: he meant the godhood crusade, which is less about immediate casualties and more about how far gone he is mentally.

There’s also that final broadcast, where he threatens mass slaughter live on TV. He does not follow through — because Butcher ends him first — but if Butcher hadn’t stepped in, it feels very likely Homelander would have tried to make good on it.

The Bottom Line

Season 5 sends Homelander out with a bang — just not the extinction-level one the marketing (and that Starr tease) seemed to promise. He grabs V1 in Episode 6, gets immunity to Butcher’s virus, looks scarier than ever... and then Kimiko takes the board out from under him before he can play the endgame. The result is satisfying TV. It’s also why, when you look back at the season as a whole, there’s no single, definitive "worst thing" that tops his past sins. The menace is there. The mushroom cloud isn’t.