The Boys Season 5: Will Butcher Get His Comics Ending?

Summary

• Amazon's The Boys has aired the entire fourth season, and now we only have one chapter left.
• The main question in the show's fandom right now is how faithful the final season will be to the source material.
• The thing is, the comics had a finale that devastated readers, and the show seems to be building on that.

We all know that Eric Kripke's The Boys is inspired by the comic books written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson. 'Inspired' has always been the most accurate word to describe the adaptation, as it strayed quite far from the source material already in Season 1, which by general consensus made the story much better and more digestible.

However, it could very well be that the Amazon series will return to its roots in the finale and repeat the horrific ending of Billy Butcher's arc, which was also the final storyline of the comics until the epilogue series Dear Becky was published in 2021.

Why are fans worried about this possibility? Let's find out.

The Disastrous Finale

Whether you're familiar with the original comics for The Boys or not, let's take a quick look at the controversial final arc involving Billy Butcher and his eternal hatred of all Supes. Casual viewers, prepare to be blown away.

Of course, Homelander's demise is a big part of the finale. But it doesn't go as expected. In fact, it is not Butcher who kills the leader of the Seven, but... Black Noir. Yep, it turns out that the silent Supe is Homelander's clone (and therefore equally powerful) and actually the one who assaulted Becca.

Butcher finds it out and takes revenge by crushing Black Noir's head with a crowbar while he is still weak from the fight with Homelander. But this is not the end of the story.

Butcher is so obsessed with his grudge against Supes that it has turned him into a Homelander of sorts, a sadistic monster killing people left and right. His ultimate goal is to commit full-scale genocide, wiping out everyone with Compound V in their bodies by detonating bombs designed to eliminate all Supes on Earth.

Naturally, his teammates in the Boys are against this plan, so Butcher kills them all except for Hughie. MM gets a grenade in the face, Frenchie and Kimiko can't escape the explosives Butcher plants in their apartment. At this point, Starlight is no longer part of the team.

As the last man standing, Hughie does his best to stop Butcher, leading to a devastating final confrontation in which he kills his longtime friend by stabbing him in the heart. Supe genocide is averted, but Hughie is left utterly alone and miserable.

Will the series adapt this arc?

Eric Kripke has confirmed that the next fifth season, which is expected to premiere sometime in the summer or fall of 2026, will be the show's last, and that it was always his plan to end the story after five chapters. Kripke did not go into detail about how exactly he plans to end the story. But the creators have already put all the key pieces in place to set up Butcher's final villainous turn.

See for yourself: Butcher is dying and going insane from cancer caused by Temp V, his extremism (embodied by Joe Kessler) is growing, Supe genocide as an ideology has been popping up more and more lately. Furthermore, the spin-off Gen V introduced a weapon that is suspiciously reminiscent of the bombs in the comics: a virus that can kill all Supes if it becomes airborne.

So yes, unfortunately, it feels very plausible that our beloved Butcher will become the final antagonist of the series. He's one bad day away from becoming a monster anyway. But will the creators allow him to kill all the fan-favorite members of the Boys? That seems to be the main question at the moment.

The comic book finale was not exactly a hit with fans. Many felt that a bunch of main characters were killed off for shock value, without any meaning to the story. So maybe Kripke and his team will let our beloved vigilantes survive the on-screen version. Fingers crossed.