- The boys‘ creator has hit back at complaints about its fifth and final season
- Some fans have reacted negatively to what they describe as “drunk episodes”
- Eric Kripke says people are “watching the wrong show” if they’re unhappy with how the story is progressing
The boys‘ showrunner has defended his fifth and final season’s plot amid growing complaints from fans that it is full of “filler episodes”.
Speaking to TV Guide , Eric Kripke suggested that some viewers were “watching the wrong show” if they took that attitude and/or thought the Prime Video show’s final hurray would include “a huge fight scene [in] every episode.”
Kripke’s comments come in the wake of growing fan frustration over The boys season 5. In fact, since its debut in early April, parts of its fanbase have reacted negatively to its plot pacing, the introduction of new characters who are superfluous to the narrative and then killed off not long after their arrival, and boring adult humor.
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Such reactions have scattered threads on the ResetEra forums, The boysReddit page – including in its season 5 episode 6 post discussion thread – and other social media platforms, such as X/Twitter, since the Amazon TV Original returned. And while these people represent only a small portion of the show’s global audience, it’s their feedback on each chapter that Kripke sees first.
With the satirical superhero franchise’s main show set to end after the next two episodes, it’s no surprise that a clearly frustrated Kripke has chosen to respond to those outraged at how The boys‘ last season unfolds – and he doesn’t hold back in his criticism of their criticism.
Full spoilers immediately follow The boys season 5, up to and including episode 6.
two episodes from the finale and homelander already got V1, no sign of Marie and her team, Deep is still alive and they rewrote Soldier Boy’s character… #theboys #theboyss5 pic.twitter.com/gxHtCRKfIg6 May 2026
“None of the things that happen in the last few episodes will matter if you don’t flesh out the characters,” Kripke replied when asked about the aforementioned fan hostility.
“I get a lot of online displeasure, to put it politely, and I’m like, ‘What do you expect? You expect a huge fight scene every episode?’ One, I can’t afford that. And secondly, it would be so empty and boring, and it would just be about shapes moving without meaning.”
“For example, it was important to really close out where Firecracker was,” he said of alt-right Supe before her demise in episode 5. “It was important to develop Soldier Boy and Homelander’s relationship and hear how hopeless MM (Mother’s Milk) feels in episode 4. It was important to see that The boys split between people rallying around Butcher and people rallying around Hughie.
“At no point during the writing of it was I like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing filler episodes. So who cares?’ We all thought at the time that we were really getting these important character details. We have something like 14 characters, maybe 15. And I owe it to all of them — in that television is the character business — I owe it to all of them to flesh them out and humanize them and their stories.
“It’s just sometimes it’s a huge character move,” Kripke added. “But apparently, just because it’s not the plot, you’re like, ‘Nothing happened!’ I say, ‘Nothing happened, huh?’ The craziest, biggest moves happened. It just wasn’t someone shooting someone else and going, pew, pew, pew. And if that’s what you want, you’re just watching the wrong show.”
Before the interview ended, Kripke also offered his thoughts on why he felt some fans thought Season 5 had largely spun its wheels in its first six episodes.
“Another thing I’ll say that’s interesting is that it might be—you see, I’ve thought about it a lot, because I’m not obsessed online and looking at people who are mad at me, you are!—but I think it might be a byproduct of a weekly release,” he mused.
“Because as much as I love the weekly release — because we should take the time to get people talking and arguing about the show — my guess is that if you binged it or watched it all at once, you’d have a very different experience than watching one episode a week that you might think is slow or slower than normal, and then you have to wait a whole second week for the next episode. I think that probably aggravates people.
“To be clear, I’m a proponent of this release plan,” he said, before adding, “But I’ve wondered if that was one of the side effects.”
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