The Boys season 5 is bringing the beloved superhero story to an end, and the show's creator Eric Kripke is definitely feeling the pressure. With filming of the new episodes under way, Kripke has recently talked about the challenges of finding the right ending, and how to tie everything together in a satisfactory way for fans.
"I am in a fair amount of terror about a series finale," Kripke confessed during an appearance in the podcast Creator to Creator alongside The Night Agent and The Shield's creator Shawn Ryan. According to Kripke, there are not that many great finales in the history of television, and being a fan-favorite show means nothing if you're unable to stick the landing.
"You can count in one, maybe two hands, the truly great series finales. Of which, by the way, well done, I think The Shield is one of them. And, conversely, the graveyard is literally filled with terrible [series finales]. You could have the greatest show for years, but if you stiff that ending, and that's what's sending everyone out in the parking lot, they go, 'Oh, maybe that show wasn't that good,'" he explained.
"How do you tie up the stories? How do you do it in a way that is emotional and satisfying? How do you do it in a way that creates, frankly, the illusion that some detail that you dropped in season 1 or season 2 is now suddenly coming back to pay off?," he continued, citing one of the best shows of all time as a major inspiration.
"Breaking Bad, to me, is as good as a show gets, and I was able to ask some of those writers, 'The way you tied everything together, how did you do that?' And they said, 'Oh, we just had a list of loose ends on our board, that we had no idea of what to do with them, that we would keep compiling over the seasons, and when then it was time to do the final season we would just start checking them off, because we are going to look like geniuses because the season 2 story line becomes this.' So that, I would say, has been a big challenge. The size of it, you know?
"We always say we want to go deeper, not bigger. But there's inevitably [a bigger scope], like, just because you need to find a new way to do an action scene, or you need to find a new superpower. The trick is so it doesn't inflate so much that it becomes a parody of itself, because it's already a parody. So you really keep it grounded."
Despite his fears regarding the upcoming ending of The Boys, Kripke made sure to follow his usual process, which has proven successful so far. "My process in the writer's room is I always want to break the emotional arcs before I break the plot arcs, because my feeling is a plot turn or a set piece, all that stuff is a dime a dozen, but if it's not a metaphor for what the character is emotionally going through, or some political point you want to make, then it's just empty. It’s just floating around. That is my biggest fear and challenge," he admitted.
The Boys season 5 is expected to debut in 2026, but Prime Video has yet to confirm a release date. In the meantime, read our recap of everything that happened in The Boys season 4 ending, and get ready for the upcoming Gen V season 2.
