As you set about watching the fifth and final season of “The Boys” you may think, yeah, it’s time to call it quits.
Make no mistake: Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic books remains the smartest and most relevant superhero TV show ever made. It’s just that there’s déjà vu all over the place as Season 5’s initial episodes repeat such series staples as grotesque graphic violence, often ickier eroticism, scorched-earth media satire and more up-to-the-minute references to Trumpian fascism than a week of Stephen Miller appearances on “The Ingraham Angle.”
There’s also a tendency for characters to repeat plot information, which sets off alarms that this flagship of boundary-busting TV may be turning into the kind of programmer Netflix denies it keeps making. Much of the writing here remains clever and topnotch, but there’s an inescapable sense of wheel-spinning in the first several episodes.
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) still calls everyone wanker or worse as he ruthlessly leads the remnants of the titular insurgent group against the increasingly powerful megalomaniac Homelander (Antony Starr). The chemically modified superman now controls the nation as well as the culture-dominating Vought corporation that created him.
Jack Quaid’s Hughie still struggles, often futilely, to operate The Boys and himself with a semblance of conscience. Dozens of secondary characters — mostly frightened (with good reason) Homelander sycophants, some well-meaning rebels, others more-or-less innocent bystanders — scheme, betray and switch sides with a regularity that can feel more plot-dictated than character-driven.
So far, so familiar. But around midpoint in the season (Prime Video showed critics the first seven of eight chapters), things get interesting in new, borderline genius ways.
There’s a kind of horror episode that’s both a homage to the greatest “Star Trek” hour of all, “The Tholian Web,” and Kripke’s take on “The Last of Us.” Hughie even mentions the latter, one of endless ways the show’s pop culture savvy lends persuasive detail to “The Boys’” lunatic world.
Another episode gives backstory and richer insights into secondary, now more intriguing characters such as Firecracker (Valorie Curry), the Marjorie Taylor Greene of the Homelander/Vought Axis; Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), Earth’s smartest supe who somehow is outsmarted by human nature; and Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), Homelander’s vulgar father and one of Vought’s first powered people, preserved cryogenically and by the corporation’s first super serum V1, long since discontinued in favor of the less side-effecty Compound V.
There’s even a visit to Hollywood, featuring celebrities we’ve been asked not to reveal playing themselves and a reunion of sorts from a beloved cult show. It’s sharp and generally hilarious — “The Boys” and “The Studio” are produced by the same company, after all — until supes start suping, anyway.
Most fascinating of all, Homelander has a new vision that leads to all kinds of personal, societal and (in his own addled head if no one else’s) theological consequences. Unsatisfied with being the most marketed hero ever worshipped, the flag-caped psychopath is now convinced that he’s God and will stop at nothing to force everyone else to believe it, too.
This leads to some marvelous, dark night soul-searching, especially among characters like Firecracker and Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) with Christian backgrounds. It’s also an excuse for bottomless mockery of coercive and commodified religion, personified to a hypocritical tee in Daveed Diggs’ super-screamer megachurch pastor Oh Father. He’s blissfully happy to dump Jesus for Homelander’s new and more profitable Democratic Church of America.
Faith’s not the only big, existential theme this season. The Boys’ umpteenth desperate plan to stop Homelander still involves a supes-killing virus. But it would also end all Compound V-enhanced lives, including those of good Boys gals Starlight and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), as well as the now tentacle-spewing Butcher himself. He’s always been a kamikaze for the greater goal; what’s interesting is how the women view, with profound ambivalence, their survival and the immortality that may be part of the equation if remaining V1 doses can be found.
This may be high-falutin’ philosophical discourse in easy-to-understand comic book form, but the value-of-life questions “The Boys” poses are part of what makes it such a superior science fiction product.
Psychologically, everyone remains a mess, some hotter than others. Starlight, who’s led the ineffective resistance while half the Boys were imprisoned in an ICE detention center … er, that is, a Vought subsidiary’s Freedom Camp (complete with an Auschwitzy “Freedom sets you free” sign over the entrance gate) … fears for her followers and has an enlightening heart-to-heart with her long-absent father.
On a more humorous note, Homelander has installed former Vought publicist Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) as vice president of the United States. And thanks to her own Compound V exposure, Ashley’s become quite the headcase (we’re barred from telling you more, but man, what a multi-pronged, vanity decimating performance Minifie registers).
While in hiding Kimiko finally trained herself to speak — like a TikTok influencer, with an unexpectedly dirty mouth and imagination to match. Yet Fukuhara infuses a new sweetness into the character once known only as the feral, deadly Female. In addition, the body part regenerating heroine’s reunion makeout scene with Frenchie (Tomer Capone) has to be seen to be believed — and you still may not believe what you’re seeing.
The main psychosis, as always, belongs to Homelander, and it’s not just a God complex. Unfrozen Soldier Boy hates his more powerful progeny, who inspires his penchant for gay-coded slurs more than anybody. Starr’s patented slow-twist facial expressions are made for processing daddy issues; those grimaces are more fun to watch at this point than the predictable accommodating-to-homicidal turns we’ve all grown to love.
The gruff unpredictability Ackles brings to Soldier Boy sometimes feels like emotional incoherence. He’ll be leading the spinoff prequel series “Vought Rising,” where hopefully the deeper motivations behind his swinging dick persona will become clearer.
As for “The Boys’ ” final chapter, the preceding seven certainly leave us eager to see how it all ends. This season was formulaic, sure, but possessed enough brilliance to confirm the show’s outstanding place in television history. Kripke and company display a crucial understanding of what their story means, what can be done with it and why it was so necessary to tell it in our time.
“The Boys” premieres Wednesday on Prime Video.