‘The Boys’ Battle It Out in a Final Season That Satires Modern American Madness With Vicious Brilliance

Alci Rengifo

Things have gotten to the point where Amazon’s “The Boys” no longer feels quite like fiction. Aside from the ability to shoot lasers out of one’s eyes, everything else could be pulled from some quote out of the latest White House press briefing. Future pop historians will marvel at how this final season of the superhero satire dropped just as the real president of the United States openly threatened another country with civilizational destruction. Homelander (Antony Starr) suddenly became all too real. We don’t know how it will pan out in our current timeline as the midterms hurtle our way, but this fifth and final season expertly balances hardcore action with compelling human angles.

The season opens with Homelander basically reigning supreme as his chief threats starting with Annie aka Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and her comrades are on the run in the underground. The situation is quite bleak. Hughie (Jack Quaid), MM (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are in a Vought “Freedom Camp” where the entrance announces, “freedom will make you free.” Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) has been deported to the Philippines. The resistance led by Butcher (Karl Urban) is still able to mount effective stunts. During an all-American rally for Homelander, they manage to publicly air a video exposing how the blonde megalomaniac left the passengers of Flight 37 to die way back in season one. As an enraged Homelander imposes police state policies in response, Butcher’s next act is to break out his comrades from the detention center. Now reunited, their most urgent task is to find a way to infect Homelander with the supe-killing virus from last season to finally bring about his demise.

While “The Boys” has never been able to recapture the full narrative originality of its first two seasons, what has always retained is a particular symbolic power. For this final round, the whole plot involving trying to get Homelander infected while avoiding Starlight-hunting authorities is a good way to keep all the brilliant pieces of satire together in a coherent narrative. We can sense the writing team’s glee at plucking ideas straight from the news. The original 2006 Garth Ennis comic series the show is based on was itself a direct response to the George W. Bush era, which at the time seemed so divisive, even apocalyptic, as the Iraq war raged on and radical evangelical groups were moving from the fringe to genuine political power. This season introduces a new hero, Oh-Father (Daveed Diggs), the husband of Vice President Ashley (Colby Minifie). He is decked in a white costume with crosses, giving interviews promoting the idea of America being a “Christian nation.” The Deep (Chace Crawford) gets his own incel podcast, only to later be emasculated by Homelander. Firecracker (Valorie Curry) meanwhile brainwashes the population with her show that promotes Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories. She also does a promo for “VMC Theaters” that hilariously shadows Nicole Kidman’s famous AMC spots. 

Much of the material in the early episodes is buildup, introducing new characters while letting the ideas around the established ones grow deeper. Butcher may be hell bent on stopping Homelander’s fascist rise, but Hughie and Kimiko still show concern for innocent bystanders who might get hurt during a mission, creating strain in the group. These two also get the sweeter storyline of the season as their romance gets intense under the pressure of a final showdown. Then there’s deeper complexities applied to Homelander, who starts becoming more of a messianic maniac. He begins to have angelic visions while grappling with revelatory childhood memories eerily close to the kinds of biographical details we know about Donald Trump and his own dad’s overbearing behavior. He even awakens super dad Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) in an effort for validation. Not that we gain any sympathy, though it is refreshing that the series’ chief monster keeps getting more psychological complexity. Seeing Homelander try to open his heart just a little comes across as darkly tragic.

Again, the real meat is still the parallels to what is actually happening in the real United States. After the Flight 37 video is revealed, the Vought corporation kicks into action to make the public believe it’s an AI hoax. Homelander suggests to Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) that insulting memes aimed at his image should be made illegal. Oh-Father is used to condemn Starlight and her followers as satanic agents in religious revival scenes where Daveed Diggs is pure religious menace, hyping crowds with flashy song and dance numbers. Later, government agents chase after Starlighters in images clearly modeled after the ICE raids now all too common in the news. As the season progresses you wonder what the actual heroes of the show can even do against such overwhelming forces, especially after an initial use of the virus against a particular character seems to fail. And yet, isn’t that how it can feel sometimes at this very moment?

The glorious humor and bloody gore that also defines the show is of course still here. Like its clearest predecessor, Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” “The Boys” deconstructs the very idea of superheroes. If a person could make someone explode, there would obviously be blood and guts everywhere. Other gags dare to make us laugh, like a Supe named Rock Hard because he’s an actual mound of rock. His porn consists of footage of volcanoes erupting, causing him to ejaculate bursts of hot lava. We would expect no less from “The Boys” as it winds down with final battles, confessions of love and plenty of rage and madness. It is pop art that can be comforting in a sense, acknowledging that we are living in dark times where mad men wield tremendous power, allowing us to laugh and cry amid the rush towards the cliff.

“The Boys” season five begins streaming April 8 on Prime Video.