The Real Reason The Boys Is Ending With Season 5
After five seasons, "The Boys" is going to pack it in at Prime Video — and it turns out that's all according to series creator Eric Kripke, who told Entertainment Weekly, "I'm excited to finally execute a 5-season plan." His last show was the enormously successful "Supernatural," which notoriously took 15 seasons to end. This time, it looks like Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie Campbell's (Jack Quaid) gang of miscreants won't be getting a repeated reprieve from cancellation.
According to Kripke, five is a magical number for screenwriters, as is the number three, so letting the series go at five seasons makes a lot of logical sense. "Part of it is such a wonky stupid screenwriter thing but three and five are the big magical numbers for writing," he explained. "Three is movie acts, TV acts are five. Jokes are a runner of three for five. Five just seems like a good round number. It's enough to tell the story but also bring it to a climax without wearing out its welcome."
Kripke revealed to Entertainment Weekly that there's something very special about Season 4 of "The Boys" that makes it unique.
Season Four of The Boys signals the end
It turns out that the fourth season of "The Boys" has been intentionally scripted to feel like the show's story at large is nearing the end of the road. "That was part of my argument: No one can watch this season without feeling at the end like 'It's ending next year right?' So we might as well announce it so people can watch it with that cool epic heading-toward-the-end feeling, which is what I'm hoping for," Eric Kripke said to Entertainment Weekly.
Naturally, this doesn't mean that the universe where the show takes place will come to a full-on halt; "Gen V," a raucous and addictive story about college-aged supes at a university, continues onward — it was renewed for a second season in October. The open-ended animated anthology series "The Boys Presents: Diabolical" aired in 2022. On top of that, Variety reports another spin-off set in Mexico is in development. "This story of 'The Boys' will not continue on," Kripke said. "With any luck, 'Gen V' will continue on, there will be hopefully a couple others in development that we're talking about that can continue on, but 'The Boys' story ends in season 5."
One can definitely expect the series to go out with a bang — whether that's a good thing or not for our gray-hatted heroes and villains remains to be seen. They'll find out what they can expect from Season 5 when Season 4 of "The Boys" arrives on Prime Video on June 13.